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Chapter One
On a Rainy Night in Georgia
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Sue Danning watched her subject from behind the concealment of a trash bin.

She had graduated from the Watcher Academy just a few months ago, following in her father's footsteps so to speak. All her life, it seemed, she had known about Immortals.

For as long as she could remember, she had known she would be a Watcher. Her first "assignment", working under her father had been watching the occasional Immortal as they passed through Los Angeles, after school, and occasionally during the days in the summers. The Society had found it useful to be able to toss a young girl on the trail of some of the more active Immortals, since she was able to blend almost effortlessly into a crowd. As long as she didn't get too close.

Long ago, she had learned the lesson of getting too close to her "subject".

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April 1998, Redondo Beach, California...

Fourteen year old Sue sat on the beach watching the man her Dad had told her was over two hundred years old. Funny, he didn't look a day over twenty. She was fortuitously well dressed for hanging out on the beach, in a bikini top, and jean shorts, her shoes simple sandals. She even had a towel to sit on.

Dugan Masters, her subject of this afternoon's observation was kind of cute. Sue looked across the beach as he stood along the line of damp sand, just a bit below the high-water line. He was dressed in a white shirt, and jeans, the cuffs rolled up, showing his naked ankles, and running-shoes. Seeming casual, with a large beach towel bunched and hanging over his shoulder in his left hand, he stood looking out at the ocean.

"I wonder where he has his sword" she thought, looking at the lines of his pants, and not incidentally deciding he had a cute butt. Suddenly she flushed red, and looked around to see if she could figure out why he was wandering the beach today. Earlier, he had eaten hot dogs, while she had had an ice cream. Obviously he was killing time, but now he seemed ready for something.

All of a sudden, Dugan tensed, and started looking around. His eyes settled on a dark-complexioned woman walking up the sand from his right, and he shifted his stance to face her.

Sue knew somehow that this was what he was here for. But why? The woman was old, looking to be in her thirties, although from Dugan's reaction Sue thought she must be another Immortal. That was when she noticed Dugan had shifted his grip on his towel. It was now hanging straight down from his right hand, trailing the ends on the sand. "Ah, so THAT is where he has his sword." She thought, nodding to herself.

Focusing her attention again on the approaching woman, she noticed that she also was carrying a large beach towel in her right hand, its ends dragging in the sand. "No! They aren't going to fight here, are they?" she thought suddenly as the two faced off on the moderately crowded beach under the shining summer sun.

Trying to look casual, she rose, plucking her towel from the sand as she got to her feet.

With a casual saunter, she angled down the sand, picking her way around other people, as she approached the two Immortals, hoping to get close enough to hear what was going on.

Dugan was saying something to the woman, who cocked her head and smiled at him prettily. She replied, with a gesture back behind herself, in the direction she had come from while shaking her head slightly.

Sue strolled closer, marking a point on the sand which would give her a good "excuse" to pass by them on her way back and forth to the water. Dropping her towel casually on her spot, she continued to saunter towards the couple, and on past into the water, but as she approached within a few feet, they both broke off in their conversation abruptly and simultaneously turned to face her.

"What do we have here" the dark skinned woman said in a dusky voice, her hand darting out to capture Sue's arm in a painful grip. "Hello Julie. Here to spy for your uncle?"

Sue writhed in her grip but said nothing, wondering why the woman called her Julie.

"Let her go Myra. She's just a child". Dugan told her.

"I don't like children." The woman said, tightening her grip. "Especially ones rude enough to follow me around and interrupt."

"Let her go, she has nothing to do with this. You know that as well as I do, she is not a part of the Game."

"She may not be playing yet, but that doesn't mean she won't be a problem for me later on. I believe in nipping problems in the bud." The woman replied.

"Nipping problems in the bud is one thing; cutting down the whole bush before it has had a chance to grow even one flower is another. LET HER GO." Dugan responded, the force in his last three words almost palpable.

"Fine." The woman said, casually tossing Sue back towards her towel. "Get out of here little girl, and tell your Uncle Yoseph that the next time he uses you to spy on me, someone will lose their head, Game or no Game."

Sue scrambled backwards in the sand, her heart pounding as she realized the honest and open threat in the woman's words. Climbing unsteadily to her feet, she ran away to find the parking-lot, a pay phone, and her father. She had no idea how the woman knew about her father's co-worker Joe, or the Watchers, but she didn't care at the moment. She had had enough of Watching for today.

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Feeling a buzz from her pager, Sue pulled it off her hip, and flipped open the cover to read the message displayed within.

"REPORT TO HQ ASAP" was the short message from her supervisor. First there was the urgent status/location request an hour earlier while Eadgils or Ed as he was presently known, was eating dinner. Now she received an urgent call to report back to the local headquarters, for no apparent reason. She edged back from the dumpster, but as she did she caught a glimpse of someone entering from the other end of the alley. Hesitating, she took another look at her subject.

He had drawn his sword, and placed his back, literally against the wall. Something was up, and whatever was going on it was almost certainly chronicle material. Ed never drew his sword outside of practice.

Even as she crouched back down, she heard a crunch of gravel from BEHIND her, and peering over her shoulder, she saw the man approaching from her end of the alley, a gun ready in his hand. But, there was something else, as he passed her hiding place; she noticed the faint image of a Watcher tattoo on his wrist!

Looking back at the figure entering the alley from the other end, she noticed the outline of another gun. After a few moments of puzzlement, she put the pieces together, and realized what she was seeing: Hunters!

In her mind Hunters were among the worst vermin on the earth. They were Watchers who had not only broken their oaths, but had decided to actively kill Immortals. Worse, they did so indiscriminately, killing whatever Immortal they could identify and isolate. Apparently they were now after Ed.

"No" she called out, as she leapt at the nearest figure, hoping to wrest his gun from his hand. "Ed, Run! They want to kill you!"

Eadgils swung at the sound of her voice, unfortunately putting his back to the man coming from the other end of the ally. "What?" he called in confusion, raising his sword to a "Ready" position over his shoulder.

Sue had her hands on the gun, and was rolling away from the Hunter.

Ed, seeing the weapon, identified the Hunter as a threat, and lunged with his sword, ignoring the second man for the moment.

As his sword stabbed the Hunter through the chest, a shot rang out from behind him and Eadgils, last speaker of the Flornlef fell forward, dead.

Sue on the other hand was still alive. Now she was armed as well.

"Drop it" she said, pointing the now dead Hunter's gun at his partner.

"Bitch! What do you think you are doing?"

"Stopping you", Sue replied coldly.

"The Abomination must die. Don't you understand that?" he asked, pointing his own gun at her.

"No, I don't. It's not our place to interfere, you know that. How can you break your oath so easily?"

"A contract signed in ignorance or under false pretences is not binding. Neither is a so called Oath." He replied. "Now, lower the gun and perhaps I will let you leave here alive."

"I can't do that." She said. "I can't just stand by and let you kill him."

"Too bad", he said, and he pulled his trigger.

The pain which blossomed in her stomach was incredible. Reflexively, she squeezed off a shot of her own, as she fell, her body lying in the puddle of bloody water, mere inches from Ed, whose back was showing faint sparks as his Quickening worked on healing the hole made in him by the Hunter's bullet. As her vision faded, she saw the other Hunter climb back unsteadily to his feet, clutching a bleeding hole in his side. Slowly the Hunter dragged himself over to where Ed had dropped his sword, and picked it up.

Her last sight was of the Hunter lifting the sword. The last sound she heard was him crying "No! The abomination MUST die!"

She could no longer feel the pain in her stomach. She could no longer feel anything, and her last thought was that she had failed. Then there was just nothing, not even darkness.

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