Claudia awoke with both a blinding headache and a peculiar tingling sensation at the base of her neck, the latter of which quickly diminished. Too bad, she thought groggily, that the headache did not do the same. She groaned and clutched her temples, trying to banish the light that filtered through behind her closed eyelids.

"Hey, Doc," a voice yelled. "She's coming around."

Thump, thump. Blood pounded through her head in a strong, steady rhythm. Thump, thump, thump.

"Hey, Doc, come here," the voice boomed.

Go away, Claudia thought, not knowing whether she was referring to the bellowing voices or the pounding in her brain. Just go away, and leave me alone.

A coolness spread across her forehead, and she sighed in relief. She reached up to pull the washcloth over her eyes, and a few blessed drops slid under her lids, lessening the pain enough that she could open her eyes. One glance around the room, and she wished she had stayed unconscious.

The serious young man hovering over her must be "Doc," she decided. She couldn't figure out, however, why all these other people had crowded into her hotel suite -- or why she was in her suite at all. She easily identified the police officers by their uniforms, and then there were the two men in black suits standing at the door. A cleaning lady was busily dusting wall hangings at the far end of the suite.

As her headache lessened even more, Claudia sat up and threw off the washcloth. "What the hell is going on?"

Doc picked up the cloth and pressed it gently against her forehead, pushing her back into her pillows. "Now, just calm down, Miss Jardine," he said. "You had a nasty fall, and you've been unconscious all night. In fact, I'm surprised you didn't break your neck. Do you remember what happened?"

Claudia closed her eyes, and the memories flooded back. The concert, Kyra shoving her off her bench, the immortal with the gun ...

"He tried to shoot me," she whispered.

Yes," Doc answered, nodding. "He did shoot your bodyguard. Lucky for you that she pushed you out of the way."

Claudia bolted upright, eyes wide with dismay. "Kyra!"

Doc pushed her down again. "Your bodyguard was taken to the hospital. The doctors tried to save her, but she had lost too much blood. I'm very sorry, Miss Jardine. But right now, you cannot worry about her. You must concentrate on your own healing."

He began feeling her head, pressing his fingers against her scalp in search for bumps and cuts. Claudia irritably pulled away.

"I'm fine, really, Doctor ...?"

"Johnson."

"Doctor Johnson, just tell me the police caught the shooter."

Claudia noticed the pointed glance between Doctor Johnson and one of the police officers, and the officer's slight nod. The doctor looked back at Claudia, licking his lips nervously. "The shooter, uh, got away."

"I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you correctly. He what?"

"He got away, Miss Jardine. He vanished. No one could find any trace of him. But not to worry, the police have investigators on the case, and ..."

The doctor droned on, but Claudia tuned him out. This is too much, she thought. First I lose my bodyguard, and then the police can't even catch the guy. She shoved back the sheets and got to her feet, but one of the officers caught her shoulder and forced back down to the bed.

"Get your hands off me," she hissed, and the officer backed away warily. "All of you, get out!"

Doctor Johnson laid a hand on her arm. "Now, Miss Jardine, I know you've had a shock, but --"

"Get out! All of you, get out! Now!"

"Miss Jardine, I --"

"Out!"

She met the doctor's eyes in a battle of wills. They stared at each other for only a few seconds before Doctor Johnson looked down, and Claudia smiled victoriously.

"All right," he said quietly. "But you'll have a guard posted outside your door, and I'll be back to check on you in an hour."

Claudia nodded curtly and waited until the doctor and his crew left and shut the door behind them. She fell heavily onto the bed and rubbed her fingers over her lids. What would she do now? Kyra was presumed dead, so Claudia could no longer rely on her bodyguard to stop the imminent attack.

That attack would come soon, she knew, because this cruel game of cat and mouse had moved into its final stage the moment that Kyra had been shot. She had to think of a solution fast. Well, the first step was simple: Call Duncan.

She reached across the bed for the telephone, but she dropped the receiver when she noticed, on the opposite end of the suite, the back end of a pale-green hotel uniform poking out from behind a wall tapestry. The cleaning lady's duster lay forgotten on the floor, and she seemed oblivious to Claudia's scrutiny.

"Hey," Claudia yelled. "What are you doing here? I said for everyone to leave, and that includes you."

A soft, deep chuckle came from behind the tapestry, the unmistakable laugh of her greatest tormentor and benefactor of the past few days. Claudia's eyes widened, and she found herself running across the room. The presence hit her after she took only a couple of steps, confirming her suspicion.

Kyra emerged from behind the hanging in time for Claudia to sweep her up in an uncharacteristic embrace. Just as suddenly, Claudia stiffened and tried to pull away, but Kyra gripped her arms and held her tight, leaning in closer until her breath tickled against Claudia's ear.

"The room is bugged. The device is behind the tapestry," Kyra whispered.

Claudia shuddered. "Is it him?"

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

"I ... met him. Yesterday. And he called me by name. He couldn't have known who I was unless he was listening."

"You met him? And you didn't tell me?"

"Listen, Claudia, you can argue with me later. Right now, just play along. We can use this to draw him into the open, where we can end it."

"I trust you."

Kyra broke the embrace and smiled reassuringly. She untied her apron and pulled it off, along with the overly large hotel uniform. Under the bulky clothing, Claudia noted with a flash of annoyance, Kyra had reverted to her black leather ensemble. She settled onto the couch while Claudia stood silent, wringing her hands and waiting for the other woman to speak.

"You know," Kyra began, "that to the rest of the world, I'm dead."

"Yes, I know." Where was she going with this?

"That also means," Kyra continued, "that I can no longer be your bodyguard."

Claudia hated the sound of those words; they vocalized her worst fear. Her legs felt like rubber, and she wanted to sit, but she couldn't bring herself to move.

"I know that, too," she said, her voice wavering. "Tell me what to do, Kyra. I need a bodyguard who knows what they're fighting."

"That's why I set up a meeting for you with an acquaintance of mine. Deborah Mendoza. She's not immortal, but she knows what we are, and she's excellent with a sword. She's waiting for you now, at a little Chinese restaurant a few blocks from here."

Claudia frowned. What was Kyra getting at?

"You, ah, want me to -- to go meet this woman. Now?"

"Well, you shouldn't keep her waiting too long. If you cut through that small park across the street, you can be there in ten minutes." Kyra paused. "I cannot go with you, though. Too many people might recognize my face."

Claudia understood. She was to act as bait. "I will go."

"Good."

She dressed in the most nondescript clothes she owned: a pair of gray slacks and a blue silk shirt. Over that, she pulled on her black raincoat and tied it tightly around her waist. As a last precaution, she slipped her gun into her pocket. If she was going to jump head first into danger, she refused to go unarmed.

Kyra efficiently knocked out the two guards outside the suite, and she gestured for Claudia to go ahead. Claudia breathed deeply as she rode down the elevator and crossed the lobby, certain her heart was pounding loud enough for everyone to hear it. She left the hotel without incident, crossed the street and entered the park.

She knew that were she not anxious for her life, she would have enjoyed strolling through the small green oasis amid the buildings of London. The sun shone gloriously for the first time in days; raindrops dripped off the pedals of a thousand flowers. The fresh scent of a city washed clean filled the air, and Claudia mourned that this perfect scene soon would be marred by the power of the Quickening -- hopefully not her own.

She fingered her gun and walked faster, her brown curls bouncing against her shoulders with every step. Then, as she expected and feared, she felt a presence. She stopped, drew her weapon and searched among the trees and flowery bushes for some sign of her hunter. She saw no one.

She licked her dry lips with an equally dry tongue. "Why don't you come out and face me?"

A rustle of leaves caught her attention, and she turned to see her stalker for the first time. He looked nothing like the demon of her nightmares, no horns protruding from his forehead or smoke wafting from his nostrils. He did not even sport a decent, face-mutilating scar. The man looked disappointingly normal, the type she might pass on the street without a second glance -- well, normal except for the sword he held casually across the back of his shoulders.

She pointed her gun at him, using her other hand to steady her shaking arm.

"Tut, tut, Claudia," he said, shaking his head. "Guns aren't part of our game."

"Game? This is no game."

He shrugged. "No use squabbling over semantics. I say game, you say hunt. It amounts to the same thing in the end."

"Don't come any closer," Claudia warned. "I will shoot you."

He walked toward her with an infuriating, smug smile. "I don't think you will. I don't think you have it in you, and now that you've lost Kyra, you have no one to protect you. My dear Claudia, you know you can't win, so why keep fighting it? Why not just end this the only way you can and accept death gracefully?"

As he drew close enough to touch, Claudia snapped. All the fear and frustration and anger of the past week gathered inside her and gave her the courage to do what she never thought she could. She pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

He ripped the gun from her hand and threw it into the bushes. "Safety was on," he whispered.

With one fluid movement, his sword was at her throat, forcing her to her knees. She gasped at the cold blade sliding along her neck, and her eyes locked onto his malicious smile. He licked his lips in anticipation. Claudia could hardly remember how to breathe.

"Good-bye, Claudia Jardine," he said. "It's been fun."

Claudia winced as she anticipated her beheading, but his expression abruptly changed from victory to confusion, and the blow did not come. She felt the source of his unease a moment later. Kyra stepped from the bushes and pointed her gun at the man's head.

"I can put a bullet in your brain right now, and you'd be dead before you hit the ground," she said calmly.

"You can't interfere, Kyra," he said, pressing the blade against Claudia's neck. "The battle has been joined."

"This is no battle," Kyra spat. "You know that. I know that. There is no honor in this."

"Then we seem to be at a stalemate."

"Actually, we're not," Kyra replied. "You see, to take Claudia's head, you need to pull back your sword and pick up momentum on the swing. That gives me plenty of time to splatter your brains all over the park." She slunk toward him, until the barrel of her gun was flush against his head. "Of course, I'm willing to give you one chance. You let Claudia go, I put down my gun, and we end this the way we're supposed to."

Claudia bit her lip, hardly daring to breathe as Kyra bargained for her life. Please, God, she thought, if You really are out there, help me now.

Whether by divine intervention or the threat of Kyra's gun -- or maybe both -- the man lifted his blade, and Claudia dashed for safety behind a thick tree. Trembling and unnerved by the silence behind her, she peeked around the trunk and saw the two immortals circling each other, swords in hand. Kyra attacked, and the weapons blurred as they clashed again and again. The fury of blows ended when Kyra slashed across her opponent's cheek, leaving a thin, bloody trail.

Kyra pulled back and grinned. The man grazed fingertips over his cheek, and with a frustrated growl, he advanced. Only seconds later, too fast for Claudia to follow, Kyra's blade buried itself just below the man's ribs. He howled and clutched at his stomach, dropping his sword in defeat. With an icy expression that frightened even Claudia, Kyra withdrew her sword and swung at his neck.

The blond-haired head hit the ground and rolled a few feet before coming to rest near Claudia's tree. His open eyes stared accusingly at her, and she lost what little food was in her stomach all over a bush of delicate pink flowers.

She heard Kyra groan, which drew her gaze back to the gruesome scene. A strange white mist rose from the body and swirled around Kyra, before slowly sinking into her. Claudia watched as the first Quickening she had ever witnessed unfolded before her.

Lightning shot from the corpse and crackled around Kyra with increasing intensity, and Claudia strank farther behind her tree. Kyra screamed as her muscles spasmed, and her electrically charged hair flew around her face like a wild halo. To Claudia, the Quickening seemed to last an eternity, but the energy storm eventually diminished. A few lingering bolts flew randomly around the clearing.

Kyra fell to her knees with a weak groan. High above, a branch, thick as a man's waist, cracked from its tree and fell. It thumped down only a few feet from Kyra, but she seemed not to notice.

Claudia left the sanctuary of her tree and dropped beside the fallen victor, gathering the woman into her arms as Kyra trembled uncontrollably. Claudia brushed back a tangled mess of sweaty blonde locks from Kyra's face.

"Are you all right?" she asked. "Kyra, answer me. Open your eyes."

Kyra obeyed, with the most exhausted expression Claudia had ever seen. "I'll be fine," she muttered. "I just ... need some ... time."

"Time is something you don't have," Claudia answered. She pointed at the police officers crossing the street from the hotel. "They must have seen the Quickening, and they'll be here soon. You must leave now."

"I ... I don't know if I can walk. He was strong ... so strong."

"You have to," Claudia snapped.

A semblance of life flickered in Kyra's eyes, and she nodded.

"Help me up."

Claudia looked over her shoulder at the approaching officers as Kyra struggled to her feet, leaning heavily against her. Claudia picked up both swords and placed them in Kyra's hands.

"Use these for a crutch," she ordered. "And leave now."

"What about you?" Kyra asked as she accepted the weapons.

"I'll delay the police long enough for you to get away."

Kyra nodded and stumbled into the bushes, her presence quickly fading away, and Claudia slumped onto the fallen branch to wait for the police to arrive. Finally, she allowed the fear and stress of the past two weeks to overwhelm her, and she sobbed for the relief of it.

When the police entered the clearing, they found a strange sight: a corpse with its head a few feet away; two guns, one with the safety still on, but no weapon capable of decapitating a man; and Claudia Jardine, trembling and crying in the dirt, unable to give a coherent response to any of their questions.

The next morning, the London Sun reported a freak electrical storm and an unusual death that somehow involved a world-renowned pianist. The tabloids used the incident as fodder for weeks, but no one, not even Claudia Jardine, ever fully explained what had happened that morning. The murder was filed away among hundreds of other cold cases that the police would never solve.

Three weeks later

Duncan had moved the barge, forcing Claudia to hunt up and down the river for almost an hour before she finally spotted the boat's familiar silhouette outlined against Notre Dame. She knocked on the glass separating her seat from her driver's, and the man stopped the car at a staircase leading down to the water. He opened her door, and Claudia stepped out, not even minding the cool Paris breeze that ruffled her hair.

"Stay here until I signal," Claudia told the man. "After that, I'll probably be here for several hours, and I'll call you when it's time to return."

He nodded and stood by silently as Claudia descended to the quay. She had so much to tell Duncan and so much to ask him. The London police had held her in the city after Kyra had disappeared, volleying the same questions at her repeatedly from inside interrogation rooms while various inspectors stood outside mirror-windows and listened for discrepancies in her answers. She never gave them any reason to doubt her story, every retelling identical to the previous one. Finally, they had released her, and she had come here, to Duncan, perhaps the only person who made her feel truly safe.

Well, with the exception of a particular bodyguard who had been missing since the morning she had saved Claudia's life.

Claudia felt Duncan before she stepped onto the barge, and her friend came out to greet her with a broad smile. She waved at her driver to leave and accepted Duncan's arm as he led her inside.

"Really, Duncan," she said, stopping at the top of the stairs, "you need to fire your decorator."

The barge was bare except for a bed, a few candles on tall, ornate holders, and a low table, surrounded by cushions, in the center of the room. Duncan gave her an indulgent look and crossed to the bar, where he poured two cups of tea.

"I see that this whole episode hasn't changed you a bit, Claudia."

He carried the cups to the table, while Claudia untied her raincoat, hung it over a candle holder and joined Duncan on the cushions. She sipped her tea with a thoughtful expression.

"Actually," she said, "I have learned something from this. I am not meant to carry a gun."

Duncan chuckled. "Kyra did mention that you're still having trouble figuring out how to take off the safety."

"Kyra was here?"

"She visited a couple of weeks ago, just after she killed your stalker. I've been reading the London papers, by the way. That's an interesting story you fed the police: Kidnapped from your room, dragged into the park and then some mysterious person appears from nowhere and chops off the guy's head. I can't believe they let you get away with that."

Claudia shrugged. "I told them that I think that's what happened. I passed out when my stalker hit me on the head, and I woke up to find police all around me and a headless body only a few feet away."

"Very thin, Claudia."

"The police came in on a very strange scene, Duncan. They were ready to believe almost anything." She sipped from her cup and looked down at the table without seeing it. "I didn't even know his name."

"Peter Olson."

She looked up at him; his half-smile did not quite reach his eyes. She had not noticed his pain before, but Kyra was right -- Duncan was not acting like himself. Then again, Kyra had been right about many things, and Claudia had been blind to most of them until it was too late.

"Kyra said something to me before she left," Duncan said. "She said that as far as she was concerned, you passed the trial period, and in a few years or decades, after the world forgets who died in Albert Hall, she would be honored to be your bodyguard."

Claudia breathed out slowly, stunned by the gift Kyra had left for her. After all that had happened, her bodyguard still might return.

"Someday," Claudia whispered. She smiled wistfully and finished her tea.

Outside the barge, standing close enough to glimpse the two figures within but far enough away to avoid their notice, stood a slight woman in black leather. She tossed her blonde hair over her shoulders and sighed, sending out a futile wish to the Fates that things might have turned out differently, that she too might be inside instead of purposely keeping her distance.

They had saved each other, in the end. She had stopped Peter Olson from killing Claudia, but at the same time, Claudia had given her the chance to put her murdered lover to rest and regain her self-confidence. The game that should have ended when she took the head of Richard's murderer was finally over.

They had made a good team. Despite the bickering, they had found companionship, solace and redemption. She had no doubt they would meet again.

"Someday," Kyra said quietly, and walked away.