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Grace Chandel has been a Good Immortal, working for the betterment of mankind as a midwife, doctor, and scientist over the centuries. Her one weakness is another Immortal, Carlo Sendaro, a former lover who is obsessed with her and refuses to let her go. He slays Grace's current (mortal) lover and, when she refuses to run off with him, frames her for the killing. She turns to her old friend Duncan MacLeod for help.

A mysterious death at the Paris Opera re-acquaints Duncan MacLeod with one of the strangest Immortals he has met in his many travels over the centuries. Ursa is a hulking giant — more beast than man — who Duncan rescued from persecution centuries ago, delivering him to sanctuary in an abbey. The abbey has long since been destroyed and Ursa now lives under Paris. He has become enamored of a past-her-prime opera singer who tries to use Ursa's innocent soul to murder her rival.

MacLeod stumbles across the trail of an Immortal, Xavier St. Cloud, who has lived in hedonistic splendor down through the ages by remorseless robbing and killing innocent men and women. MacLeod had nearly fallen victim to this remorseless killer behind the front lines during World War One, when Xavier used poison gas to loot a payroll truck. He uses even deadlier gas in modern day Paris, and MacLeod must track him down before he kills again. He succeeds in defeating Xavier, but the Evil Immortal escapes with his head. In a humorous yet touching subplot, Richie falls for a glamorous older woman, not realizing she is married, and Tessa must disentangle him from the woman's clutches.

An Evil Immortal, Kuyler, has hired himself out down through time as an assassin — the most successful killer in all of history. He strikes again in modern day Paris using his signature disguise as a mime. A French Police Detective, LeBrun, suspects that Duncan MacLeod is connected to Kuyler, but of course he cannot imagine that Kuyler once killed an eighteenth-century baron under MacLeod's protection. When LeBrun is wounded protecting Tessa from Kuyler's men, MacLeod confronts the Immortal assassin and puts an end to his centuries-old reign of terror.

Warning comes from MacLeod's old friend Darius, a monk over 2000 years old, that Grayson, Darius' one-time protege, is now stalking Darius' other students — among them, possibly, MacLeod. Grayson, disillusioned that his former comrade-in-arms has become a man of peace, is killing Darius' mortal students in order to draw the monk off holy ground and into combat. MacLeod must protect peace activist Victor Paulus, another of Darius' students, from Grayson's plot to assassinate him. Later he joins Richie and Tessa in France where they will live while Tessa takes up her new job as curator of a traveling collection.

Tessa witnesses the murder of a painter, Anne Wheeler, but the absence of a body leads everyone but MacLeod to doubt her story. MacLeod supports Tessa in her quest to obtain justice for Anne. It develops that Anne was killed by her Immortal ex-lover, to keep her from revealing his secret. After Tessa is taken to a police safe house, MacLeod realizes that the killer is in fact the Chief of Detectives, and he must rescue Tessa and bring justice to Anne's killer.