{"id":1467,"date":"2012-09-05T05:46:29","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T05:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/azar.ink-and-quill.com\/?p=1467"},"modified":"2012-09-06T03:25:55","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T03:25:55","slug":"fic-the-childrens-hour-part-49-fkhl-diviakenny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/azar.ink-and-quill.com\/?p=1467","title":{"rendered":"Fic: The Children’s Hour part 4\/9 (FK\/HL, Divia\/Kenny)"},"content":{"rendered":"

location unknown<\/strong>
\n somewhere in Seacouver<\/strong><\/p>\n

Richie groaned as awareness flooded back to him. The unpleasant fact that he was handcuffed standing up to a thick metal pipe in the middle of an empty room quickly dismissed his initial relief that he was still alive.<\/p>\n

Great. The little demons decided to keep me alive. Just perfect.<\/em><\/p>\n

He forced his eyes open and immediately wished he hadn’t. Divia was sitting directly across from his line of vision, watching him with sinister intensity.<\/p>\n

“Let me guess–I taste so good you couldn’t bear to part with me?” he asked sarcastically.<\/p>\n

The child vampire laughed softly, the sound making him feel cold all over. (It was fairly obvious from what had happened that she was a vampire.)<\/p>\n

“No, I’m afraid keeping you alive was my Khnum’s idea.”<\/p>\n

“Hate to break it to you, Divia, but his name’s Kenny.”<\/p>\n

“He is my Khnum, my reborn sun,” she insisted with unnerving calm. “The name he was born with is of no importance.”<\/p>\n

“So, why does the little rat want me alive, anyway?” Richie demanded.<\/p>\n

“For our amusement,” she replied with another creepy smile. “This game we’ve played is getting dull, so we’ve decided to try our hands at another one. To bait the trap with a new cheese.”<\/p>\n

A chill spread over the young Immortal. “And I’m the cheese.”<\/p>\n

“As my Khnum has said, you are most observant,” she sneered.<\/p>\n

Richie sighed. “Great. Just for once, I wish someone would use Mac as bait to catch *me*, instead of the other way around.”<\/p>\n

His child-like captor laughed. “You, a boy barely more than a fledgling? Why would anyone spare a man with such power as this MacLeod to capture you<\/em>?”<\/p>\n

“At least I hit puberty,” he retorted.<\/p>\n

Divia hissed angrily and flew at him. Jerking his head back as she had in the alley, she raked her sharp fingernails painfully down the side of his face. “I have lived more days than you will ever see, you insolent child! Be grateful that we still need you or I swear you would never wake from my kiss!”<\/p>\n

With that, she sank her fangs again into his throat and Richie felt the world once more slip mercifully away.<\/p>\n

o\/<\/p>\n

MacLeod’s loft<\/strong><\/p>\n

Duncan turned over the necklace in his hands, studying the features of the girl in the cameo. “So you don’t know how she survived?”<\/p>\n

“MacLeod, she lived through a beheading,<\/em> the one thing that can make us stay dead! Of course he doesn’t know!”<\/p>\n

“Actually, I do have an idea,” LaCroix corrected his older friend. “It’s a poor one, I suppose, but it’s the best we have at the moment.”<\/p>\n

“Really?” Methos asked. “Do tell.”<\/p>\n

“In spite of everything, Divia was still my daughter. I may have had to kill her, but I was determined at least to give her a decent resting place. So, I chose the very tomb we were in, the tomb of her slain master–it was both noble in architecture and fittingly vile in company. The seal of Amen-Ra upon the sarcophagus kept her imprisoned, but her master’s power, even in death, may have restored her body.”<\/p>\n

“So, if the seal kept her entombed, why is she out and running around hunting Immortals?” Duncan asked next.<\/p>\n

“The seal must have been broken.”<\/p>\n

MacLeod was still pondering this idea with a dubious expression on his face when the phone rang. “I’ll be right back,” he told the two ancients and rose to answer it.<\/p>\n

He returned a moment later with his face unusually pale. “The police found Richie’s bike abandoned on the street.”<\/p>\n

Methos swore. “Damn. They’re already here then.”<\/p>\n

“Yeah, they’re already here, and they may have killed a very good friend of mine,” Duncan retorted, rising to pace the room.<\/p>\n

“I’m sorry to hear that.”<\/p>\n

“You don’t sound very unhappy about it.”<\/p>\n

“Do you expect me to? I barely knew the kid.”<\/p>\n

“I expect you to have a little respect for the lives of others,” MacLeod snapped.<\/p>\n

The ancient Immortal opened his mouth to shoot back another retort but just then the phone rang again. The three men looked at each other and Duncan hurried into the bedroom to answer it.<\/p>\n

“Hello?”<\/p>\n

“Long time no see, MacLeod.”<\/p>\n

The Highlander’s blood turned cold at the sound of the familiar voice. “Kenny?”<\/p>\n

“Got it in one!” the eight-hundred-year-old child exclaimed with deceptive juvenile glee. “I’m so glad you remember me, because I have something that belongs to you.”<\/p>\n

Cold turned to ice even as relief swept over him that the young man was still alive. “Richie doesn’t belong to me.”<\/p>\n

“Oh. You don’t want him back then? Ok. I guess I’ll just have to take his head after all.”<\/p>\n

“What do you want, Kenny?” Duncan demanded.<\/p>\n

“Just a trade. Sort of like baseball cards, or something else ‘kids’ like me are supposed to like to collect. I guess I just like to collect heads. And I’d much rather have yours than our young friend’s here. It’s much more valuable.”<\/p>\n

Mac closed his eyes. “All right. Tell me when and where.”<\/p>\n

“Not so fast, Duncan. I just wanted you to know where we stand. I’ll call you in a couple of days–we can talk again then.”<\/p>\n

The line clicked and went dead.<\/p>\n

Methos and LaCroix both stood as MacLeod stormed back into the room. “Where are they holding him?” the ancient Immortal asked.<\/p>\n

Mac shot him a surprised look.<\/p>\n

“Vampires have very good hearing,” the older man explained.<\/p>\n

“So then you know your daughter has really bad taste in company,” Duncan spat, turning to LaCroix.<\/p>\n

“It’s appropriate in a twisted sort of way,” the vampire acknowledged. “Someone her own ‘age.'”<\/p>\n

The Scot grunted and turned towards the elevator, pausing to grab his coat and sword.<\/p>\n

“Where are you going?” Methos demanded.<\/p>\n

“I’m going to face him!”<\/p>\n

“MacLeod, think with your brain for once and not your Goddamned hero complex!” The older man grabbed the Highlander by his arm. “If you go up against them alone, you will have no<\/em> chance of surviving. None, do you understand?”<\/p>\n

“Methos, they’re just kids–”<\/p>\n

“Eight hundred and two thousand-year-old kids, one of whom also happens to be a vampire,” the ancient Immortal corrected, his voice still sharp. “If you go waltzing in there like they want you to, you will be dead. And it won’t even be an honorable<\/em> death–how does that strike you?”<\/p>\n

That gave the younger man pause. “So what am I supposed to do, then?” he demanded. “Let them kill Richie for their own amusement?”<\/p>\n

“We even the odds,” Methos replied grimly. “We take a couple of vampires of our own.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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