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.

The second he heard the noise, Adam abandoned the corpse of the man to return to the girl’s side. Tapping her face in an effort to stimulate her revival, the Immortal’s hazel eyes swept the surrounding area, keeping watch for any signs of danger. Seeing none, he replaced the safety on the .38 and tucked it loosely into his belt before turning his attention back towards the teenager.

“Willow?” he questioned, his tone becoming more demanding as he called her name repeatedly.

“Ugghhh.” With another groan of protest, Willow’s eyes fluttered open. “Wha..where?”

“Willow? Come on, kid, work with me here.” The Immortal kept his voice quiet but firm as he assisted her into a sitting position. “Are you all right?”

“Kinda dazed and a little confused,” she admitted as she shook her head in an effort to clear out the cobwebs. One of her petite hands came up to rub her aching jaw while she tried to recall exactly how it came to hurt in the first place. Adam could almost see the wheels of her mind turning as she struggled to put the pieces together. After a brief moment of silence, Willow’s glassy eyes met his own.

“Dr. Pierson,” he supplied before she could vocalize her obvious question. “We met at the school library this morning.”

“Wha...what are you d...doing here?”

“I happened to be passing by when I saw those men jump out of the bushes at you...” Even as the words fell from his lips, Adam saw the moment everything clicked into place in her memory. He opened his mouth to continue speaking when a heart-breaking cry interrupted him.

“Oh my God! My...Angel? Angel!?!” The girl’s expression was one of pure panic as she craned her neck to search for her fallen friend. Adam couldn’t help but feel relieved that his body blocked her view of the gruesome sight directly behind him. Although the cynical, survival-driven portion of Adam Pierson refused to acknowledge it, there was a small part of the Immortal that was both saddened and impressed by the stranger who had given his life in defense of this girl. It was that fact alone that triggered a sudden attack of the conscience that he so frequently denied having. Out of respect for the dead man’s actions, Adam decided to keep the girl from seeing the battered body. He did not want the sight to be her last memory of the boyfriend who obviously cared so much for her.

“I’m so sorry, Willow,” Adam soothed as he leaned forward to pull her tiny frame into a comforting embrace. “He’s gone.”

“Gone?” Willow questioned without pulling away from the Immortal.

“His injuries were too severe. I’m afraid he’s...he didn’t make it.” The Immortal spoke delicately, uncertain as to how the teenager would react to bluntness. A small sob was her answer as Willow’s arms rose to clutch tightly at his waist.

“No!” She managed to whisper around the tears that choked her. “No. Not Angel. Not Angel.”

Adam allowed Willow a long moment to sob out the grief that was overwhelming her. There was nothing he could do other than to rub her back and whisper soothing noises in her ear while she cried in the comfort of his arms.

Then, Adam noticed a movement in the distance.

“Willow, we have to get out of here.” The teenager stiffened at his words, instantly reminded of the danger that lurked in the shadows. “Can you stand?”

Rising even as she nodded, Willow almost tripped over a piece of wood lying on the path. Sniffling, she bent over to retrieve it. It was only when she straightened back up that the gasp escaped her.

Alerted by the sound, Adam traced her line of vision only to realize that she’d seen the body of her boyfriend. Fearing that she would become hysterical, the Immortal reached forward to grasp her arm.

“Angel?!!?” To Adam’s surprise, the girl sounded almost happy to see the corpse resting against the park bench. In his confusion, Willow managed to avoid his hand, surging past the Immortal to reach her friend’s side.

“Angel, oh God, Angel!” Her cries were excited as she dropped to her knees to gather his limp form into her arms. “You’re still here!” she whispered reverently while she rocked the body like a child would a favourite doll.

“Willow...Willow, let go,” Adam insisted, trying his best to pull her away. But she wasn’t having any of it. “Willow, listen to me. He’s not breathing...there’s no pulse.”

“Of course he’s not breathing,” Willow retorted, leaving Adam to wonder if that blow to the head she took was harder than he originally thought. “We have to get him out of here.”

“We can send the police to collect him later. Right now, we need to get moving.”

“Angel, please wake up,” Willow pleaded, ignoring the Immortal to tap the man’s face as Adam had done to her own just a short time ago.

“Listen to me,” Adam said sharply. “He’s dead, Willow, and unless you want to join him, we need to get out of here.”

The Immortal was more than shocked when the teenager roughly jerked her shoulder out from underneath his hand. When her face turned to meet his, Adam found himself pierced, not so much by her determined expression, but by the green eyes that skewered through him. Gone was the weeping child he’d held only moments earlier. In her place was a fiery, self-assured woman.

Yet, even at her best, she was no match for this particular Immortal. Or so he thought.

“We’re leaving.” Adam’s tone brooked absolutely no tolerance as he once again reached for her arm...only to find himself staring down the barrel of his own gun. ‘Son of a...’ he thought to himself, both annoyed and somewhat impressed that the girl had managed to grab the weapon without his knowledge. It wasn’t often that anyone pulled one over on him.

“I said we’re *not* leaving without him.” Her words would have been a lot more convincing if both her voice and her hands weren’t shaking. Apparently, just holding a gun made the teenager nervous.

For a moment, Adam considered just knocking Willow out and carrying *her* out of the park. Besides, the teenager hadn’t realized that the safety on the gun was still in place. Balling up his fist to throw the necessary punch, he froze when he heard the simple ‘oh wait,’ followed by the click of the hammer being cocked.

“Please, mister,” Willow begged. “I want to get out of here just as badly as you do. I’m so sorry. I’ve never even held a g...gun before, and I don’t really think that I like it too much, and I know you saved our lives and all, but I really, *really* need your help...”

Like a micro-processor, Adam’s mind rapidly considered his options while Willow babbled nervously. Fight or flight -- both choices were instantly dismissed by his proximity to the teenager. If he were to try and grab the gun, she would probably squeeze the trigger accidentally; and as unstable as she seemed to be at the moment, he didn’t trust her not to shoot if he decided to cut his losses and make a run for it. It wasn’t that he was overly afraid of being shot -- that had happened to him countless times over the years -- but bullet wounds were still messy and painful, even to Immortals. Not to mention the fact that if he were to die, it would still take a few minutes for his body to heal itself, thus leaving him exposed to any number of potential dangers. In the end, Adam chose the path of least resistance.

“Fine,” he snapped, leaning forward to pull the body over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The weight caused him to stagger before he finally found his balance. Keeping an eye out for potential dangers, he led the way back the car. At least the teenager wisely chose to remain quiet as they walked.

“Unlock the trunk,” Adam instructed when they reached the rental. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d transported a body, and he wasn’t about to risk the questions that could arise should he be pulled over by the police.

Much to his annoyance, Willow bypassed the trunk in favour of the rear driver’s side door. When Adam was about to protest, the teenager simply raised the gun she still held in her hand. Realizing that she was serious, the Immortal gave in, less than gently manoeuvring his burden into the back seat. That accomplished, he slid into the driver’s seat and waited for Willow to get situated in the front passenger position. Once her door was closed, the teenager twisted in her seat, unwilling to remove her gaze from her boyfriend’s corpse.

“All right, then. Which way to the hospital?” the Immortal asked with false cheerfulness.

“Not the hospital, the library,” she replied, unwilling to stop staring at her dead companion.

“What?!?” Adam asked, not bothering to mask his confusion.

“The library. We have to get him to the library. Giles will know what to do...I hope.”

Adam almost sighed in relief when they pulled into the parking lot of the high school. Ignoring his steady stream of suggestions that they go to a hospital, Willow remained eerily silent during the duration of the short drive from the park. In fact, the Immortal wasn’t even sure if she realized that they’d reached their destination.

“Willow, we’re...”

The rest of his comment was lost as the teenager opened the door of the still-moving car. Muttering a curse at her recklessness, Adam harshly slammed on the brakes while throwing out an arm to protect her from the force of inertia. The gesture proved unnecessary as the redhead slipped out the door before the car even jerked to a final stop.

“Xander! Oz!” Willow cried, her voice cracking as the tears she’d held in check on the ride overwhelmed her.

“Will! We were just coming to look for you.”

Exiting the car himself, Adam watched as two teenaged boys raced across the otherwise empty parking lot. He recognized the dark-haired boy from his visit to the library earlier that morning, but the short blond was a new face to the Immortal. That he was an acquaintance of Willow’s was made clear when he pulled the redhead into an embrace of reassurance.

“You okay, Willow?”

“Where were you?” the taller boy asked impatiently.

Willow, however, was unable to answer as her tears finally began to fall. Searching for answers, the blond never let go of her as he lifted his eyes to meet Adam’s. There was no mistaking the questions in the boy’s gaze.

“What happened?” he quietly asked the Immortal.

“I was driving by when I saw her and her friend being mugged in the park...” Adam began.

“Friend?” The dark-haired teen queried.

“Angel,” Willow gasped. It was as if simply saying his name renewed the inner strength and courage that the girl had shown when she stole Adam’s gun away from him in the park. With one last sniffle, Willow swiped her nose with the back of her hand before pulling away from the blonde’s embrace.

“Please, we need to get him to Giles,” Willow pleaded to her friends. Two gasps of surprise could be heard as she opened the rear door of the car to reveal the body in the rental’s back seat. Even in the dim, artificial light of the parking lot, the injury to Angel’s forehead stood out in all its gruesome detail. The force of impact had smashed the man’s temple, leaving a two-inch divot just below his hairline. Like most head wounds, this one bled profusely in the minutes that it took the die. In fact, if Adam didn’t know better, he would have thought that there was *more* blood on the corpse’s face than there had been when he’d first thrown the body into the car. But that was impossible. Dead men don’t bleed. It was a simple law of nature that even Immortals could not defy.

“Oh man...” the blond whispered as he blanched at the sight before him.

“That’s gotta smart,” the taller boy, whom Adam recalled was named Xander, quipped while moving to Oz’s side.

“Hurry up!” Willow insisted.

“It’s too late,” Adam said softly to the two boys, not wanting Willow to overhear. “He was already dead in the park, but she insisted on bringing him here rather than a hospital or calling the authorities. There was no pulse, no signs of life....”

“I’ve been saying that for years...” Xander griped, only to be silenced by a none-too-subtle elbow in the stomach from the shorter kid.

“Let’s get him to the library,” Oz suggested. As the two teenagers moved forward to retrieve the body from his car, the blond once again spoke directly to Adam. “Uhh, look. Thanks for helping out Willow and bringing him,” he nodded towards the corpse in the car, “here.”

“You do realize that’s a dead body. The police are already going to ask a lot of questions as to why he was moved,” Adam noted.

“I know this is gonna sound kinda strange, but we’ll take care of everything from here. I’m sure you don’t need the complications from the police asking a lot of questions, so how ‘bout we just leave you completely out of it. You never saw any of us, and we never saw you. Okay?”

Adam instantly saw in the boy’s expression the fervent hope that his offer would be taken without reservation. For just a moment, Adam considered the offer. After all, getting involved in a murder investigation wasn’t exactly in the best interest of any Immortal. But something strange was going on here, and Adam would be damned if he just walked away without satisfying his blatant curiosity. Besides, he still needed to talk with ‘Sabrina’ about the subject that originally brought him to this bizarre little town.

“Hey, that’s fine by me,” Adam agreed, punctuating his remark by raising his hands in surrender as the two boys quickly learned the real meaning of the phrase ‘dead weight’.

“Geez, what the hell has Deadboy been eating lately,” Xander grumbled while he maneuvered one of Angel’s arms behind his neck.

“Can we just get to the library?” Willow asked restlessly. Her barely constrained impatience reminded the Immortal of a racehorse at the starting gate awaiting the sound of the gun.

‘Deadboy?’ Adam wondered silently as the trio of teenagers made their way towards the side entrance of the school. What truly surprised the Immortal was Willow’s reaction, or more specifically her *lack* thereof, to the comment. And why in blazes was it so bloody important for them to get the body to the library? More than ever, Adam was determined to find out exactly what was going on with the strange girl he’d been seeking.

Keeping a discrete distance, the Immortal followed the teenagers into the building.

The walk to the library was a long one. Even at a distance, Adam could clearly see the redhead as she ran ahead of her friends, undoubtedly to inform the librarian of what had happened. The two boys struggled with their burden. They were shouldering the dead man between them, but the disparity in their heights made it difficult to distribute the weight evenly. The legs of the body dragging along behind them only made matters worse. As they lurched drunkenly down the hallway, the Immortal couldn’t help but have ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ flashbacks -- that awful movie about two guys dragging their boss’s corpse around for days on end.

Once they reached the library, Adam took up position outside the heavy swinging doors. The small, round glass windows afforded him a limited view of what was happening inside. Tilting his head, the Immortal pressed his ear towards the crack between the doors in an effort to listen in on the conversation taking place inside. Although the words were muffled, he could still hear parts of the conversation clearly enough to gain an understanding over what was happening.

The librarian was arguing with Willow even as he examined the body that had been placed on the large table Adam had been seated at earlier that day. The two boys were standing off to the side with a dark-haired teen-aged girl, who was purposely keeping her back turned to the corpse. Willow was pleading her case as she emerged from the caged storage room. In her hands was a large cardboard box.

“...have to do the Rite of Heliocus.”

“Willow, perhaps we should examine this more carefully before we...”

“It’s been over 45 minutes, Giles. He’s never stayed unconscious that long before. Besides, even though he won’t admit it, Angel still hasn’t fully recovered from...what happened...”

“Be that as it may,” the librarian interrupted, “what you are proposing is not only dangerous, but reckless as well. By attempting an incomplete incantation, you might accidentally harm Angel...”

“NO!” Even with his stunted view, Adam saw the other occupants of the library jump at Willow’s unexpected outburst. Intrigued, Adam risked being seen by raising his head to peer into the window. Staring at the redhead, he saw on her face the same determined expression she’d had at the park when she refused to leave her boyfriend behind. However, it only lasted for a few seconds. Vestiges of self-doubt emerged, despite her best attempts to remain resolved on the matter.

“I...I...don’t ask me how...or why, for that matter. I...it’s just something that I *know* I have to do.”

“Will?” the young blond questioned hesitantly.

“Oz, I don’t...I can’t explain it. It’s like, remember that time at the hospital? When all that wiggy stuff happened with the restoration spell?” The boy called Oz shared a long, hard look with the dark-haired girl before nodding to Willow. “It’s like that again.”

“God, Giles, just let her do it, if for no other reason than to close up that disgusting crater on his forehead. That is *so* gross! It’s like one of those icky medical surgery things on the Discovery channel. And why do they always show those things during dinner? It’s like ‘wow, look, a human spleen! Pass the carrots, please.’”

Rolling his eyes at the girl’s bizarre and totally useless commentary, Adam stifled a chuckle when Xander spoke.

“That’s our Cordy. Always so compassionate in a time of need.”

“Yes, indeed,” Giles noted before once again training his attention on the redhead. “Willow, the Rite of Heliocus hasn’t been performed in centuries, most likely due to the fact that no one has been foolhardy enough to attempt a spell that cannot be completely translated.”

Willow, however, was already pulling various jars and bottles from the box on the table, frequently checking the pages of the cracked, yellowed volume in front of her. It seemed as if the librarian was about to continue his protest when Oz walked up to him and whispered something in the older man’s ear. Giles’ body jerked in reaction to whatever it was that the boy had to say, but Oz clamped a firm hand down on the librarian’s shoulder, forcing him to be still. They exchanged whispers until the boy strode off to the storage room, emerging a few seconds later with a black duffel bag in his hand. Calling to Xander, the pair made their way up the stairs and disappeared from Adam’s line of sight into the stacks.

Willow was busy with an apothecary jar and pumice, mixing and grinding various contents from the collection of jars. Giving into the inevitable, Giles called to the girl named Cordelia, and together the pair began creating a circle of sand on the floor of the library.

‘A spell?’ Adam thought incredulously as the twosome arranged a series of strategically placed candles. ‘Riiight. Like that’s going to help.’ When he’d first realized that the girl he was looking for fancied herself to be some kind of witch, the Immortal was amused. Teenagers. No matter what age they lived in, they always wanted to test the boundaries, to play on the edge, to somehow distinguish themselves in their otherwise homogenous surroundings. It was the same cycle repeated over and over, regardless of what century the calendar marked. They always wanted to be different, to be special, to be recognized as the ‘new and improved’ generation. So they lashed out, behaving wildly, acting recklessly, dressing differently -- and all the time having no earthly idea that they were doing exactly the same thing that every generation had done before them.

So, it was witchcraft for this little group. Fine. So be it. To Adam, it was far from original.

Over the years, Adam had seen his share of ‘magic’. Once upon a time, he might have believed in its power -- taken the concept of ‘higher and unexplained powers’ as fact. However, it was very difficult to maintain that belief after he was worshipped as a god himself thanks to his miraculous ability to ‘return from the dead’. To the Immortal, it just proved that some people would believe anything.

Perhaps P.T. Barnum had said it best when he quipped that ‘there was a sucker born every minute’. The man calling himself Adam Pierson had been many things over his long life. A sucker, however, was not one of them. And he’d seen the best the world had to offer.

As far as Adam was concerned, the majority of magic was nothing more than a mixed bag of superstition, rubbish, and parlor tricks. When it came to anything resembling the ‘supernatural’, the Immortal had to admit that he leaned more towards the Scully and less towards the Mulder. It wasn’t that he discounted the possibilities of ‘magic’ as a whole -- he had lived long enough to witness things far beyond his level of comprehension at whatever given point in time. Over the years, Adam had come to realize that ‘magic’ was simply another name for things that could not yet be explained.

“The answers are out there -- you just have to know where to look,” Agent Scully once said on the X-Files. And, despite the unexplainable existence of his own race, Adam tended to agree with her. In the course of his rather lengthy life, the Immortal found enjoyment in finding and exposing the ‘tricks of the trade’ when it came to ‘magic.’ For centuries, charlatans and sham-artists had done it all: the utilization of natural phosphate to create light shows, the abuse of legends and folklore to paint more vivid illusions, the mixing of natural herbs to heal the sick, even hypnosis to fog the audience’s mind into believing something that was simply not real.

It never ceased to amaze him that even as mankind was racing to explore the stars, millions of people *still* desperately needed to believe that there was some greater, mystical force out there that only a handful of con-artists could reach. People paid money for instant ‘cure-all’s’ and phony love spells. They sent television crews into ‘haunted’ houses. They paid televangelists millions for ‘healing’ the sick.

Yet, despite the bilking of the public by the pretenders and charlatans, there were times when he found himself wanting -- daring -- to believe. Twice in the past year alone, he had, albeit out of desperation, placed his faith in the mystical.

The first time was after Duncan MacLeod succumbed to a rare affliction among Immortals -- a so-called ‘Dark Quickening’. Unable to control his baser impulses, the Scot’s normal, boy-scout personality experienced a complete role reversal. It pained Adam to see Duncan so out of control, and in one last-ditch effort, the older Immortal brought the stricken Scot to a Holy Spring. Although he was less than confident that the waters were actually magical, Adam hoped that MacLeod’s belief that they were would be enough. In the end, Duncan was able to confront the ‘evil’ within, and emerged from the milky waters an older, wiser version of his good-hearted self. A few weeks after the Dark Quickening, Adam found himself once again in need of a miracle. This time the person affected was the mortal woman he was in love with, Alexa. Dying from a terminal disease, the Immortal found himself unable to cope with her impending loss. Instead, he left her side in pursuit of the Methuselah Stone, a mystical crystal said to bring immortality to the wearer. Despite the help of MacLeod and the Immortal thief, Amanda, all but one piece of the crystal was lost in the murky depths of the Seine River. Less than a month later, Alexa passed away, leaving Adam to grieve the loss of yet another mortal lover.

Before he could get swept away in his memories, the Immortal refocused his attention back on the present. Training his eyesight on the interior of the library, he noted that Willow was apparently finished with her preparations and was lighting a series of candles in a circular order. Adam knew enough about the basic tenets of witchcraft to realize that she was attempting to summon the four elements.

The muted sounds of her chanting escaped through the crack in the doors. She was reading the words directly out of the book, which she was clutching in a white-knuckled grip. Long minutes passed where, as Adam had suspected, nothing happened.

Then he noticed it.

It was slight at first, a dim blue glow that seemed to seep directly from Willow herself. In a way, it reminded the Immortal of the early stages of a Quickening, the part where the energy slowly accumulated before the onslaught of the transfer itself. The light around the girl intensified as her chanting grew louder, leaving him to wonder if the two were connected and, if so, which was the cause and which the effect?

As soon as Willow’s chanting reached a fever pitch, the teenager reached forward to place one of her glowing hands over the wound on the dead man’s forehead. Half-expecting to see the same kind of lightning that accompanied a Quickening, Adam was sorely disappointed when nothing out of the rdinary occurred -- at least if one considered a girl who could make herself glow in the dark ordinary, anyway.

That, however, was nothing in comparison to what happened next.

Had he been standing at a different angle, the Immortal never would have noticed it. So slight a movement, and yet, so momentous. A simple twitch of the right foot.

Of a corpse.

In principle, such a sight should not have shocked him. After all, Adam had witnessed Immortals ‘coming back to life’ countless times. It was old news, just a simple matter of fact.

But this particular man was not Immortal. Had Angel even been destined to become one, Adam would have sensed him as he followed the pair from Angel’s apartment to the park.

‘So,’ he wondered silently, ‘what in the fu....’

It was a question he never got the chance to finish as a voice rang out from the hallway behind him.

“I guess you decided not to take that offer on just walking away, huh?”

Startled, Adam abruptly swung around to find himself face to face with the business end of a crossbow. Fighting his intial impulse to reach for a sword, the Immortal slowly lifted his hands in a non-aggressive gesture. Erring on the side of caution, he kept them at waist-level just in case the blond teenager’s trigger finger got itchy. Through experience, he knew the boy named Xander was lurking in the nearby shadows.

“Look, why don’t you two just calm down...”

For the second time in as many minutes, Adam’s train of thought was interrupted; this time by the hair-raising screams coming from within the library.




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