Title: You Forgot To Mention Hell, Horatio
Author: JR
Email: JRR42@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13 for language.
Status: Complete
Warnings: Nope. Not this time.
Category: Crossover with Highlander
Disclaimer: All other characters belong to their respective owners and are used without permission. This story is not intended to infringe upon any copyrights, nor is any profit being made from it.
This is what happens when you get involved with too many different fandoms.
Universe setting: For you Highlander fans, this story takes place sometime after ‘Archangel’ (sorry to all those Richie Forever people). Please forgive me for playing with the timelines of the shows, but hey, it’s fan-fic and I can do that ;-)
Thanks: As always, to Carrie, and to Marius, the oak and the ash to my birds in the forest.

Adam Pierson slowly descended the stairs as he listened to the annoying electronic dial tone coming from his cellular phone. Finally, on the seventh ring, a familiar gravelly voice rumbled through the ear-piece.

“Hello.”

“Where is she, Joe?” Adam demanded without any preamble.

“Adam? Is that you?”

“I should have killed her when I had the chance! Twice! Twice I’ve had the opportunity...” the enraged Immortal ranted.

“Slow down, old man. Just who in the hell are we talking about here?” the mortal asked with a hint of impatience.

“Cassandra.” Adam hissed, the reviled name flowing off his lips like venom.

“Wait a minute,” Joe insisted, trying to catch up on current events. “What does she have to do with this?”

“She knew, Joe.”

“Whaddya mean, ‘she knew’?”

“She knew all of it -- Ahriman, MacLeod, the visions -- the goddamned bitch even knew *when* it would happen...”

“Slow down a second!” Joe ordered, determined to figure out what had his normally unflappable friend so riled. “What exactly have you found out?”

“It’s a long story, Joe, but the short version is that I’ve uncovered an old diary of Cassandra’s. Almost all she talks about in it is the coming of Ahriman and the Immortal Champion who will fight the demon.”

“Does it say anything about how Mac is supposed to beat this son of a bitch?”

“At first glance? No. In fact, she doesn’t even name MacLeod as the Champion until almost the end.”

“Oh that’s just terrific.”

“Look, Joe, I’ve only had time to skim over this so far. Maybe there’s something more in here, but mostly it’s just pages upon pages of how and when Ahriman will appear and what will happen if the Champion *can’t* defeat it,” Adam growled, obviously frustrated at the lack of useful information the diary contained.

“Did you ever think that maybe that’s the reason Cassandra never said anything to Mac? I mean, maybe this wasn’t deliberate. Maybe she didn’t say anything because she didn’t know anything truly useful.”

“No, Joe. She did this deliberately,” Adam insisted. “I mean if she had told Duncan even a portion of what’s in here...”

“Forgive me for saying this, but are you sure? You aren’t exactly the most objective person when it comes to Cassandra, after all.”

“I just need to know where she is, Joe,” Adam changed the subject.

“I can’t help you there. She up and disappeared right after her little run-in with you last year.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” the Immortal cursed. “First MacLeod and now Cassandra? Are there any Immortals that the Watchers are actually *watching*?”

“Hey!” Joe protested hotly. “Look, pal. You, of *all* people, should know better than most how easy it is to stay lost when you don’t want to be found.”

There was a pause in the conversation as the Immortal conceded the point. “Joe...”

“Besides, even if we knew where she was,” the Watcher interjected, “what makes you think that she would actually do *anything* to help either you or MacLeod? I’ve seen it up close and first hand, my friend. She *hates* you, and not without some damn good reasons. And after the mess the three of you got into last year, MacLeod’s name is right under yours on her fecal roster.”

“Just find her, Joe,” the Immortal sighed, his heart and head heavy with exhaustion. As tired as he was, however, Adam still had one more card to play. “Not for me, but for MacLeod...,” he paused for effect, “...and for Richie.”

“Richie? What does he have to do with this?” the mortal whispered sadly, remembering the Highlander’s ill-fated student. The Watcher and the young Immortal had long shared a close friendship. Joe had taken the death hard, breaking down sobbing in Adam’s arms as they stood together over Richie’s headless corpse.

Hefting the diary still in his hand, Adam began to read from a passage that he had marked with an index card. “In 1723, Cassandra wrote: ‘In the days that mark the end of the millennia, the demon will roam once more. He shall appear, cloaking himself under the faces of opponents past. And with this guise, the demon shall deceive the shepherd into slaughtering the lamb.’”

It was a shameless manipulation, one totally unworthy of someone as adept at it as Adam was. What made it worse was the fact that both men knew it. Nevertheless, it still had the desired effect for which the Immortal had been hoping.

“I’ll get everyone I can spare on it,” Joe promised solemnly.

“Let me know if you find anything, and I do mean *anything.*”

“Don’t forget to stay in touch,” Joe reminded.

“Yes, Dad,” the Immortal teased.

“Smartass,” Adam heard as the mortal severed his end of the phone line. With a long sigh, the Immortal followed suit. He was exhausted -- not physically, his Immortal healing factor took care of that, but mentally. In addition to the emotional roller coaster of dealing with Cassandra’s journal, Adam had been awake for over thirty hours by that point. While Immortality may have kept his body from feeling the effects, it did nothing to appease his mental weariness. What he really needed was food, a couple of hours of sleep and meditation -- not necessarily in that order.

Turning around to face the group from Sunnydale, he wasn’t surprised to find all eyes trained on himself -- all eyes, that is, except for Angel and the boy called Oz. The two of them were looking hard at each other with matching expressions of confusion. The oddity of it attracted Adam’s attention, and though it took him a moment, its meaning soon dawned on him. Giles had noted in his diary that Oz retained extremely powerful senses the twenty-eight days of the month he was not a full-fledged werewolf. As for Angel, Adam suspected that the vampire’s hearing would also be augmented like any other creature that hunted for its food.

Unnerved by the revelation, the Immortal ran back over the conversation with Joe, reviewing the contents to insure that nothing too incriminating had been revealed. At the same time, he was also simultaneously creating a plausible cover story for the barrage of questions he knew would be coming.

“I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that there was no joy for the Hoos in Hooville,” Xander blurted in an attempt to break the uncomfortable silence that had settled over the room.

Xander’s humor faded under Adam’s icy stare, one so cold it could have frozen vodka. “Has anybody ever told you that you have an absolutely astounding grasp of the obvious?”

“As a matter of fact, but hey, it’s a gift,” Xander shot back.

Ignoring the irritating teen, Adam tossed the book onto the folding table. The loud ‘thud’ the volume made when it landed made both Cordelia and Willow jump, but Giles simply picked up the leather-bound journal and calmly began flipping through the pages. It was a moment before the librarian finally voiced the questions on his mind.

“Is this Cassandra truly a witch?” he inquired, dragging a sigh from the Immortal.

“If you had asked me that before this whole mess with Ahriman started, I would have said no.” Seeing that they were all waiting for a more detailed explanation, the Immortal continued with carefully chosen words. “She does this thing she calls ‘the Voice,’ but it’s mostly a light form of hypnosis blended with the power of suggestion.”

Angel nodded at Adam before facing the others. “I’ve seen Drusilla do that before.”

Giles blanched at the vampire’s unintentional reminder. It had not been that long ago that Drusilla had used that very same mental trick on him. With a glare at the vampire for bringing up the subject, Giles swallowed his anger and continued onward with the topic of discussion.

“Most of the reference material we have on Drusilla indicates that her ‘visions’ are quite often accurate. In her insanity, however, she seems to lack the logic and deductive reasoning skills necessary to interpret what she sees accurately.”

After making the statement, the Watcher turned to Angel, who reluctantly nodded in agreement. The vampire’s face was full of guilt, not only from Angelus’ torture of Giles, but also from the knowledge that it was the demon-controlled version of himself who had driven the beautiful vampiress into insanity. However, Giles inadvertently pressed onward before Angel could slip into full-blown ‘brood mode’.

“This Cassandra,” the librarian asked Adam, “are her prophecies generally accurate?”

Concealing a secret grin, the Immortal shrugged casually, greatly anticipating the reaction he knew his next comment would receive.

“King Priamos used to think so.”

It took a moment for both Giles and Angel to make the connection, but the looks on their respective faces were well worth it in Adam’s opinion.

“Are you saying that the Cassandra who wrote this book is actually Cassandra of Troy?” Giles asked in disbelief.

Once the Watcher vocalized the connection, it was Willow’s and Oz’s turn to gasp in surprise. Not surprisingly, Xander and Cordelia both required a little more information.

“Okay, how about an explanation for those of us who got the nice parting gifts *before* the final Jeopardy round?” Xander groused.

“It..it’s from Homer’s I..Iliad,” Giles stammered, more than a little unnerved by Adam’s revelation.

“Oh! I saw that!” Cordelia chimed. “I liked the sequel with Armand Assante better, though. What?” the May Queen protested when six pairs of eyes began glaring at her.

“Okay, aside from the whole ‘part of ancient history thing’, why is this such a major deal?” Xander questioned.

“In the story, Cassandra received the Gift of Prophecy from the gods, but she kinda pissed them off,” Oz began. “The gods couldn’t indian-give, so they worked some godly mojo and cursed her so that nobody would ever *believe* any of the things she said.”

“Most likely, Cassandra was already more than a little off her rocker, which is why nobody believed her until it was too late,” Adam surmised. “Of course, Homer had to make it more interesting by making it seem like there was a divine intervention. It has a much nicer ring to it than ‘she was as nutty as a fruitcake’.”

“You...,” Willow began, her eyes wide with shock. “...that was...like 3000 years ago. You...sound....like you ...were... you weren’t actually *there*, were you?”

“Who, me?” Adam responded, his expression dripping with astonishment. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m nowhere near Cassandra’s age.”

“I do apologize, but h...how can you b...be c..certain that the Cassandra who wrote this...” Giles gestured at the diary, “is the same one in Homer’s writings?”

“Throughout most of history, there has been a secret society that keeps records on Immortals. We aren’t supposed to know about them, but I do. I’ve gained access to their records a time or two,” Adam explained calmly, then waited for the others to absorb the magnitude of what he had just revealed.

“This is...truly astounding. I mean, historians b...believe that the events described in the Iliad date b...back to 1200 BC. That someone from that time period still exists...well, surely you can see just how amazing that is,” Giles flushed as the other six people in the room stared at him as he rambled.

“So,” Oz began, changing the subject before the librarian could continue. “Cassandra is an Immortal. You guys got any other names we might recognize?”

Adam smiled at the teen’s blatant curiosity. Deciding to show off a little, he reviewed his mental roster, careful to name only those Immortals that were *really* deceased.

“Let’s see now...there was Nefertiri and Marcus Constantine...”

“...*Cleopatra’s* Nefertiri?” Willow interrupted.

“Yes, that’s the one. Who else? Darius. Copernicus. Rembrandt. Byron...”

“The poet?”

“The musician?” Giles’ and Oz’s voices overlapped each other.

“Yes and yes. One and the same,” Adam supplied.

“Cool. He really had the whole lyrics thing down,” Oz enthused, then paused to consider the concept. “Then again, he had a lot of time to practice. But didn’t Byron...die...a couple of months ago? Or was that just an Eddie and the Cruisers re-enactment?”

“No,” Adam replied, hiding his grief under a clinical mask of indifference. “That was definitely for real.”

“That sucks,” the teen said sadly.

“You knew him, didn’t you?” Adam was surprised at Willow’s insight, not to mention the comfort she extended by placing her hand gently on his arm. When he brought his eyes up to meet hers, he found himself drowning in a sea of sympathetic green. “I’m sorry.”

“I think,” Adam paused, trying to vocalize both his sorrow and acceptance over the death of his one-time student, “I think that underneath it all, it was what he wanted. I will miss his genius, though.”

With the remembrance came a wave of exhaustion. Adam looked at his watch and was surprised to see that it was well-past noon. He was tired, hungry, and needed to take a break from the Sunnydale natives.

“Look, I don’t know about you all, but I would like to suggest we break for the afternoon,” he suggested.

Seeing the teenagers’ faces light up at the prospect of some downtime, Giles had no choice but to acquiesce to the Immortal’s suggestion. For his part, Angel was greatly relieved. Even after establishing eye contact with the Immortal, Angel still needed to expend a great deal of energy to keep his demon under control. Since he’d begun spending such long hours at the library, the vampire had been keeping a small quantity of blood in the back of the little refrigerator in Giles’ office. He had finished the last of his supply earlier that morning, though.

“Please attempt to be back here about a half an hour before sunset,” the Watcher instructed.

They were gathering up their various belongings when Adam asked if he could hold on to Cassandra’s journal, which Giles rather reluctantly permitted. Willow was whispering something quietly to Angel as she accompanied the vampire over to the hidden entrance of the underground tunnels. Adam was almost to the door with the remaining members of the Slayerettes when Angel’s voice called out across the expanse of the room.

“Pierson?” Adam stopped at the sound of the name, but did not bother to turn around. Seeing that he had the Immortal’s attention, Angel continued. “Why does Cassandra hate you so much?”

All motion in the room stopped as they waited to hear Adam’s response. The stillness was uncomfortable, as was the could-hear-a-pin-drop-type silence. There was an almost imperceptible drop of the Immortal’s shoulders before he wearily pivoted and captured Angel’s eye in a searing glance.

“Tell me, in the past two-and-a-half centuries, surely you’ve had regrets about the some of the things you’ve done.” Not bothering to wait for Angel’s obvious reply, Adam turned back to face the heavy double doors as he spoke.

“Well, Cassandra is one of mine.”

That said, Adam Pierson left the room, leaving behind six very puzzled Slayerettes.

Almost immediately after Adam’s departure, the group from Sunnydale took their leave from the library. Angel was the first, slipping through the obscured hole in the wall that led directly into the vast network of tunnels that ran under almost the entire city. These underground passageways allowed not only Angel, but every vampire in Sunnydale, to move about freely during the daylight hours while avoiding the hazard of direct sunlight.

Moving silently as he made his way back to his warehouse apartment, Angel frowned as he shifted the book that Whistler had sent to him back and forth between his hands. Prophecies -- too damned many of them for his liking. Of course, what else should he have expected, living on the Hellmouth and all? And then there was the unexpected arrival of the Immortal. As if they didn’t have enough to worry about...

Before he could finish the thought, Angel sensed another presence in the tunnel with him. Instinctively sliding into his game face, the vampire stopped suddenly, whirling around to look for the implied threat.

He never even saw the lead pipe that impacted with the back of his neck, sending him to the ground unconscious.

It definitely wasn’t the vampire’s week as far as head injuries were concerned.




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