It begins with the king as a boy, having to spend the night alone in the forest to prove his courage so he can become king.

Now while he is spending the night alone he's visited by a sacred vision. Out of the fire appears the Holy Grail, symbol of God's divine grace . And a voice said to the boy,

'You shall be keeper of the Grail so that it may heal the hearts of men.'

But the boy was blinded by greater visions of a life filled with power and glory and beauty.

And in this state of radical amazement he felt for a brief moment not like a boy, but invincible, like God.

So he reached into the fire to take the Grail, and the Grail vanished, leaving him with his hand in the fire to be terribly wounded.

Now as this boy grew older, his wound grew deeper, until one day, life for him lost its reason.
He had no faith in any man, not even himself.

He couldn't love or feel loved. He was sick with experience. He began to die.

One day a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. And being a fool, he was simple minded, he didn't see a king. He only saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king,

'What ails you friend?'

The king replied,

'I'm thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat.'

So the fool took a cup from beside his bed, filled it with water and handed it to the king.

As the king began to drink, he realised his wound was healed. He looked in his hands, and there was the Holy Grail, that which he sought all of his life. And he turned to the fool and said with amazement,

'How can you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?'

And the fool replied,

'I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty.'

Happy Valley Motor Lodge, Boston MA

The motel was, not to put too fine a point on it, a rathole. Someone back in the Seventies had decided that brown was a good colour for wallpaper. At least, Mulder mused, it hid most of the stains. The bed sagged; the television, after a number of minute adjustments to the aerial, was grudgingly receiving two and a half channels. Mulder left it as it was and settled back onto the yielding mattress with a sigh, coldish beer in one hand and warmish pizza in the other. Home sweet home, or the nearest thing to it he could come up with at short notice. It wasn't much, but after the emotional tumult of the last couple of days, it was exactly what he needed. He was exhausted. After the drive from Seacouver to Vancouver, the early morning flight to Boston and a day spent at the FBI building there trying to track down his cousin Herb and Herb's ex-girlfriend, Saffron, it was more than thirty-six hours since he'd slept. He wearily tried a button on the remote, and was not even slightly surprised when nothing happened. Still, by some good fortune, the film that was on was suited perfectly to both his surroundings and his mood.

'Greetings, my friends,' the narrator intoned. 'We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends... future events such as these... will affect you, in the future.'

Mulder allowed himself a tired smirk; the man on the screen continued with his speech, injecting needless levels of drama into his voice as he did so.

'We once laughed at the horseless carriage...the aeroplane...the telephone...the electric light, vitamins, radio and even television! And now some of us laugh at outer space...'

'Yeah. You tell 'em,' Mulder muttered. The familiar old formula was starting to do its work, lulling him to sleep faster than any of the more usual insomnia remedies ever could. No need to bother with alcohol or pills when an Ed Wood movie did the job for a fraction of the cost, with no side effects other than a tendency for particularly bad lines of dialogue to leap into his mind during tedious case conferences.

It was as Mulder's eyes finally began to fall closed that his cellphone rang. He reluctantly pulled himself back to wakefulness, and away from 'Plan Nine from Outer Space', debatably the worst movie ever made and one of own his personal favourites.

'Mulder,' he said.

'Mulder, it's Joe.'

'Hey, Joe,' Mulder acknowledged sleepily. 'So what have you got for me?'

'Well not too much, as it happens,' Joe said apologetically. 'Lemarchand was last seen on February 12th in Manhattan. His watcher said he met a woman in a bar on Amsterdam and 103rd and went to an apartment building just off Central Park. When she didn't see him come out by midday the next day she decided he must have left by a back door and gone home to New Jersey. He wasn't at his apartment so after 24 hours she reported him missing. She didn't take any pictures of the woman he picked up because it happened almost every night. That's all we've got. Nothing on the woman at all.'

Mulder scribbled the address Joe gave him on the lid of the pizza box. 'Anything else? Did she get close enough to describe the woman?'

'We've got a description, but it's not that useful. Our girl didn't ever get too close to him. Lemarchand was into drug dealing and organised crime. He had some very nasty friends. The guy was a dangerous assignment.'

Mulder pulled himself up into a sitting position. 'You ought to give some thought to double crewing your people, Joe. FBI procedure is not to even consider going on a stakeout without at least one other person as backup. If it's going to be long term four would be better.'

'I know that as well as you do, Mulder, but manpower's a luxury we just don't have,' Joe said, not without some regret. 'That's the nature of the organisation. The one watcher to one immortal thing - a lot of people see that as sacred. If you want to change it you're working against three, four thousand years of tradition.'

'Four thousand years, huh? And I thought the FBI was bad,' Mulder said. He stretched lazily, stifled an involuntary yawn. 'So this woman Lemarchand was seen with...?'

'Blond, late thirties to early forties, heavy make-up. I showed our Watcher the pictures of the woman from France. She said it could have been the same person but there's no way she can be sure. And that's about all I can give you, buddy. I cross-checked against all immortals known to be living in or visiting Manhattan on that date. Came up with zip. On the night Lemarchand disappeared they were all accounted for. If this woman's an immortal then as far as we know she doesn't have a Watcher assigned.'

'Why would that be?' Mulder asked.

'Hey, I never said we were perfect,' Joe said, and Mulder could almost see his shrug. 'We don't have a Watcher on every immortal, not by any means. Some of these guys we just don't know about, some of them we've just lost along the way. Then there are the ones who know about us and make a point of killing anyone we assign to them. Usually we try to keep an eye on them from a safe distance but it's not always possible.'

'Can you get me a list of the women you know about who don't have Watchers?'

'Could be the woman Lemarchand picked up isn't even immortal, Mulder,' Joe pointed out. 'It wouldn't be the first time immortals have teamed up with mortals to make a kill. Hell, she could have been a casual pickup. She mightn't have had anything to do with Lemarchand getting killed.'

'It's all we have to go on. That and the apartment building.'

Joe sighed. 'Well I can get you a list of names and descriptions for any female immortals on the records who don't currently have a watcher on them. Pictures if we've got them. Chances are they're probably all dead, but I suppose it's worth a shot.'

'Thanks. Oh yeah, and while we're on the subject of mystery immortals, is there anything on the guy who killed Drake?'

There was the sound of paper being shuffled. 'Got the photos from Drake's cottage here this morning,' Joe said. To Mulder he sounded distinctly unimpressed. 'They're not too good. Keefe wasn't expecting Drake to be challenged so he didn't have a lot of equipment along. Kind of sloppy really, but to be fair Drake was good at avoiding fights. He hadn't taken a head in ten years. Anyway, Keefe got a couple of usable shots of the guy leaving and we've got a registration number for his car. Turned out to be a rental, so no surprises there.'

'Did you check whether the rental company had security cameras in their offices?'

'Mulder, do you have any idea how many years we've been doing this?' Joe said, rather irritably. 'Of course we checked the rental company. There weren't any cameras, which is probably why they chose it. The description the clerk gave us doesn't give us any more than the photograph. He was a big, quiet guy with a beard, paid cash, seemed kind of slow, had a couple of heavy bags with him. The clerk thinks he probably arrived in Rennes by train. And before you ask, the drivers' licence was a forgery. It doesn't give us anything.'

'Sorry, Joe,' Mulder said ruefully. 'No criticism intended. I just didn't get a lot of sleep last night. Can you fax the photos and the details of the women to me?'

'At the FBI?'

'No. The other number I wrote down for you. It's a secure fax line with some friends of mine. Same guys who set this line up. They kind of know what's going on.'

'Just how many people have you told about this, Mulder?' Joe said angrily.

'It's okay, Joe,' Mulder reassured him. 'I'd trust these guys with my life.'

'Mulder, I don't want to be the guy who sold out the Watchers to the FBI.'

'You won't be. You've got my word on that.'

Joe sighed. 'Okay, Mulder. I'll fax through what we have. Anything else?'

'No... Uh, yeah. Yeah. How's Adam?' Mulder asked. He tried to make it sound like an afterthought, but his voice caught over the words.

'Adam left for Chicago a couple hours ago,' Joe told him. His voice grew hesitant. 'Look, Mulder, I know it's not really any of my business, but you guys need to talk. The Horseman thing came as a shock to all of us but that's not who he's been for a long time now. He's one of the good guys now.'

'Yeah, I know, Joe,' Mulder said wearily. 'I'll call him tomorrow.'

'You need to,' Joe advised him, not unkindly. 'I'm telling you now, Adam's not going to make the first move here. And you gotta bear in mind, this guy is the world expert at the clean getaway. If he thinks he's blown it, he'll be gone the minute this is over and I guarantee this time you won't be able to track him down again.'

'Yeah. I'll take it under advisement, Joe.'

'See you do that, Mulder,' Joe said gruffly. 'I want to keep him around too.'

'How did you meet him?' Mulder asked, suddenly curious.

Joe let out a smoky chuckle. 'Hah. Long story. He was a friend of a guy called Don Salzer, one of our head researchers. Don used to own the bookshop in Paris. You don't know it: Shakespeare and Co, near Notre Dame. I used to go in there to see Don and I'd see this guy, this *kid* hanging around. I mean, student clothes, student haircut - he looked about nineteen, twenty tops. There was a cafe next door, and he'd buy a coffee and borrow a book from Don and make the coffee and the book last the whole day. After I'd seen him around a few times Don asked me to go and talk to him because he wanted to recruit him as a researcher and he wanted to know if I thought the kid was Watcher material. So I spent the rest of the day buying Adam coffee and talking to him about his research and his life so far and all kinds of other crap. He was damn near perfect for the job, and I liked him, straight away. Next day, he came along to the bar to hear me play and we got talking again. Three weeks later I was recommending him to the selection committee. Once he was in he went straight to the Academy in Geneva. I got assigned Mac not too long after that, so I was spending most of my time in Seacouver.' His voice grew dryly amused. 'Adam, meanwhile, managed to get himself assigned to tracking down Methos and spent the next few years making damn sure it wasn't going to happen. We used to meet up for a drink whenever Mac went over to Paris - maybe a couple of times a year.'

'And then you found out who he really was.'

'Yeah, Joe said. 'Mac told me. That's another long story, but the bones of it is that Don Salzer was killed by an immortal called Kalas who thought he had a handle on Methos. Mac had come damn close to taking Kalas once and Kalas decided to even the odds by taking Methos first. Don managed to warn me that Methos was the target, so I sent Mac to Paris to get to our Methos researcher before Kalas did. Mac worked out who he was the minute he walked into Adam's apartment, which was a surprise, because Mac's not usually what you'd call intuitive. In any case, Kalas tried to whack Adam, and Adam got away. Then Adam tried to whack Mac, but he was fighting to lose. He told Mac he wanted him to have his quickening so Mac would be good enough to take Kalas. I've got my doubts about that. Adam knew enough about Mac by then to know he wasn't going to kill him.'

'So what was the point?' Mulder asked in puzzlement.

'Well, I'm no expert in Adam's motivations,' Joe hedged, 'But my guess is that he wanted Mac's friendship or his protection. Both of which he got. Mac went straight after Kalas, then Adam stopped the fight by calling the police on the pair of them.'

'Which is where Inspector Lafayette recognised him from,' Mulder said. Another piece fitting into place.

'Yeah. Guess it had to happen someday,' Joe said dryly. 'Anyway, as soon as he could Mac headed straight back to Adam's apartment. By then Adam was long gone, of course. I thought he was gone for good, then I got an e-mail from him a week later. He knew Duncan would tell me who he was. He didn't understand why I hadn't told the Watchers.'

'So why didn't you?' Mulder asked in bemusement.

'I should have,' Joe said slowly, 'But God help me, I liked him too much. The son of a bitch pulled one over on me so damn elegantly. If I turned him in all that would have happened would be that he'd had to have spent the next hundred years of his life in hiding. It would have been such a waste.'

A sudden thought struck Mulder. 'You're writing the Methos chronicles, aren't you?'

'Well, yeah,' Joe admitted. 'I know he's written his own but he's not likely to publish them any time soon. '

'Does he know?'

Joe snorted. 'I'd be amazed if he didn't. He's not stupid, but he trusts me. He tells me things about his life almost every day. We haven't talked about it, but he's got to know I'm putting it all down somewhere.'

'So after you found out, you met and talked things through?'

'Yeah. We agreed to meet at the same cafe, just outside Don's old bookshop. It was a public place - it seemed safe enough. At the time I didn't know whether to be more scared or pissed. I mean, he'd used me. He'd played me like a fish on a line. The whole friendship thing between us could have been something he'd orchestrated to get into the Watchers. He could have arranged to meet me so he could take me somewhere and whack me. I decided to go more out of curiosity than anything else. I mean, if I'd missed that, knowing who he was, I'd have spent the rest of my life kicking myself. Figuratively speaking, at least. So I turned up and there he was, same student clothes, same student haircut. Hadn't touched his coffee. We looked at each other, and that's when I figured it out: he was as scared as I was. We ended up going back to the bar and he gave me the heavily edited highlights of his life all over again, only this time starting sometime around 3000BC. He's hung around ever since, on and off. Christ alone knows he's got more than his share of faults, but God help me, I care about that devious bastard. I don't want him disappearing again, Mulder.'

'Yeah,' Mulder said. 'I know how that one goes. I'll call him tomorrow, Joe. I'll get this sorted out.'

'You do that. I'll speak to you soon. You take care, Mulder.'

'You too, Joe.'

Mulder put the phone down and closed his eyes, collecting his thoughts. Despite only meeting him the day before, he liked Joe a lot. Another one of the good guys, and God knew they were few and far between. He sighed: Joe had been right - he needed to call Adam. No point in calling him now - he'd already be in the air on his way to Chicago - but it would have to be soon. There had already been too much evidence of Adam Pierson's propensity to bow out when the going got sticky.

Mulder yawned again, widely this time, and flopped back down onto the thin pillows. On screen the film continued, unconstrained by either narrative flow, grammar or logic.

'The saucers are up there. And the cemetery's out there. But I'll be locked up in there,'' the female lead informed the hero earnestly.

Mulder was disinclined to share her belief that she was out of harm's way. A zombie who looked almost, but not entirely, completely unlike Bela Lugosi was walking around with a cloak held up to his face to hide that deficiency. Most directors would surely have been put off by the fact that their only big name actor had died mere days into filming. Not Edward J Wood. In a stroke of casting genius he had found a replacement who not only looked completely different, but who was also a foot taller.

Mulder took another mouthful of his beer. On screen a number of mismatched zombies were stiffly roaming an unconvincing graveyard; even as he watched a cardboard gravestone fell over. Given this perfect background material it would have been no effort at all to have let his eyes fall closed again. It was with reluctance that Mulder returned to the task at hand, and dialled a number on his cellphone. There was no point in putting the Lone Gunmen number on speed dial. They changed it too often.

'Lone Gunmen.'

'Hey Frohike. It's me.'

'Guys, it's Mulder. So, Mulder, how was the Pacific Northwest?'

'Damp. Tell your sister thanks for the loan of the car. Sorry I had to leave it in Vancouver. I'll get someone to drive it back.'

'Just send her the money for the plane ticket up there, Mulder. She doesn't get out enough. She can do some shopping or something.' A pause. 'There aren't any bullet holes I ought to warn her about first, are there?'

'How well you know me, Frohike,' Mulder said. 'No, the car's fine. I think the carwash got most of the ichor off.'

'Ha ha, very funny,' Frohike said. There was a another pause. 'That was a joke, wasn't it?'

Mulder grinned. 'Yeah, it was a joke. So what are you guys doing?'

'We thought we'd take a little light relief from safeguarding the freedom of the American people and exposing the corruption in the US government,' Frohike said.

'We're playing Tomb Raider,' Langly interrupted. 'That Lara Croft is one good-lookin' woman.'

'She's not real,' Mulder pointed out. 'Even if she was, she's so out of proportion she wouldn't be able to stand upright.'

'Oh yeah? How would you know, Mulder?'

'Scully told me. She was kind of irritated about it.'

'So what are *you* up to this fine evening, Mulder?' Langly asked. His tone of voice suggested that he strongly doubted that Mulder's choice of activity would be any more culturally enlightened than his own.

'I'm crashing with beer, a pizza and an Ed Wood movie.'

'Plan Nine?' Frohike asked, with the air of a connoisseur.

'Yeah, but I'm probably not going to stay awake all the way through. It's been a long couple of days.'

'So to what do we owe the pleasure of this call, Mulder?' Byers asked from somewhere in the background.

'I just called to tell you that a guy called Joe's going to be faxing some stuff through to you later. If you fax it on to Danny in Washington he'll send it on to the Boston field office and I'll pick it up in the morning. You guys know the drill.'

'I take it the case is going well?' Byers asked.

'I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you,' Mulder told him dryly. It was a standing joke between the four of them.

'Hey, Mulder,' Langly said. 'I got one for you. AOL is run by Satanists.'

'Ok, Langly, I'll bite,' Mulder said. 'Why is AOL run by Satanists?'

'Because the maximum number of people allowed in a chat room is 23 and two divided by three is .666. And that's not the only time the number 23 comes up. Bill Clinton's initial are B and C - the second and third letter of the alphabet and there are 23 letters in 'William Jefferson Clinton'. And there are references all over popular culture. Babylon 5 is set in the twenty-third century. In Star Wars, Princess Leia is held in cell block 23. Babe was entrant number 23 in the sheepdog trials. The mad bomber in the movie 'Airport' - I'll just let you guess which seat he was sitting in...'

'Does this remind anyone else of the time when Oliver Stone was the special guest on Sesame Street?' Mulder asked of the world in general.

'Actually, Langley, I think you'll find two divided by three is .66 recurring,' Byers added helpfully.

'Damn,' Langly said in mock disgust. 'Another fine theory shot to hell.'

'You can't win them all,' Mulder commiserated. 'Of course, if you've got to base a conspiracy theory on anything, a prime number under 30 has to be one of the safest bets.'

'Man, don't even get me started on seven and thirteen...' Langly began.

'Wait...' Byers interrupted suddenly. 'Frohike, tell Mulder to hang up. Mulder, hang up!'

'What's wrong?' Mulder demanded. 'What's happening over there?'

'Mulder, we're showing three separate traces started on this call. We'll call you back.'

Then came the dial tone. Mulder had been cut off. He waited, and the cell rang again after a minute or so.

Mulder picked up the phone instantly. 'So you're sure there were *three* traces?' he asked, without preamble.

'Just how many were you expecting, Mulder?' Langly snapped.

It was a good question. 'I guess just the two,' Mulder said uncertainly. 'The guys I'm after and the guys who are after them.'

'And you didn't think it was worth warning us about this?' Frohike asked irritably.

'Just doing my bit to keep you guys on your toes,' Mulder said, although in truth the possibility of an outgoing trace on his cellphone hadn't actually occurred to him. 'Can you get me any locations for those traces?'

'Sorry, Mulder,' Langly said. 'All I can tell you from the lapse times is that two of them were probably from around the Eastern Seaboard. New York, Washington, Boston maybe. The other one I can't give you anything on. Some pretty sophisticated equipment there.'

'So what would you recommend?' Mulder asked.

'We'll set up another line for you, make it as secure as we can, put some monitoring equipment on it. Until then incoming calls are probably okay. Just watch the outgoing stuff. Don't ring anyone you're worried about being tracked down. If it's an emergency keep the calls as short as possible. Under a minute if you can.'

'Thanks, guys. I owe you for this.'

'No problem, Mulder,' Frohike said. 'But when this is over...'

'Don't worry, Frohike. I'll come over and give you guys the full rundown.'

'Yeah. We'll look forward to it. We'll call you when the new line's set up.'

'Make it tomorrow morning, Okay guys? I've got a lot of sleep to catch up on.'

'Speak to you soon, Mulder. Enjoy the movie.'

There was one more call to make that night. This was one Mulder wasn't too worried about having traced. Anyone who did manage to track the call down would end up with the not particularly secret central switchboard number for FBI headquarters in Washington DC. He dialled the number, and was put through to the extension he needed.

'Danny? You're working late. I thought I'd just get the machine. I'm sorry? Oh the holiday. Yeah, the holiday's going fine. Danny, I need you to do something for me. It's urgent. Yeah, I know, but it's *really* urgent this time. I'm going to need you to make-up some photofits for me. Yeah, I know we have people for that, but this is a little different. I'm going to have the pictures I want you to work from faxed through in the next hour or so. When they're done I want you to get them to the Boston field office. I'll pick them up in the morning. I know. I'm going to owe you big for this one, Danny. On my tab, yeah. See you soon Danny.'

He put the phone down and turned his attention back to the film. The same shot of Bela Lugosi walking through a graveyard had been replayed at least three times now. The fact that it was set in a different graveyard to the rest of the film and had been filmed during broad daylight while the rest of the scene was set at night had obviously escaped its director.

'One thing's sure. Inspector Clay is dead. Murdered. And somebody's responsible...' a police officer announced. But this immortal piece of script writing had passed Mulder by. He had finally fallen asleep.

He was woken a couple of hours later when his cellphone rang for the second time.

'Mulder,' Mulder said blearily.

'Mulder, it's Scully. Where are you? I've been trying to get hold of you for more than a day... Mulder, what are you watching?'

Mulder tuned into what was currently going on on the television.

'...The transvestite is not interested in those of their own sex. The clothing is not worn to attract the attention of their own sex, but to eliminate themselves from being a member of that sex.'

'I was asleep, Scully. I think this must be an Ed Wood filmathon.'

'Ed Wood?'

'Yeah. He's the worst director of all time. This is "Glen or Glenda." This guy Glen is a transvestite. There's this incredibly touching scene when his girlfriend lets him try on her angora sweaters.'

'Give this man satin undies, a dress, a sweater and a skirt or even the lounging outfit he has on, and he's the happiest individual in the world. He can work better, think better, he can play better, and he can be more of a credit to his community and his government because he is happy...'

'I think this was a subject old Ed was quite passionate about. Transvestism as stress relief *and* social control. And he does make it sound kind of liberating. Hey, Scully, I don't suppose...?'

As usual, Scully read his mind. 'Mulder, if I wasn't so worried about you I would be hanging up now. And you'd better believe I don't have *any* clothes that would fit you.'

'Scully, I wasn't going to say anything of the sort!' Mulder protested indignantly. He paused for a moment. 'Does that mean you wouldn't lend me your angora sweaters?'

'Mulder, do you really think I'm the kind of person who owns *anything* angora?'

There was another pause. 'Cashmere?' Mulder asked plaintively.

'Touch my cashmere, Mulder, and partner or not, you're a dead man,' Scully assured him flatly.

'But you'd let me come shopping with you, right? I'd still need you to help me pick out colours. I mean, do you think I'm more of a spring person or an autumn person?'

'Mulder, I'm hoping and praying you're not serious about this.'

'Well, if it's good enough for J. Edgar Hoover...'

'Mulder, where are you?' Scully asked, in a voice that suggested that she was rapidly losing patience. 'You tell me you're chasing down Adam Pierson, then you hang up on me and vanish from the face of the earth. You didn't tell anyone where you were going, you turned your mobile off...'

'I'm on holiday, Scully. I'm touring the great run-down motels of New England.'

'Why are you in New England, Mulder? I thought you were going after Joe Dawson. Doesn't he live in the Seacouver area somewhere?'

Mulder blinked. 'How did you know that, Scully?'

'Well I assume he lives near MacLeod, since he's been the man's alibi on three separate occasions.'

'I was in Seacouver, Scully, but I'm not any more. At the moment I'm trying to find Herb and Saffron.'

'Your cousin?' Scully said, puzzled. 'I thought you said he and your friend hated each other.'

'They do, but I thought maybe the people who are trying to find Adam contacted other members of the camp apart from Naomi and Jacques.'

'One of these people who *were* trying to find Adam. He's dead, Mulder.'

'Scully, I can't talk about this now. I need you to do something for me.'

'Mulder, this is feeding your delusion that Adam Pierson is alive. It isn't healthy.'

'Please, Scully. This is important. I need you to find out anything you can about an apartment building in New York city. Can you do some research for me?'

Familiar irritation crept into Scully's voice. 'Mulder, I'm at a conference. I don't have time to run around checking things out for you. Why don't you get Frohike to do it?'

'Scully, nobody's going to think it's unusual if someone in the Manhattan field office does a search on a building but if might look strange if it's done from Washington DC or a remote site. I just thought it would be quicker this way. It won't take you long.'

'What do you want me to do, Mulder,' Scully said with weary resignation.

'I need you to check out this apartment building. It's where Jacques Lemarchand was taken before he vanished. The woman he was seen with was a blonde in her late thirties, could be the same woman in the CCTV pictures in Paris. She obviously owned or rented an apartment in that building. I don't want you to go anywhere near the building. I just want you to check out any criminal or financial records, see if anything jumps out.'

'All right, Mulder,' Scully said resignedly. 'I'll get the Manhattan office to carry out a check for me. I'll go through it when I have time.'

'Thanks, Scully. I really appreciate this.'

'No problem, Mulder. Now would you mind telling me what's going on?'

'Not over the phone, Scully. I'll be in New York in a couple of days. I'll meet you there.'

Scully let out a breath. 'Mulder...'

'What is it, Scully?'

'Just take care, Mulder,' Scully said wearily. 'And don't switch your phone off again. I'll speak to you soon.'

'Thanks, Scully. Have a good evening.'

It was later, Mulder didn't know how much later, when the cellphone rang yet again and interrupted his sleep. He fumbled for it on the bedside table, and managed to hit the 'receive' button after a couple of tries.

'Mulder,' he said, without opening his eyes.

'Agent Mulder, this is Assistant Director Skinner.'

For some unknown reason, Mulder felt an involuntary smile stretch his face.

'Hello, sir,' he said. He must have sounded exhausted. He wasn't sure what time it was, but the Ed Wood filmathon was apparently far from over. More lines of classic dialogue echoed around his dingy motel room.

"I am here. Sent to bring you home."

"Home? I have no home... Hunted... Despised... Living like an animal - The jungle is my home!"

'Agent Mulder, would you care to tell me exactly where the hell you are and what you're doing?' Skinner asked acidly.

Mulder opened one eye. 'At the moment I'm watching... I think it's "Bride of the Monster".'

'I see.' Skinner's voice spoke volumes.

'I'm on vacation, sir, but when I get back I swear I'll only watch the Discovery Channel and CNN.'

'Mulder, I don't care what film you're watching You've been out of contact for forty-eight hours now. Tell me where you are and what your current status is.'

'I'm on vacation, sir,' Mulder protested weakly.

'We both know you're not on vacation, Mulder. Now where are you and what's your current status?' His voice softened a little. 'Are you all right? You sound like hell.'

'I'm fine, sir. I'm just tired, that's all. I'm in a motel just outside Boston. The Happy Valley Motor Lodge. And before you ask, it's exactly as bad as it sounds.'

'As far as I'm aware we're paying you more than minimum wage, Agent Mulder. You could afford a proper hotel.'

'My family always used to stay in hotels, sir. I think the reason I like motels so much is that my parents wouldn't have been seen dead in them. Hotels require a certain standard of behaviour. These places expect you to act like a slob.'

Short silence from Skinner. Too much information, Mulder decided.

'Mulder, don't switch your mobile off again. I don't know what you're doing and I'm not sure if I want to, but if you need help, you call me, day or night.'

'Uh, thank you sir,' Mulder said. 'Actually, there is something I need from you.'

'Go on, Agent Mulder,' Skinner said cautiously.

'I need a warrant to enter an apartment building in New York.'

He heard Skinner sigh. 'On what grounds, Mulder?'

'In connection with the death of Jack Merchant. I have a witness statement which confirms that the last known sighting of him is when he entered that apartment building about two months ago with an unidentified woman.'

'That's not a lot to base a warrant on, Mulder.'

'Sir, I think something very dangerous is happening and we don't have much time left to stop it.'

'Based on what, Agent Mulder. Instinct? The information that Krycek gave you? We both know that's not enough.'

Mulder pulled himself into full wakefulness. 'Sir, if I'm wrong about this and there's nothing in that apartment building, then I'm willing to accept the consequences. Fire me, post me to Alaska, bust me down to tape transcriber. Whatever. I don't care. But are you willing to accept the consequences if I'm right?'

He heard Skinner let out a weary breath. 'I'll do what I can, Mulder, but it may have to be through the NYPD. The details of Merchant's murder were referred to us for information but it's still an NYPD case.'

'Sir, as long as I can get into that apartment building I don't care if it's with the NYPD, the CIA or Scooby Doo and the Mystery Machine Team.'

'At this rate, Agent Mulder,' Skinner told him testily, 'Scooby Doo and the Mystery Machine Team are going to be the only people who take either one of us seriously.'

'Sir, I appreciate what you're doing for me.'

'I'm not guaranteeing anything, Mulder, and I expect you to have a lot more for me before I can get this organised. They won't authorise a warrant for the whole building. At the very least I need to know which apartment.'

'Don't worry, sir. I'm on it. It turns out I have someone on the spot to do some research for me.'

'Agent Mulder, I would strongly recommend that you leave Agent Scully out of this.'

'Did I mention Agent Scully, sir?' Mulder said innocently.

'You didn't need to, Mulder.'

'I wasn't going to bother Agent Scully,' Mulder lied, unconvincingly.

'Mulder, Scully is at that conference for a reason. I don't want her involved in this.'

'Which would kind of imply that when you sent her to that conference a week ago, you knew there *was* a this.'

'That's certainly one interpretation,' Skinner said blandly. 'Now get some sleep, Mulder, and keep your cellphone switched on. I'll speak to you tomorrow.'

'Yes *sir*,' Mulder told the cellphone, but a dial tone was his only answer. With a single, economical motion, he threw it into his flightbag and closed the zip. Anybody else who wanted to speak to him could wait until the next morning. Thirty second later it was debatable whether he'd have heard the cell in any case. He was dead to the world before he even had time to pull up the covers.

The next morning, Central Chicago, Illinois

Chicago was just as Adam remembered - noisy, over-polluted, overcrowded and somehow more real than New York had ever seemed. The Sears Tower loomed over the city in much the same way that cathedrals once had in cities far more ancient. Beneath its shadow the subway trains rattled around the loop and the traffic crawled from stop-light to stop-light. He walked briskly along the streets, his hands in his pockets, looking up at the shop signs. Eventually he breathed a sigh of relief as he found the one that he wanted. It had been a few decades since he'd been on the West Side but this at least hadn't changed. The restaurant he'd been looking for was called 'The Taverna'. Nothing special, from the outside at least. Adam ducked into the alley alongside it and knocked on the kitchen door. A double buzz filled his ears as he waited. Both still here, then. Good.

Someone called: 'Come in. It's open. Keep your hands where we can see them.'

'It's me. Adam.' He pushed his way slowly through the door, hands spread out in front of him. The scents of the kitchen made his mouth water. Lamb and herbs, lemons, aubergines. He'd turned down an indifferent airline meal. Now he realised that he was starving.

The short, dark haired man who faced him held a Roman shortsword. He straightened as Adam entered, with a look of cautious relief. 'You armed, Adam?'

'No. I thought I'd just wander around inner city Chicago with absolutely no protection on me.' Adam said sourly. 'What do you think, Marius?'

'Put it on the table,' a voice said from just behind him. 'Don't turn around.'

'Nice to see you again too, Centurion,' Adam said sarcastically. He heard the sound of a safety catch being released. 'Christ, what is it with you guys today? You weren't even this paranoid up on Hadrian's wall.'

'Just a little nervous,' Marius said. 'Sword on the table, Adam.'

'Now you're making me nervous. You really expect me to give up my sword when Terras here has a gun pointed at my head and you're still waving that thing around? If I was after either of you I'd hardly have knocked at the door.'

Marius sighed and sheathed his sword. 'Okay. I'm sorry. Someone tried for Terras a couple of days ago and we're still pretty jumpy about it.'

'Things are getting dangerous around here,' the man called Terras said from behind him. He closed the door and put the gun back into an open drawer. He was a heavyset man, even shorter than Marius and almost as grizzled as Joe. 'The guy I took out was the third this year. Seems like we're getting too well known around here. Any more and it'll be time to move out.''

'Kind of a shame after ninety years,' Marius said. 'But you've got to roll with the punches.'

'You should try hanging out with Duncan MacLeod,' Adam said sourly. 'The guy might as well have a big target painted in the middle of his forehead.'

'The Celt? Yeah, so we've heard,' Marius said with a grin.

Adam sat at the battered kitchen table and looked around hopefully. 'So, what's on the menu tonight?'

'You turn up unannounced after fifty years and expect us to feed you?' Terras said dryly. 'You haven't bloody changed in two thousand years.'

'All I had today was a corn muffin at the airport and some complementary in-flight peanuts,' Adam complained. 'I had to pay two dollars for the muffin. And it was stale.'

The two other men exchanged glances. 'It's fish,' Marius said. 'I managed to get hold of an octopus. We were going to have it stuffed.'

Adam grinned. 'I haven't had stuffed octopus for about eighteen hundred years.'

'Didn't we have it in Athens once?' Terras asked.

Marius nodded. 'Yeah. You remember the guy at that party? Tried to eat the whole thing and collapsed about two-thirds of the way through?' He grinned. 'We called a physician in. I really thought he was a dead man. When the physician arrived and started prodding him he woke up. Do you know what the first thing he said was?'

'Tell me,' Adam said.

'He said "Where's the rest of my octopus?"'

Terras guffawed loudly. Marius shook his head. 'What a pig. Octopus cost a bloody fortune. And you know what his contribution to the party was? Some stuffed vine leaves he bought from a stall on the way in and a half empty amphora of sour retsina.'

'Bloody philosophers,' Terras said sourly. 'Bunch of freeloaders, the lot of them.'

'It just goes to show how good your cooking is,' Adam remarked. He pulled a bottle out of his airline carryall. 'Fifty year old Metaxa. My contribution to the party.'

'Who did you steal this from, Adam?' Terras asked sourly.

'I borrowed it from Duncan. I'll pay him back next time I see him.'

Marius folded his arms. 'All right, Pearce, or whatever you're calling yourself these days. What do you want?'

'It's Pierson now. No, wait, he's dead. It's Benn. Adam Benn. I need some information, urgently. I think I'm going to need to speak to the others too.'

'How urgently?' Terras asked suspiciously.

'In the next couple of days. We think someone's planning their own apocalypse and the date they've worked out for the millennium is sometime this year.'

'Come on, Adam,' Marius said. 'Seriously?'

'Seriously. They're immortals, but I have no idea who or why. They've got hold of some kind of virus from the Russians. It won't touch us, but everyone else...' he spread his hands.

Marius shook his head. 'And you''re involved in this how?'

'I'm mixed up in it with a friend of mine. They've tried to kidnap me and kill him. It's them or us and personally I'd rather it was them.'

'Wait a minute,' Terras said. 'This year?'

'Yeah. That's right.'

'That's stupid. The millennium's been and gone. You know that Herod died in 4BC? And he ordered those kids killed when Christ was two or three years old? Christ was born 6BC at the latest. The millennium was in March 1994 or 1995.'

'I'd go with you on 1995, but March?' Adam asked. 'How did you work that one out?'

'You remember the shepherds watching their flocks in the fields at night? Sheep can usually get to sleep by themselves and they're not that interesting to look at unless you have some very specialised tastes. The only time shepherds would bother to actually stay up and watch them would have been lambing time. That's early March.'

Adam sighed. 'Look, I'm not saying they're right. Whoever they are, maths is probably not their strong point. I know they're wrong and you know they're wrong, but the problem is they think they're right and they're the ones with the killer virus.'

'OK,' Marius said resignedly. 'I'll get the others together. It's been five years since the last meeting anyway.'

'And I want to bring a guest along.'

'This wouldn't be the famous Methos by any chance?' Marius asked dryly.

'What is it with everyone and this Methos guy?' Adam asked of the world at large. 'If he's still alive.. if he ever actually existed, and that's a pretty big if, he's probably some Neanderthal with a sloping forehead and knuckles that trail on the ground when he walks...'

Terras shook his head wearily. 'Adam, we know.'

'You know what?' Adam asked innocently.

Marius said: 'Livia ran into Cassandra a couple of months back. They were having one of those "all men are bastards" conversations when your name came up. She's still pretty pissed off with you, you know.'

Adam sighed. No point in hiding it any longer. 'Yeah. I'm well aware. You'd think after twenty or thirty centuries she wouldn't still be holding a grudge. If she keeps spreading my name around like this I really am going to have to take her out and I'd hate to have to do that.'

'She said you killed Silas,' Marius said. 'Was that the Silas who came to visit you in Rome? I thought you guys were good friends.'

Adam nodded. 'We were. I wish I hadn't had to kill him. He was the only one of us who really didn't know any better.'

'And the other two?'

'Duncan took Kronos. Caspian too.'

'So, no more Horsemen,' Terras said. He uncorked the brandy and sniffed the bottle appreciatively.

Adam nodded. 'Except me, and I've been retired for a while now.'

'But these nuts planning the end of the world, they want you out of retirement?' Terras asked.

'Yeah. We think they might be Crusaders. One of the knight orders. Templars, maybe.'

Marius rolled his eyes. 'Jesus Christ. Enough said.'

'Bunch of fucking arrogant psychos,' Terras muttered.

'You know any Templars who were immortal?' Adam asked.

'Got one name for you,' Marius said. 'Gilles de Rais.'

'Shit. *The* Gilles de Rais? Gilles de Rais the insane psychopath?'

Marius nodded. 'There's only one Gilles de Rais. You think anybody was going to name their kid after him?'

'Nasty piece of work,' Terras agreed. He spat accurately out of the door.

'Wait a minute,' Adam said. 'I thought Gilles de Rais started out in the fifteenth century.'

'Well that's what he called himself then. It's kind of a long story.'

'Then unless you don't mind telling it twice, could you save it for a day or so? There's someone else who needs to hear it.'

'OK, Adam. So who's the guest?'

'The friend I mentioned. His name's Fox Mulder. He works for the FBI.'

'Right,' Marius said. 'Anyone else you wanted to invite along? Geraldo? The Joint Chiefs of Staff maybe? Have you gone completely insane?'

'I trust him. He'll keep quiet about us, if for no other reason than that he's in it up to his neck.'

'You'd better be right about this,' Terras warned.

'Trust me.'

Woburn, on the outskirts of Boston, Massachusetts

The house was somewhere on a street of compact single storey buildings in the Boston suburb of Woburn, one of thirty or forty almost identical such houses. Cars, and vans were parked on both sides of the road. A little further along three kids were kicking a soccer ball around. Mulder looked at the note he had scribbled down and tried to work out which of the identical houses he wanted, but most of the mailboxes were hidden by the parked cars. Giving up, he parked and went to interrupt the children. The three boys looked up at him wordlessly. He knew that he looked incredibly out of place here on a Saturday in his dark suit and trenchcoat.

'Hey, kids. I'm looking for Tiffani Naylor's house. Number 37?'

One of the kids, a blond boy of about ten or eleven, pointed wordlessly at a white-painted house a little further down. 'That's where we live. What do you want with my mom?'

He looked at the boy more closely, and saw something of the woman who had called herself Saffron in the blonde hair and the freckled face. 'Nothing bad. I just need to talk to her about someone she used to know.'

'You a cop?' the boy asked, with unconvincing bravado.

'I'm with the FBI but I used to go to school with your mom in Chilmark.'

'Cool!'

The other two boys looked at their playmate with something approaching envy.

'Hey, you kids okay? Is this guy bothering you?'

A man in a sweat top and jeans had come out of one of the garages. There was a faintly suspicious look on his face. *I'm invading their territory and threatening their young,* Mulder thought. He was definitely watching too many wildlife documentaries.

'Just getting directions, sir,' he called back. Tiffani's son turned and ran towards the house. Mulder heard him shouting 'Mom! Mom! There's someone here to see you!' The man and the other boys watched him all the way down the street to number 37.

Number 37 was not quite as neat as most of the other houses along the street. The grass needed cutting, the borders needed weeding. The house itself could have used another coat of white paint. The windows were festooned with frilly white nets. A white van was parked on the drive 'Naylor Doors and Windows, Energy Efficient Units, Since 1987'.

Mulder knocked on the door, and it was opened instantly by a tanned man wearing only a pair of sweatpants. The boy stood uncertainly behind him.

'What do you want?' Tiffani's husband asked shortly.

'I need to speak to Tiffani Naylor. My name is Agent Fox Mulder. I'm with the FBI.'

The man didn't move. 'What's it about?'

'I left a message on your answering machine last night, sir. I'm sorry for the short notice but it really is important.'

The man swore disgustedly under his breath. 'Didn't get the messages yet. We got in late. Why do you want to speak to my wife?'

'She may be able to give us some information. Sir, may I come inside?'

'What kind of information you after?'

Mulder sighed inwardly. This guy had something to hide. Taxes, probably. Move to the shock tactics.

'It's in connection with an investigation into series of murders, sir. A serial killer. I don't believe that your wife's in danger but it's very important that I speak with her.'

Forty five seconds later he was sitting on a violently patterned purple armchair in front of a table covered with beer cans, a half-full ashtray, pizza boxes. The toys scattered on the floor suggested that there was another child younger than the boy he'd spoken to. Tiffani sat opposite him on the couch, looking sleepy and dull-eyed and every bit of her thirty-eight years, a pink frilled housecoat clutched around her. A fading bruise on the side of her face gave him one of the reasons for her husband's reluctance to let him in.

'Mrs Naylor, do you remember back in the summer of 1979? When a group of us went up to Maine?'

Tiffani nodded, and lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. 'Yeah.' Her eyes pleaded with him. *Don't tell my husband about Herb or Jacques.*

He'd already taken the hint. Her husband was hovering in the kitchen, just through the serving hatch, listening to every word they said. 'Some of the people who were there have been killed, Mrs Naylor.'

'You can call me Tiffani.' Tiffani said shakily.

Mulder continued, gently, as if to a child. 'Tiffani, you may have heard about Arch Drake being killed in France.'

'We don't catch the news much,' Tiffani said blankly.

'This happened about a month ago. A week before that Naomi Redburg was killed in San Francisco. Do you remember Naomi? She called herself Sunflower.'

'Yeah. I remember Naomi.'

'Rebecca Kirkwood was killed in Toronto three or four years ago. Max Donnelly disappeared a year earlier. Last week we found Jacques Lemarchand's body in the sea just off the coast of New Jersey. He'd been dead for about six weeks.'

She began to cry then, soft, choking little sobs that sounded as though they were tearing her apart.

'Tiffani, it's all right.' Mulder said awkwardly. He wished that Scully was here. She was so much better at this kind of thing. 'Do you need a few minutes?'

'No. No. I'll be okay.' she sniffed loudly. Mulder's estimation of her husband went down a few more notches. Anyone with an ounce of decency would have been in there to comfort his wife, not lurking in the kitchen eavesdropping on the conversation.

'Will they.. will he be coming for me?' Tiffani asked, in a scared little voice.

He had been going to tell her that there was no real danger, but suddenly he wanted to get her away from this place.

'It's a possibility. I think you should take your kids and go and stay with your mom for a few weeks.'

'I don't see a lot of mom and dad anymore.' Another sniff.

'I really think you should go. Just in case.'

'You said... you said you wanted to ask me some questions.'

'Do you recognise any of these women?'

He gave her Danny's photofits. There were six women immortals and the man who'd killed Drake. An outside chance. If she'd met the woman who'd led Lemarchand to his death she'd probably have been dead too by now.

'Her. I recognise this one.'

'Are you sure?' he couldn't quite keep the surprise out of his voice.

Tiffani nodded. 'She said I'd won a contest. A washing machine. She wanted to come and measure up the kitchen and see which model I wanted. She was really nice, you know? Nice clothes and hair. She said Nicky was a nice kid.'

For a moment, he was speechless. 'You're sure it's her?'

'I said that, Fox.' A spark of the old Saffron. 'It was a month ago. We got the washer a week later. Do you want to see it?'

'Do you have any papers for it? Anything that could tell me where it was bought?'

'I guess there's a serial number or something.'

'Do you remember entering the competition?'

'I enter a whole lot of contests. It's kind of a hobby for me. I didn't remember that one but sometimes the closing date is like six months or a year after you enter. I've won prizes from contests I forgot about before.'

'And after she came round, did anything strange happen? Have there been any attempted burglaries? Was there anyone strange in the neighbourhood?'

She shook her head. 'Nothing like that. They just came and delivered the washer.'

'Was the woman wearing a long coat when she came?'

She gave him a confused look. 'Yeah. She was. Kind of like yours. Real nice, expensive clothes.'

'And your kid was here.'

'Yeah.' She drew on her cigarette. 'Nicky was off sick from school. He was in here watching TV when she came. You think that's why...'

'Why she didn't want to hurt you? Yes. I think maybe it was.'

'You're wrong. You must be wrong. She was nice. Real pretty.'

'And she likes children.' The realisation hit him. Immortals couldn't have children. This woman liked children. Naomi Redburg didn't have children. That's why she'd been killed instead.

The rest of the interview gave him almost nothing. She didn't remember anything strange about Maine. She'd stayed on for another month or so, and so had Jacques. Then he'd had an argument with Drake and left and she'd had to call her mom to come and pick her up. Herb had only stayed for another week after Mulder and Adam had gone. He'd been real worried when the two of them disappeared. He'd gone to the police and everything. Mulder nodded, and rubbed his forehead with his hand. Had he heard anything from Adam? she'd asked. Yes, he told her, he'd tracked Adam down in Paris.

'You two were real close friends, weren't you.'

Not a question. He said 'Yes. We were very close.'

She nodded, as if something she had always suspected had just been confirmed. He could almost see her whole attitude to him change. In some indefinable way he wasn't a threat any more.

He stood. 'Tiffani, please do as I've asked. Go and stay with your mom for a couple of weeks.'

'I'll talk to Dave about it.'

'I'll contact the local police and explain the situation to them.'

'Thank you. Thank you for everything.'

She walked him out to the car, still in her housecoat. Out of earshot of her husband, he said softly: 'You should think about leaving. I mean really leaving. This is only going to get worse.'

She knew what he meant at once. 'You didn't leave your folks, Fox.'

For a moment he didn't have an answer to that.

'When you're a kid, it's different,' he finally managed. Herb had told her *that*?

'Now I have kids.' Tiffani said, with a spark of anger. 'You want me to take their father away?'

'How long do you think it'll be before he starts hitting them too?'

Now she was the one who didn't have an answer. He saw from the flush on her face that maybe that had already started. He pushed. 'I know what it's like to grow up with that.'

'It's not the same.'

'It's the same. Just think about it.'

'But I love him.'

'Think about it, Tiffani.' He wanted to kiss her cheek, but he saw from the movement of the frilly white curtains that they were being watched. He settled for shaking her hand. She stood, barefoot, her cigarette still in her hand, and watched him until he'd driven out of sight.

The washer had been brought with cash from a big electrical superstore in a strip mall on the outskirts of Boston. In a place where they sold hundreds of appliances each week he didn't have much hope of finding any new leads. A cashier vaguely remembered the woman who had paid in actual cash and identified the same woman that Tiffani had from the six photofits. On the warranty form the name and address she had filled out were Tiffani Naylor's. The date was the same date that she'd visited Tiffani's house, only later, during the evening. Mulder took a photocopy of the warranty form, for the handwriting.

That done, he called Joe to update him. There were a few clicks as the connection went through the new phone line as supplied by the Lone Gunmen, but even through the cellphone Joe's voice came through clearly.

'Joe Dawson.'

'Joe, Mulder here.'

'Hold on a minute,' Joe said. 'I'll take this in the office.' It was a minute or so before Joe came back on. It was easy to forget that Joe was disabled, but the walk into his office had taken time and left him slightly breathless. 'So, Mulder, any leads?'

'We've got two positive identifications of one of the women. Anne of Kirrin.'

'I'll find her chronicles. It'll take a while to translate them...'

'Translate?'

'Anne of Kirrin is the oldest of the six. She became immortal in about 1106. Unless your Latin and medieval English are a damn sight better than mine you're going to need help.'

'Could Adam translate them?'

'Sure. He probably knows more languages than anyone else alive.'

'Then can you get them to him? He'll be able to read through and pick out anything relevant.'

'I'll get them shipped over from Paris.'

'Oh yeah, and one more thing. Lemarchand's watcher. Can you run those pictures past her too? I want to know if Anne of Kirrin is the woman who picked him up in Manhattan.'

'It's done, Mulder.'

'Thanks Joe. I owe you one.'

'My pleasure.'

He made the next call straight away.

'San Francisco Police Department, Detectives Collins and Ozbek. We're not here right now, so leave a message. If you got an emergency, dial 911. Speak after the tone.'

'This is Agent Mulder. I'm calling about the Redburg killing. I need to know if Naomi Redburg told anyone that she'd won a contest in the ten days before she died. Could have been for a washing machine. Can you call me...'

The phone was picked up.

'Mulder? Collins here. Sorry about that. Just went to get a coffee.'

'No problem. I just need to know if Redburg told anyone that she'd won a contest just before she died.'

'Short answer's yes, Agent Mulder. She told her mother that she won a singles cruise to Alaska. What's it got to do with anything? You got the guy who killed her. We've closed the case.'

'Leigh wasn't working alone. He had an accomplice. A woman. That's how she got in, to check the place out. She did it before, in Boston, but that woman had kids. I think that's why she picked Redburg instead.'

'Got anything else on her?'

'I'm sending you a photofit as soon as I can get to a fax. If you can check with the neighbours, see if anyone can ID her, I'd be grateful.'

'You got the number?'

'Yeah.'

'I'll be waiting, 'though I may not have a chance to get out for a couple of days. I've got three more cases on.'

'I know how busy you are. Whenever you've got the time. We've already had two positive IDs on her in Boston. I just want some confirmation.'

'I'll get someone on it.'

'Thanks. I appreciate that.'

That Afternoon, Near Albany, Upper New York State.

Herb Jenks' house was almost a mansion, set in the hills to the west of Albany. The house was expensively, if not tastefully, furnished. When Mulder arrived he was shown into a book lined study, although no book showed any evidence of ever having been read. It was like Drake's house in France - designed, not lived in.

Herb shook his hand with excessive cordiality. His bald patch was gone, covered by what looked like an expensive weave, but he was easily twenty pounds heavier than when Mulder had seen him last.

'Fox! Good to see you again!' Herb said, not particularly sincerely.

'Herb. You've done well for yourself,' Mulder commented.

'It's Herbert,' Herb said dismissively. 'Herb sounds too much like a goddamned hippie. Yeah, the past few years have been good to me. Multimillionaire, third richest man in the city.'

'Congratulations,' Mulder said, trying sound as if he meant it.

Herb took the comment as his due. 'I heard you were doing well for yourself with the Feds too. What was it? Division head already?' He didn't wait for an answer. 'Make yourself comfortable, Fox. Drink?'

There was a full-sized mahogany cocktail bar in one corner of the study: a bewildering selection of bottles was lined up along it. Herb poured himself a large whisky. He seemed unoffended at Mulder's refusal and gestured around the room expansively.

'When dad died I sold his stake in the company,' he said. 'I've done a bit of wheeling and dealing since then, you know?' He indicated a fat, green leather sofa, which squeaked as they both sat down. 'So what can I do for you after all these years, Fox?'

'I don't know if you heard about Arch Drake being killed in France,' Mulder began.

'Yeah. Shame that,' Herb said, with little evidence of regret. 'I heard he was queer. Lover's quarrel, wasn't it?'

'There have been several deaths which could be connected. We think Drake was killed by the same people who killed Naomi Redburg, Jacques Lemarchand and possibly Rebecca Kirkwood and Max Donnelly.'

'Wait. You mean...? Shit! Someone's after the people who were in Maine that summer?'

'It looks that way, Herb,' Mulder agreed gravely.

'I know who it goddam was,' Herb said furiously. 'That fucking boyfriend of yours. Adam fucking Pierson.'

Mulder sighed. Herb's reaction was depressing, but not much of a surprise. 'Someone tried to kill Adam Pierson two weeks ago in Paris.'

'Yeah, I'll just bet they fucking did.' The hate in his voice was intense, frightening.

'Herb, what the hell did Adam ever do to you?' Mulder asked in anger and mystification.

'I just know his type. Goddam fag. He fucking seduced you, Fox. You were just a kid. He couldn't wait to get his fucking hands on you. Did you know he had a sword? Fucking psycho, that's what Jacques said.'

Mulder took a deep breath. *Forget it. It's not worth it.* 'Herb, all I want to know is if you can identify any of these women...'

Herb snatched the photofits from his hand and leafed through them. His brow furrowed.

'This is some kind of a trick, right, Fox?'

'What do you mean?'

Herb tapped the same photograph that Tiffani Naylor had already identified.

'This is that woman from Forbes. Came to interview me about a buyout I'm working on. Said she was going to write a column about me.'

*Giving them what they want* Mulder thought. A washing machine had been enough for Tiffani. With Jacques Lemarchand, it had probably been sex. Naomi had her cruise. Herb the mover and shaker had been offered a column in Forbes.

'Did you tell her about your kids?' he asked. The hunch he had had in Boston seemed worth following up on.

Herb nodded. 'Tell her? Hell, she took photographs. Said it would be a bit of human interest. Practically all she wanted to talk about. Lucky it was their weekend to come here.' He blinked at Fox, puzzled. 'Anyway, how'd you know I had kids?'

'Lucky guess,' Mulder said noncommittally. 'Have you got any surveillance tapes of her? You've got quite a security system here.'

'We tape over the old stuff after about a week.' Herb paused. 'She asked all about you, Fox. What you were doing now, that kind of stuff. Said she knew you from college in England.'

'And I suppose you told her all about the good old days in Maine,' Mulder said wearily.

'Yeah. You got a problem with that? What was I supposed to do, tell her to fuck off? She was a good looking woman. I'm a single guy again now. Hey, you wanna tell me what the fuck is going on here?'

'When I've worked it out myself, Herb, I'll let you know.'

It was with some relief that Mulder left both Herb and Albany and headed down towards New York and the apartment on Amsterdam and 103rd. Herb had declared his intention of calling Mulder's supervisor at the FBI to demand round the clock protection for himself and his house. Mulder contemplated warning Skinner, but decided not to bother. If anyone could handle his cousin, it was going to be his boss.

Evening was drawing near as he pulled into a diner for some coffee on the way back to New York. The diner was part of a long stretch of highway outside some soulless, anonymous commuter town, lined with motels, a shopping mall, car and computer outlets. At this time of night most of the buildings on the strip was shuttered. Only the restaurants and the cinema showed any sign of patronage. The diner parking lot was almost empty. It was too late for the evening rush hour, not the right time of year for families to be travelling. Most of the people here were on their own, like himself. Sales execs, businessmen, truck drivers. The coffee, at least, was good. Outside, in the dark, cars and trucks roared passed in a blur of noise and lights, and were gone.

It was a uniquely lonely place, where travellers stopped with no expectation of any human contact except with the weary, underpaid waitresses who worked into the night. It made Mulder suddenly, achingly aware of his own loneliness as he returned to his car and made ready to leave again. On a sudden impulse he did what he'd been putting off all day, picked up his cellphone and dialled Adam's number. It was picked up after just a couple of rings.

'Yeah, what?' Adam snapped. He didn't sound as if he was in a particularly good mood.

'Adam? It's me. Mulder.' He frowned. Was that bouzouki music in the background?

'Mulder? You took your bloody time.' There was concern as well as annoyance in Adam's voice.

'I'm sorry,' Mulder apologised wearily. 'It's been a busy couple of days.'

'Where are you?' Adam asked, a little less irritably, picking up on his mood.

Mulder looked out into the gathering darkness. It had started to rain again. The lights of the restaurant signs were blurred through the water collecting on the windshield. He let his head fall back against the head-rest.

'I'm on my way to New York. I stopped at a diner for something to eat.'

'Let me guess. Cheeseburger, all the toppings but no salad, fries, onion rings, extra ketchup, coffee, cheesecake.'

Mulder grinned despite himself. It was painlessly easy to fall back into the old banter. 'You remembered.'

'Well it's hard to forget since you ordered that every single time we stopped at a diner the entire time we travelled together.

'I don't normally eat this stuff, but I have to take advantage of Scully not being here,' Mulder explained. 'She never lets me have fries *and* onion rings. I mean, she doesn't say anything, she just gives me *the look*. And she makes me use that low sodium salt substitute.'

'Well, I'd say life's too short,' Adam drawled, 'But in my case it doesn't really apply.'

'She's always nagging me about the burgers too. I hate to admit it, but in this case she may be right. I don't think there's much actual cow in this one.'

'I thought medical opinion was that too much beef was bad for you anyway,' Adam said suspiciously.

'Maybe she's trying to poison me, just in a *healthy* way.'

'Personally, I haven't trusted medical opinion since physicians started recommending leeches for everything from heart attacks to split ends. You know what I used to prescribe instead?'

'Alcohol,' Mulder said, deadpan.

'Alcohol,' Adam agreed, self-righteously. 'If my patients died, at least they died happy. And now medical opinion is saying I was right all along.'

'I think that's more the occasional glass of red wine to ward off heart attacks. Nobody's said anything about beer.'

'Yet,' Adam corrected him. 'Nobody's said anything about beer yet. Anyway, what do you know about healthy eating? When's the last time you ate a vegetable that wasn't deep fried or on a pizza?'

'I eat green vegetables regularly,' Mulder protested. 'Every Christmas and Thanksgiving. I haven't missed one in years.'

'I rest my case.'

Mulder smiled, his weary mood lifting a little. 'Well, thank you for your insight, Doctor Pierson. I keep getting this nagging feeling I should be asking you these deep and meaningful questions about the history of mankind.'

Adam sighed. 'Yeah, Joe gets that a lot too. Well, fire away. It's not as if I've got anything better to do until my entree arrives.'

'What, ask you anything?' Mulder said in genuine surprise.

'Yeah. Sure. I'll try to be honest. Give me your best shot, Mulder.'

'Uh... you must have seen a lot of changes over the last hundred years,' Mulder began, rather lamely.

'So you want my list of the top improvements brought about during the twentieth century?'

'Uh... yeah.'

'Star Trek,' Adam declared. 'Star Trek is good.' He thought for a moment. 'And fabric conditioner. I like the way it makes my clothes smell.'

'Star Trek and fabric conditioner?' Mulder said in disbelief.

'Yeah,' Adam said brightly. 'I think Deep Space Nine's my favourite.'

'Not a big Voyager fan, huh?' Mulder said. He had the distinct feeling that the conversation was sliding uncontrollably into the surreal.

'It's just a rip off the Odyssey. If I was Homer, I'd sue.'

There was a pause.

'You mean Homer is...?'

'Nah. Figure of speech.'

'Oh,' Mulder said. There was another pause. 'That conversation didn't turn out the way I thought it was going to.'

'You want profound insights, talk to Mac. I don't do profound.'

'Two days ago you didn't do saving the world either,' Mulder reminded him slyly.

'I've only got energy for one thing at a time, Mulder. Profound or saving the world. Take your pick but do it quickly. My entree just arrived.'

'Then I suppose I'd better get around to my main reason for calling. We've got three positive identifications on one of the women.'

'Yeah. Anne of Kirrin. Joe tells me there's going to be about four centuries' worth of her chronicles waiting for me back in Seacouver.'

'Yeah, sorry.' Mulder said, not particularly apologetically. 'I thought it would be quicker that way. Did you ever meet her?'

'Nope. Northern Europe was a pretty unhealthy place to be during the dark ages. Mostly I hung out in the Middle East. I'll check if any of the guys here knows anything about her.'

'How about MacLeod? Would he know who she was?'

'She's before his time, Mulder. Joe told me her last recorded sighting was in Rome, 1562, and even that wasn't confirmed. If Mac had run into her since then his watchers would have caught it. So how'd it go today? I'm guessing you found your asshole cousin and his airhead girlfriend.'

'Yeah,' Mulder said, his good mood fading fast as he thought back on his depressing day. 'Herb's still an asshole. Saffron has two kids and a husband that beats her. Anne visited them both. I think she chose to kill Naomi because the other two had children. There might be something in her chronicle to confirm that. Maybe she lost her foster parents at an early age. The more we know about her psychology the better. This might be something we could use.'

'Could be. What did Herb have to say?'

'Not a lot that's worth repeating. You're not going to be getting any Christmas cards from him in the near future.'

'I'm shattered,' Adam said dryly.

'Yeah, I can tell.'

'So where are you headed now?'

'I'm waiting for Scully to track down some information about the apartment building in Manhattan where Anne took Jacques. There are twenty apartments so it's taking her a while but she should have the list by this evening. I'm heading back to New York tonight and I'm going to try to get a search warrant out of the Assistant Director tomorrow morning. You?'

'Still in Chicago. There are some people here I'd like you to meet. They've got some back story that might be useful. Can you make it over here?'

'If I can get into this apartment tomorrow afternoon I should be able to get a flight over the day after.'

'Let me know the time and I'll pick you up at the airport. Mulder... Are we okay?'

'Yeah. I think I'm over it. I'm sorry I reacted the way I did. Adam, I'm not good at this. I mean relationships. I screw this kind of thing up at the best of times...' he trailed off. 'I wish I could see you. I wish I was there with you right now, with you stealing my fries and my beer...'

'Mulder...' Adam began, in a voice thick with both affection and exasperation.

'I miss you. I wish I was better at saying this stuff. I don't know if it's easier or harder without being able to see your face. I want to be with you, but part of me keeps thinking: you're five thousand years old. What the hell do you want with someone like me?'

Now there was real irritation in Adam's voice. 'Mulder, I thought we dealt with this once already. Get it into your head. I want you. I like to be with you. You make me laugh, you buy me beers, the sex is good. You're the only person I've ever met who can talk about pre-Columbian civilisation and Jerry Springer in the same sentence.'

'Most people don't think that's much of an advantage,' Mulder said, with a rueful grin. Despite himself he was cheered a little by Adam's words.

'Guess what, Mulder. I'm a five thousand year old horseman of the apocalypse. I'm not most people. I've lived through centuries when I would have hacked my right arm off for the chance to have had an interesting conversation with anyone. I mean, the fourteen hundreds alone... It was all God this, the Pope that...'

'What were you doing then?' Mulder asked, curious despite himself.

'Actually, I was working in the Vatican,' Adam admitted. 'The ultimate holy ground, but without doubt the most boring fifty years I've ever spent. But look, I've got to go. We'll talk about this when you get to Chicago.'

'I'll meet you at the airport.'

'I'll be waiting. And Mulder?'

'What?'

'I miss you too. Just don't let it go to your head.'

It was the nearest thing he'd ever had to an outright declaration of affection Mulder had ever had from the other man, and as offhand as it had been, it restored his good mood for most of the rest of the evening.

It was late the next time the cell rang, and Mulder swore under his breath as he pulled his car off the road somewhere across the state line in New Jersey. One of the advantages of having Scully along was that she did cellphone answering duties while he drove. As it was, he was starting to give some serious thought to hiring an answering service. It would have to be a broad-minded, highly confidential answering service of course. Hell, maybe he could just get the Lone Gunmen to do it in return for unlimited access to his video collection.

'Mulder.'

'Mulder, Frank Black.'

Mulder sat back in his seat. 'Frank. Did you get anything from Lemarchand's body?'

Frank's voice was as low and calm as ever. Mulder had to strain to hear it over the passing traffic. 'Mulder, Jacques Lemarchand didn't just die once, he died several times over a period of two or three days. Every time he healed, and was killed again. You mentioned that someone else in this case died and came back to life?'

'Yes. It would take a long time to explain it now. Who killed him?'

'I can't give you a description, Mulder. I saw a vision of a black lamb, a woman carrying a sword and a man who devours.'

Mulder sighed. 'Do you have anything I can give to the NYPD?'

'It doesn't work like that, Mulder. All I can tell you is that I don't think there's much time left.'

'Before what? You think this might be the beginning of some kind of biblical apocalypse?'

'Mulder, when I first touched the body of Jacques Lemarchand I heard these words spoken. "I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the angels go your ways, and pour out your vials of the wrath of God upon the earth. And the first went and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast and upon them which worshipped his image. And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea. And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and mountains of waters; and it became blood. And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given to him to scorch men with fire."'

'We're in trouble, aren't we,' Mulder said, after a short silence. It wasn't a question.

'I think that this is a false apocalypse, Mulder. The images I saw were as Lemarchand's killers saw themselves, but they were not the truth.'

'So they can't succeed?'

'I didn't say that. If they do succeed, it won't be the apocalypse. All that will happen is that millions of people will die.'

'That's encouraging,' Mulder muttered. 'Then there's actually going to be an apocalypse?'

'I don't know. Ask me again in three years' time.'

Mulder frowned. If it hadn't been Frank Black on the other end of the cellphone, he might have suspected that that was a joke. 'So what's the next step in a case like this?'

'There's not much I can tell you, Mulder. You need to find out who they are and when they think the apocalypse is.'

'I'm working on it Frank. I'll keep you posted.'

The next evening, Manhattan, New York City

It was a cold evening for March, and it was already starting to grow dark. The unmarked NYPD car jolted through the potholes of one of New York's less affluent streets. Skinner had requested the assistance of the NYPD, which had co-operated to the extent of assigning them one surly detective about to go off duty. A taxi behind them sounded its horn and swerved past them.

'He's in a hurry.' Scully commented. She had insisted that she accompany Mulder to the apartment building over all his protests.

'This is New York, Agent Scully.' Detective Sipowicz said gruffly. 'Everybody's in a hurry. I'm in a hurry because my wife is cooking lasagne for dinner tonight, so I'd be grateful if you can get done whatever crap it is you're doing at the place so's I can get home before it's cold.'

Scully shot Mulder a loaded glance, but forbore to comment.

Mulder said 'We appreciate you taking the time to do this, detective.'

'I don't get why the FBI is interested in Jack Merchant's murder,' Sipowicz said. 'The guy was just a dealer who got on the wrong side of the wrong friggin' people. This is not out of the ordinary for New York City.'

Mulder leaned back on the grimy seat. 'Six weeks ago, a drug dealer called Jack Merchant was found floating off the coast of New Jersey. Three weeks later a bookstore clerk named Naomi Redburg was murdered in San Francisco. A week after that a computer systems millionaire was found dead in his cottage in France. These people had two things in common. In 1979 they all spent part of the summer living in an alternative community in Maine, and they were all beheaded. Even for New York that's got to be a little strange, detective.'

'Okay. Okay. So it's a little unusual,' Sipowicz conceded. 'But how'd you find this address? My partner and me were involved with the New York end of this case. Nobody we talked to saw a friggin' thing, although again this isn't out of the ordinary for New York City.'

'Merchant was under surveillance at the time of his death.' Mulder said. 'The information was passed on to me a few days ago.'

'Oh yeah?' Sipowicz said, in a voice that suggested that he, personally, found this extremely doubtful. 'Who by?'

'By a reliable source.' Mulder said mildly. 'He was picked up by a woman in a bar in Greenwich Village and brought back to an apartment in this building. That's the last time he was seen alive.'

'Reliable source my ass.' Sipowicz said in disgust. 'There are a lot of apartments in the average apartment building, Agent Mulder.'

'That's why we tried to narrow it down.' Scully said. 'We've checked occupier convictions, credit ratings, court judgement, debt, rent arrears...'

'You call that narrowing it down, Agent Scully? In New York?'

Mulder said 'That depends on what you're looking for. There's one apartment in that entire building that comes up completely clear on all counts. It's rented by a company called Regulus Holdings registered in Northern Cyprus.'

Sipowicz shook his head. 'A lot of firms rent apartments in New York.'

'This firm paid for six months' rent in advance, cash,' Scully said drily. 'Most companies that can afford to do that can probably afford a better neighbourhood than this.'

'OK, it's unusual, I'll give you that,' Sipowicz conceded. 'So what are you expecting to find in this apartment of yours?'

'Well for one thing, Jack Merchant's head hasn't turned up yet.' Mulder said with a completely straight face.

Twenty minutes later he was really wishing that he hadn't made that particular comment.

Sipowicz was on the radio, calling for forensics and backup.

'We got three heads in jars here... Yeah, I said heads. Heads in fucking jars. Three of them.'

Mulder was used to grizzly murder mementoes, but these three gave even him pause. The jars were old, thick glass, pitted and stained with rings of limescale. Jacques Lemarchand's face leered out at him, fixed in a grotesque rigor that reminded him of nothing so much as Jack Nicholson in 'The Shining'. The second head was a young black woman, eyes wide with terror.

The formaldehyde that surrounded her was streaked with her dissolved makeup. But it was the third that made Mulder's stomach turn. He made his own report to the co-ordinator of their efforts, Joe Dawson.

'This is the place, Joe.'

'You found it? How do you know?'

'Well, we had to break in, and it looks as if nobody's home, but we've got three severed heads here. Pickled in formaldehyde. I've seen a lot of sick stuff, but this...'

'I know, buddy,' Joe said, with a soldier's compassion. 'You never quite get used to it, do you.'

'Joe, they killed some little kid. Just a little boy.'

'Oh Jesus. That's horrible,' Joe said sombrely. 'God, I'm sorry that happened.' His voice suddenly grew suspicious. 'Wait a minute. Was it a little blond kid? About eleven or twelve?'

'What, you know him?' Mulder asked incredulously. 'He's one of your guys?'

'Oh my God,' Joe said slowly. 'They killed Kenny! The bastards!'

'Who the hell was Kenny?' Mulder demanded.

'He's about eight centuries old. I think his family were killed by tax collectors back in Norman England.'

'You're telling me that little kid was hundreds of years old?'

'To be honest, he was a vicious little creep,' Joe admitted. 'He'd sucker immortals in, ask to be put under their protection, then kill them first chance he got. He almost got Duncan a year or so back.'

'But he was just a little kid,' Mulder said helplessly.

'That's how he survived so long,' Joe said sadly. 'I guess he ran into someone who wanted his quickening and didn't care whether he was a kid or not.'

'Oh God. This is turning out to be a long night.'

'Mulder?' Scully called from one of the other rooms.

'Joe, I've got to go. I'll call you back later. Scully's found something.'

'Be careful, Mulder. I don't want to tell you your job but it sounds like these people are dangerous.'

'I'll bear it in mind, Joe. Are you coming to Chicago?'

'Yeah, if you think it'd help,' Joe said.

'It wouldn't do any harm.'

'I'll talk to Adam about it. I'll speak to you soon, Mulder.'

Scully stood just inside the door of one of the rooms in the small apartment, waiting for him. The room seemed to be a centre of operations. A mass of computer equipment lined one wall, a narrow camp bed lay along another. Scully didn't have to point out what it was she'd found. It covered the entire third wall of the room - a mass of pictures, photographs, newspaper clippings, scraps of paper and post-it notes.

A blurred group photograph was pinned in the centre, blown up almost to the point of unrecognisability. 'May '79' was scrawled on one corner in black ink. There were ten people in the photograph, only five of whom Mulder knew. Arch Drake stood in the centre, arms folded, an air of amusement about him. Namoi Redburg, restored to youth, twenty pounds lighter than at the time of her death, her face mild and vague. Max Donnelley, vanished four years after Mulder had seen him last. Rebecca Kirkwood - Mulder let out a disgusted breath as he finally made the connection - who had later become the housewife in Toronto whose death report he had puzzled over. Lemarchand, at the back, amused and sly. Other photographs pinned around them. A blurred polaroid of a thin-looking teenager in a basketball vest - himself, on closer inspection - sitting against a tree, reading a book. A few pictures of others he didn't know, some he vaguely recognised as having left in the bad weather just after they'd arrive. A picture of Herb and Saffron, standing next to each other, not looking at each other or holding hands. A campfire picture of Lemarchand playing his guitar. The only other recognisable people in the photograph were Saffron to one side of him and Rebecca to the other.

Only two documents hung in this central grouping. One was a police report on the drugs raid that must have closed the camp in the late autumn of that year. Naomi and Rebecca were the only two names he knew on the list of those arrested. Drake, presumably, had grown bored before then and already departed for France. The second document was Herb's missing person's report, with the names 'Fox Mulder', 'Adam Pearson' and the registration of Adam's car highlighted in yellow.

Around this central group were other clusters of documents, each under a blue file card with a name written on it. For the incorrectly spelt 'Adam Pearson' there was nothing apart from a receipt from a motel room they'd stayed in on their way through Vermont and a printout tracing the history of his car from its manufacture in 1971 to its eventual destruction in an accident in 1985. His own name was pinned directly below, with a mass of paper beneath it. There was another picture of himself - a recent photograph taken a month or so ago in Washington. A picture of him leaving the Hoover building with Skinner. A smiling, passport sized picture of Scully. Surveillance photographs of his apartment, Christ, of the inside of his apartment. A photocopy of his student ID from Oxford. Newspaper cuttings dealing with the cases he'd worked on.

Scully moved behind him to look.

'You know, Mulder, with any other agent there'd probably be more from the Washington Post and less from the Weekly World News,' she commented.

'Scully, these people have been inside my apartment!' Mulder said in outrage.

Scully raised an eyebrow. 'Mulder, everybody's been inside your apartment. You should install a revolving door."

But Mulder wasn't listening. One of the myriad post-it notes had caught his attention. There were hundreds of them spread across the wall - reminders, avenues of investigation to be checked, notes of dates. This was an order: 'Pierson is the one we seek, I am certain of it. Concentrate your efforts on Mulder.' It was signed 'Gilles'.

Mulder felt himself grow cold. 'I know that writing, Scully. I have to call Danny.'

Thankfully the ever-present Danny, possibly the only person in the FBI with less of a social life than Mulder, was still at his desk when Mulder called.

Mulder breathed a sigh of relief. 'Danny, I want you to go down to my office and open the third drawer down on the left. There's an envelope in there marked "repent". Somewhere in the envelope there's a letter on white vellum, written in ink. I want you to find it, call me back and read it to me. Yeah, thanks, Danny.'

'You didn't tell him where the key was, Mulder,' Scully said, when he'd rung off.

'Danny's got a key.'

'I've got to meet this guy someday,' Scully said wonderingly.

It was only a few minutes before Danny called back.

'Ok, Agent Mulder, you ready for this?' the voice on the end of the line asked.

'Go ahead.'

'It starts off: "Renounce thy sin, Fox Mulder, forsake thy corruption and come into the Lord's light..."'

'Can you skip the first bit? I've already scanned over that part. Just read me the second page.'

'Sure, Agent Mulder. It says: "The man who calls himself Adam is your enemy. He is death, one of the four, and countless thousands have perished upon his sword. Reject he that hath seduced you. You have but sixty days to repent and enter the light before the end of the world." It's signed Gilles de Rais. Agent Mulder? Agent Mulder, what's the thumping noise? Are you all right?'

'I'm sorry, Danny. I was just banging my head against the wall. When's the letter dated? Please tell me it's the one he sent me a week ago.'

'Sorry, Agent Mulder. The date on this one is February 1. There are some others that look as if they were written by the same person.'

'Postmark?'

'All New York, Agent Mulder. You want me to run some tests?'

'Somehow I don't think we're going to have this guy's fingerprints on file, but it can't hurt. Danny, do you have my desk calendar there? Can you work out exactly what date it is we're looking at?'

'Yeah. Just let me mark it. Sixty days from February 1 would make it... Agent Mulder, is this... are these people actually serious?'

'Danny, just tell me the date.'

He heard Danny let out a breath. 'Well, let me put it this way, Agent Mulder. Did you make any plans for next weekend you can't cancel?'

'We've got a week? What do you mean we've only got a week?'

Mulder stopped pacing the narrow corridor outside the apartment and leant wearily against the peeling paint of the wall. Forensics and back-up were taking their time getting there. Even though Friday night must have been one of the worst possible times to call out the NYPD, it was still taking too long. He found himself growing more and more on edge as he waited for the familiar blue lights to appear in the traffic that passed through the darkening streets below.

'We've got eight days. And will you please stop saying that?'

'Oh eight days, that makes all the difference,' Adam grumbled. 'Talk about your short notice.'

'Well don't complain to me about it. It wasn't my idea.'

'I do have a suggestion, Mulder.'

'What?' Mulder asked, a little more shortly than necessary.

'Western Samoa,' Adam declared. 'I book myself into a hotel there for a couple of weeks, by the time I get back the whole thing's blown over. Think about it, Mulder. For some reason, I'm part of the package. They don't have me, they don't release the virus, the world's safe until 2997, I get to sit on the beach and work on my tan. Everyone's a winner.'

'And what if they decide they can do without you after all?' Mulder interrupted irritably. 'It's too big a risk, Adam. You may be the only thing that can draw them out in time.'

'Yeah.' Adam said, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. 'That's what I thought you'd say.'

Mulder shook his head wearily. Along the corridor he heard the lift rising. 'Adam, someone's coming. It's probably the NYPD. We'll talk about it when I get to Chicago, okay?'

'Yeah, later, Mulder.'

Mulder slipped the cell back into his coat and waited patiently for the life doors to open. It wasn't the police. A woman, carrying an armload of shopping stepped out of the elevator and gave him a curious glance before starting down the corridor in the opposite direction. Mulder frowned, then recognition came as the woman looked back again. It was just a furtive glance over her shoulder, but it was enough for him to know her. She, of course, must have known his face by heart, from the photographs in the apartment and from when she'd helped to kidnap him in Paris. Then thought and action came together, and his gun was drawn and he was moving towards her, calling a challenge.

'Anne of Kirrin! Stop or I shoot!

Behind him he heard sudden, running footsteps from behind the stairwell door, heavy, men's footsteps. He didn't wait around to see who it was. Anne had already started to run, her shopping bags thrown into his path in the middle of the corridor. Someone in one of the apartments further down opened the door to see what was happening. Somewhere nearby a radio was turned off.

'FBI! Stay in your apartments!' Mulder shouted. 'Keep your doors closed! All of you, stay in your apartments!'

Anne's shopping lay abandoned on the floor. Mulder barely registered it as he ran past - a Bloomingdales carrier bag, a brown paper bag of groceries spilling onto the floor, a broken bottle of wine.

There was a crash as the door to the stairwell was kicked open. Mulder didn't pause, didn't look around. Anne was still running fast, even though the corridor was a dead end.

Behind him he heard Scully shout 'Mulder, look out!' at the exact same time as someone else shouted 'No!' and a bullet whined over his head. Mulder ducked involuntarily and needlessly as he ran. The bullet hit the ceiling four feet above him, showering him with a fine trickle of plaster dust.

Anne didn't duck, didn't look around, didn't even slow down. She went through the window at the end of the corridor, in a shower of glass, shoulder first. Mulder skidded to a halt on the worn linoleum. He hadn't paid much attention to which floor they were on, but from the window it looked as though it was a long way down. The corridor turned there, and led into a small utility area, a grey little room with two washers, a bank of dryers, a battered ironing board, a couple of plastic chairs and a fitfully humming florescent light. Its single window along led out onto a fire escape. Mulder pulled one of the washers a few inches to the side, blocking the door, then worked at the stiff, rusted window catches with desperate fingers, wrenching them upwards until the window opened with a squeal of unoiled metal. He looked down; bags of trash were stacked in the alley four floors below. Anne's unmoving body was sprawled among them. He had to get to her before they did. He had to get to her before she woke up or came back to life or whatever the hell it was these people did.

The fire escape platform shuddered unsteadily under his feet as he climbed through, and back inside the building someone hammered on the utility room door. The metal of the platform was pitted and rusted. It looked as though it had been there since the building had been built and Mulder tried not to think about how rusty the bolts that held it to the wall looked. Instead he began to make his way down the rusting stairs as fast as he dared, the handrail flaking under his hands where he gripped it, leaving them grazed and stained with rust. Three dizzy turns and three floors down the fire escape proper stopped, leaving more than twenty feet to ground level.

Mulder swore softly to himself as he undid the bolts that held the ladder to the street in place, and slid it down it as quickly as he could, to the accompaniment of a cacophony of shrieking metal, until it jammed, its bottom about six feet above ground level.

It didn't look like a good bet, but then Mulder looked down, and saw Anne start to stir and heard her soft moan. If he was going to do this, he had to do it now. And so he swung himself onto the ladder, trying not to put his whole weight on any one of the creaking rungs.

And then the noise of protesting metal again, this time louder by far. The ladder gave a sickening lurch, then another. Mulder risked a glance upwards, and felt his heart sink wretchedly. The whole of the lowest platform was starting to pull away from the wall. He froze, but it made no difference. As he watched another of the bolts gave way and one side of the platform jolted down by several inches, leaving him hanging at an angle. His choices had been reduced to letting go and falling to the ground or hanging on and falling to the ground tangled up in several hundred pounds of rusted metal. Mulder took the path of least resistance. He let go of the ladder, and let himself drop.

The fall was about four metres, and Mulder fell hard and landed awkwardly, dropping onto a pile of garbage bags and boxes and then rolling onto his front on the pitted, oily asphalt. And as he pulled himself up onto his hands and knees he was dimly aware of a shape standing over him. And then something hit the back of his head, sickeningly, teeth-jarringly hard...

...a noise woke him, the noise of straining metal as someone else climbed onto the fire escape. A few more flakes of rust fell before whoever it was thought better of taking the risk. Mulder, sprawled on the rubbish bags directly underneath, was thoroughly grateful. He had already tried to move, but even lifting his head caused a hollow ringing in his ears and a dizziness that blurred his vision.

*Hello concussion, my old friend,* Mulder thought fuzzily. He closed his eyes in an attempt to make the pounding in his head go away, but made himself open them again. The darkness was just a little too inviting. Although, of course, the prospect of waking up again without a head did focus the mind somewhat. Instead he did a quick physical inventory; everything hurt, but with the possible exception of a couple of ribs nothing seemed to be broken. The garbage he was laying on smelled terrible, and something unidentifiable and disgusting was soaking through the arm of his coat, but otherwise there seemed to be no immediate danger. He lay still and dazed for a couple more moments before a rattling noise brought him back to full consciousness. On the other side of the alley, the woman called Anne of Kirrin was trying the firedoors.

Anne had picked the wrong alley to jump into. The far end of this one was closed off behind a security fence of closely spaced steel posts topped with razor wire some fifteen feet above. In the gathering darkness Mulder could barely make out a compound full of tightly packed cars on the other side. The street at the other end of the alley would have seemed the safest way out to Mulder, too public for any kind of confrontation, but Anne made no move in that direction. *She sensed other immortals there,* Mulder guessed. He let his head fall back - his neck hurt and his vision was blurring again - but over the continuous noise of the traffic passing obliviously by on 103rd Street he could hear her harsh panicked breathing, her rattling of one door after another. These buildings were her only escape now. Mulder had no plans to stop her. She hadn't killed him and so far she was ignoring him, a state of affairs that was fine as far as he was concerned. He decided to stay exactly where he was; not moving was good right now, for so many reasons.

The rattling stopped. Mulder heard quick footsteps and the metallic hiss of a sword being drawn and in a moment of cold terror wondered if Anne had changed her mind about leaving him alive and if he could get to his gun before she could get to him, or even if he still had his gun.

But then he heard her whispered breath, 'Leithen,' and he knew that he wasn't the one the sword was intended for.

'There's nowhere left to run to, Anne of Kirrin,' Mulder heard, from the entrance to the alley. The words were spoken in a low, deep voice. 'Face me, or surrender. Those are the choices I offer you.'

Anne turned to face the man who had spoken, throwing her coat aside, and Mulder raised his head again and got his first good look at her and at her opponent, the man called Leithen.

Anne wore a short red suit, creased and stained now, but good quality nonetheless - Chanel maybe, Mulder guessed; Scully was the one who knew these things, assuming he survived this, he'd have to ask her. Her hair was artfully streaked with blonde, her jewellery heavy gold. To all outward appearances she was a wealthy and successful woman on the edge of middle age, albeit one who'd just fallen from a fourth floor window. She held a slim and deadly looking sword loosely in her hand, in a way that spoke of expertise and long practice.

The man who faced her wore a dark suit and a trenchcoat. He was a big man in the way that Duncan MacLeod was a big man. The suit had been designed to hide that. It failed. Leithen was bearded, but his dark hair was cut very short. He was pale, not tanned as MacLeod was, and his eyes were light, blue or grey, Mulder couldn't tell which. At some point his nose had been broken, but his face had a calm nobility about it that Mulder distrusted instinctively and immediately.

'That's not a choice,' Anne whispered.

'But it is. It need not end here, Anne of Kirrin,' Leithen said gravely.

'This isn't the end,' Anne spat at him.

'For you, Anne of Kirrin, it will be,' Leithen stated. 'The woman, the one who died upstairs. She wasn't one of us. Who was she?'

'I don't know,' Anne spat. 'One of Richard's pickups. A shopgirl, a prostitute - who cares? What does it matter now?'

'You haven't changed at all,' Leithen said, calm and sad. 'I suppose I was a fool to expect it. Where are the others, Anne?'

'You expect me to betray them to *you*, Leithen?'

'Then just tell me where the Gilles has taken the virus.'

'And if Gilles found out that I had betrayed him, I would be a thousand years in dying.'

'If you do not tell me, you will die now. This is your last chance,' Leithen said simply. 'Tell me and when this is finished, you will be free to go. I have no wish to kill a woman.'

Anne laughed, but the sound was high and shrill. 'There can be only one, Leithen, and I swear by the Temple of Solomon, it will not be you!'

And now Leithen had a sword too, and where the *fuck* had that thing come from? This wasn't a slender blade like Anne's. 'Hand and a half sword' his memory supplied from somewhere. Whatever it was it looked medieval, a crude hacking weapon. At least half of its stopping ability must have come from its weight.

And, oh Jesus, oh God, no. Anne was raising her sword too. They were going to fight. He was about to see it happen, here and now, right in front of him.

It was over so fast that it was almost an anticlimax. Anne had been good, but the odds had been against her from the beginning. She was a woman approaching middle age. No matter how fit or how practised she was, it had been obvious from the first swing of the unequal fight that she stood no chance against a trained warrior almost twenty years her junior and twice her weight. Her first feint was blocked with contemptuous ease. She was disarmed and on her knees in less than thirty seconds.

'I have no desire to kill a woman,' Leithen said again. He wasn't even out of breath. 'Yield to me, Anne, and I will spare you.'

Anne of Kirrin raised her head proudly. 'Don't insult me, Leithen.'

'So be it, lady. There can be only one.'

And then Mulder watched helplessly as the sword was raised high and swung down. For as long as he lived, he would never forget the sound of metal parting flesh and bone, or the sound of Anne of Kirrin's head falling onto the hard alley floor. He must have made a noise then, because Leithen's head came up, and Leithen's dark gaze met his own, and he knew that he was *really* in deep shit now. And then, from Anne's headless body a pale, glittering mist rose, and started to wreath its way around Leithen's legs.

He watched, paralysed as Leithen stood transfixed, every muscle tensed against his ordeal. The first shock hit him, a goddamn lightning bolt coming from Anne's body, and then again and again, until the alley echoed with the noise of them and with Leithen's cries. And then the mist spread, and then it hit him too, and Oh God, it was worse than an electric shock, far, far worse, and he was helpless - all he could do was ride the power and the pain and pray that he didn't black out. It was like the most powerful orgasm he'd ever had, but it was as much like an orgasm as a plane crash was like a rollercoaster ride, and it was hitting him, again and again and again, harder and faster, and some distant part of him smelled burning, and far, far away there was the sound of breaking glass, and then just the blackness, not something to be resisted this time, but coming towards him like the ground had when he'd fallen from the fire escape, only this time he wasn't going to be getting up...

...and there was blood on his face, making his eyes sting. He touched his forehead gingerly, felt torn, numb flesh, a few fragments of glass that fell away under his searching fingers, others that felt as though they were embedded more deeply.

Leithen must have been hit by as much broken glass as Mulder had, but his injuries had healed already.

'Get him out of here, Clanroyden,' he said thickly. He was on his knees, his sword held in front of him, point resting on the ground as though it was too heavy for him to lift. The lights of a car shone into the alley. There were two or three other men around him, big men, all wearing trenchcoats.

'Did he see?' the man called Clanroyden asked. Slim, blond, English accent, good tailor, Mulder registered dimly.

'He saw everything,' Leithen confirmed. 'Everything.' He stood painfully. 'Get someone to clean this mess up, Clanroyden. Then deal with Mulder.'

'Will you be all right?'

'In time. I'll speak to you later. I want to supervise the search of the apartment personally.'

'Do you want me to maintain surveillance?'

'No,' Leithen said. 'The others won't come back here now, but we'll have enough to find them. All that remains here is for you to tie up the loose ends.'

'All right,' Clanroyden said. He turned to the two men beside him. 'You, clear up the body. You, help me get him into the car.'

One Christmas, when Mulder had been eight years old, his family had gone on a shopping trip to New York. It was the usual Mulder family disaster, heavy with guilt trips. His mother had been the one who wanted to go in the first place but had spent most of the weekend protesting that they may as well have stayed at home if her husband was going to be in a foul mood all the time. His father had ill-humouredly agreed to come with them, but had made it clear that he was only doing so with extreme reluctance and because he didn't trust Mulder's mother either to drive or not to spend too much. His mother, delegated to map reading, had grown flustered and lost them in the heart of Manhattan as a winter's night drew on.

Mulder remembered looking out of the back window of the car, at the lights, at the buildings stretching to the sky, the tallest he'd ever seen. He remembered the noise, the unending traffic, the people, the sirens, the booming music, the Christmas displays in the shop windows, the advertisement for Santa's grotto at Bloomingdales. Samantha's hand had been warm in his own. And then the snow had started to fall and at that moment New York had become a magical place in Mulder's mind. The magic had never completely gone away.

More than twenty years later he'd driven through these streets with Krycek on the Grisham case. Krycek had played the wide-eyed, hero-worshipping rookie. He remembered lying on his hotel room bed, unable to sleep, listing the reasons not to go through the connecting door into Alex Krycek's room. Then the moment when Krycek had made the decision for him, had come through the door himself, had raised his perfect face to Mulder's and closed his eyes for a kiss. Mulder had turned him down (on the grounds that Krycek was too innocent and inexperienced, for Christ's sake!) and had spent the years since mentally kicking himself. He wished that just once, just one single time, he could have screwed Alex Krycek. God alone knew that Krycek had screwed him, figuratively at least, almost every time they'd met since.

And now he was back in New York, sitting in another car, driving through the same dark/bright streets, and he knew that his chances of ever visiting the Christmas grotto at Bloomingdales, or of screwing Alex Krycek, or of seeing the sun rise again, were low to zero.

They sat together in the back seat of the long, black car, Clanroyden behind the driver, himself behind the passenger seat - standard police procedure. Both his gun and his cellphone had been taken away from him, but his hands had not been cuffed. For that at least he was grateful - it was hard enough to stay upright in his seat as it was. He didn't bother to try the doors. He was too tired and too sore to even think about diving from a speeding car anyway. The car moved silently through anonymous city streets, stopping and starting in the evening traffic. Mulder didn't recognise where they were.

'How badly are you hurt?' Clanroyden asked him, after they'd driven in silence for about ten minutes.

'I'll live,' Mulder said shortly. His lip was split. He tasted blood as he spoke.

'I believe there are some painkillers in the first aid kit.'

'I'm fine.'

'Leithen expects me to kill you,' Clanroyden said conversationally. The niceties, apparently, had been observed.

'I know,' Mulder said wearily. Down to business. 'But let me guess; you're going to offer me a deal.'

Clanroyden shook his head. He seemed faintly amused. 'Not a deal, not as such. I just need to know whether I have a reason to kill you or not. I assure you that I don't want to do so unless it's absolutely necessary.'

'By which you mean am I going to expose your organisation,' Mulder said wearily, slumped back in his seat. 'Or have your friend Leithen brought in for murder.'

'More or less, yes,' Clanroyden agreed mildly. 'I have to protect our interests. That's my job.'

'Who are you?' Mulder demanded angrily, with a mounting fury against his own sense of helplessness. 'Who's Leithen? What the hell has all this got to do with you?'

Clanroyden's expression grew slightly pained. 'It's a long story, Agent Mulder, but if you're willing to be patient, I'll try to explain.'

Mulder blinked, completely taken aback. 'You're going to tell me? Just like that?'

The disbelief must have been patent in his voice. Clanroyden shrugged. 'Nothing would be served by keeping you in ignorance, Agent Mulder. If I let you go, you'll find a way of discovering what you want to know. The alternative is to kill you, and I've already told you I don't want to do that.'

Mulder digested this unusual state of affairs for a moment. 'Are you an immortal too?' he asked warily.

Clanroyden nodded. 'I was born in 873AD, in a town called Searoburh in the kingdom of Wessex. I died for the first time when I was twenty-five. They called it blood sickness. Some kind of leukaemia, as far as I've ever been able to work out. How much did Pierson tell you about immortals?'

'The rules,' Mulder said, uncertain how much to say. 'There can be only one. You fight one on one. Holy ground is sacred.'

'And did he tell you about himself?' Clanroyden asked, in tones of polite enquiry.

'Yes. Yes, he did. Some things.'

'What did he tell you?' Clanroyden asked. Mulder just shook his head numbly.

Clanroyden nodded, unsurprised. 'I'm not interested in his head, Agent Mulder, except in seeing that he gets to keep it.'

'Somehow I find that hard to believe,' Mulder said. He made no effort to keep the weary cynicism out of his voice. His fatigue would have been impossible to hide anyway. He found that now his anger had drained away he was shivering, although whether from shock or exhaustion or both he wasn't certain. Clanroyden leaned forward and murmured something to the driver. Warm air started to circulate silently from somewhere.

'Tell me nothing, if you don't wish to,' Clanroyden said easily as he sat back again. 'I'm curious about Methos. He's a legend, after all. But, if you don't want to talk about him, so be it. I only really need to know the extent of your knowledge about immortals. It'll save time if I don't have to go over it twice.'

'He only told me the rules,' Mulder said again, wary of this unexpected capitulation. 'He didn't explain what immortals were or where you came from. I don't think he knew.'

Clanroyden nodded. 'We don't know ourselves, although it's not for want of trying to find out. And Methos doesn't know either...' His voice trailed off in thought.

'You were going to tell me who you are. Who Leithen is,' Mulder prompted. Patience would probably have been wiser at this point, but by now he was beyond caring.

'It's hard to know where to start...' Clanroyden mused.

'The beginning?' Mulder suggested acidly.

'The year 1095,' Clanroyden said.

'I just knew you were going to say something like that,' Mulder muttered.

'You really do set yourself up for these things, Agent Mulder,' Clanroyden said, with the merest hint of a smile. 'How's your early Medieval history?'

'Not one of my strong points,' Mulder said. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes. 'I never studied the period.'

Clanroyden nodded. 'Then I'll go over the salient points for you. In 1095, Pope Urban II made a speech at Clermont in France calling upon all Christians to march under the banner of the Cross, to save our Eastern Orthodox brothers from the evils of Islam. His problem was that wars were expensive; he didn't want to be the one who had to find the cash. That being so, he gave the nobles of Europe another incentive. If they joined his crusade against the Turks, it would count as a penance for all their sins. Effectively it was a guarantee of heaven. It backfired apallingly.'

The car moved on through the darkening streets, stopping and starting with the traffic, driving down quieter and quieter streets. Mulder shifted uncomfortably on the soft leather of the carseat. Clanroyden was not looking at him. His face was drawn and distant with memories.

'Religion was the driving force in most people's lives, Agent Mulder. Europe in the eleventh century was a society every bit as fundamentalist as Afghanistan under the Taliban is now. The Crusade drew everyone; not only knights, but the poor too, peasants and farmers, the old, women and children among them. They were the first, in fact. A people's crusade making their way across Europe, not much more than a destructive rabble, pitifully unprepared for what they were going to face. Of course they were wiped out by the Turks almost as soon as they entered the Holy Lands. The first official army of knights and soldiers followed perhaps a year later. In the end there were very few European nobles who would have turned down the prospect of looted wealth, glory *and* eternal life.'

'The big three,' Mulder said light-headedly.

'Oh, quite so,' Clanroyden agreed absently. 'For most of us, too, the Crusades were an attractive proposition. For some of the younger ones faith alone was enough to draw them to Palestine. I was older and a little wiser than that, but I went anyway. The scars from the Norman conquest were still too fresh for me. I was an Anglo-Saxon in Norman England, a member of a subject race in a newly-conquered country. There was nothing for me there. Joining up wasn't a difficult decision. I think it was the winter of 1096 when I left England to join Godfrey's army at Cologne. Understand that it was the first time in my life I had ever left her shores or even been on a ship. I think it was the hardest journey I have ever made. Some things you never forget, Agent Mulder. For me it was standing on the dockside on a November morning with sleet blowing in the wind. I had no real hope of ever returning. I didn't trust boats - I'd never been on one before - and I remember wondering what would happen if there was a wreck and I was lost at sea, if I would die again and again and again, until I was swept over the edge of the world. It seems laughable now, but of course we all believed that the world was flat.

'I took some comfort in the fact that if I had been lost at sea, I would by no means have been the only one. Dover was teeming with Crusaders - every departing ship was filled with them. Most of them were Norman knights. The armourers must have been making a fortune out of them.' A faint smile at the memory. 'And not just the armourers. There wasn't a bed in Dover to be had for any money, occupied or empty. I had to sleep in a stable while I waited for a boat, and I paid well for that privilege. There were others worse off than me, of course. There were still some of the poor waiting to cross to France to join the People's Crusade. They were sleeping in doorways or ditches or such churches as were willing to open their doors. Their rabble had already been massacred by the Turks at Nicea, but none of us knew that then. In any case I had more things to worry about then a few ill-advised peasants. It was at Dover that I came across the third immortal I had ever met.'

'Leithen?' Mulder asked, caught up in the story despite himself.

'His name was Tancred,' Clanroyden said. 'He was a second generation Anglo-Norman. Ten years earlier I'd have challenged him just for that but by 1096 I'd just about got the Norman conquest out of my system. He was very young and very naive, and full of questions. He had no idea what he was; he didn't even know that he'd died. He made a nuisance of himself following me around Dover for two days, trying to work out what the buzz was. In the end I couldn't bring myself to challenge him, if for no other reason than that I didn't want to spend the next few years with every Norman up in arms against me. Instead of killing him, I became his teacher. You know the concept?'

Mulder nodded. 'I think so.'

'New immortals are very vulnerable. They're usually poor swordsmen, so they're easy pickings for the more unscrupulous among us. If they're lucky they meet a more experienced immortal willing to train them in swordsmanship and teach them the rules. My own teacher was a man called Ramirez. I took Tancred on as my first student.'

'What happened to him?'

Clanroyden bowed his head. 'He died about two hundred years ago. We lost touch long before then. Perhaps it was just as well. One thing even an immortal never gets used to is watching a student die.'

Mulder nodded, not certain what to say.

'But you asked about Leithen,' Clanroyden said. His face grew impassive once again. 'I didn't meet him until months later, at Constantinople. I mentioned Tancred because he was the third immortal I had come across in my two centuries of life. Two weeks later, my total had risen to twenty. Immortals were joining the crusade every day. It was unprecedented. There have never been so many of us together, before or since. And, of course, it quickly became obvious that we risked our heads to a challenger every time we closed our eyes. It was with that in mind that a group of us choose to band together for our own protection, to watch each other's backs while we slept. There were almost thirty of us by the time we reached the Bosphorus. That's where we met Leithen. He was part of a second army that had travelled across Southern Europe, through France and Italy. The same thing had happened there. A group of perhaps forty immortals had banded together for protection. They had accepted Leithen as their leader, and after a little friction so did we. We joined them there, and still more joined us as we travelled. By the time the first Crusade took control of Antioch in 1098 there were more than a hundred of us. In the ruins of that city, for the first time in history, we came together on Holy Ground to talk about what we were.'

'Holy Ground? You mean a mosque?'

'A Christian monastery. Antioch had a significant Christian population, Agent Mulder,' Clanroyden said; regret coloured his voice. 'Eastern Orthodox Christian, but Christian nonetheless. Many of them died at the hands of the Crusader army. At our hands.'

Mulder nodded his understanding. It seemed strangely unreal, or surreal perhaps, to be sitting in the air-conditioned comfort, speeding through the streets of Manhattan, listening to stories of a war nine hundred years gone from one of its soldiers.

'I offer no excuses for what I did,' Clanroyden was saying. 'Unless we live the lives of saints we all do things that we regret in our lives. For me, the first battles of the Crusades will always be one of the greatest regrets I will ever have. We were beyond caring who we slaughtered. The journey across Anatolia to Antioch was one of appalling hardship. The heat was endless and merciless. Our horses were dying under us. Men were dying of thirst, abandoning their armour because they could no longer carry it. It made us savage. By the time we reached Antioch, we were an army of fanatics. We laid siege to the city, and sacked it without mercy.

'I suppose it was only poetic justice that just days later we found ourselves besieged, by a Turkish army many times the size of our own. It was only when we were trapped within the walls ourselves that we discovered that our own siege had been more successful than we'd imagined - there was no food left. We were weakened and starving. We prayed for reinforcements, but none came. In our madness, we began to see visions. An artefact was discovered buried beneath the floor of the Cathedral, the Holy Lance. Men began to see the ghosts of their dead comrades, visions of Christ and the Saints. I'm sure you have at least one explanation for that.'