Cullen, an old friend of MacLeod's, is burnt out from centuries of playing The Game and has turned to drugs and alcohol to get the courage to keep on playing. Cullen had a run-in with Richie and now he's coming for Richie's head. While playing ""chicken"" with Richie on a mountain road, Cullen crashes head-on into a bus full of passengers, killing many. MacLeod tries to convince Cullen, who he once knew as the greatest of the warriors, to stop using the drugs, but a paranoid Cullen believes MacLeod is just trying to render him helpless. Finally, MacLeod has no choice but to confront his former comrade and defeat him.

MacLeod is tormented by visions of his own death, beheaded by a mysterious dark-hooded figure. Anne tries to convince him to seek medical help, but instead he turns to his old friend Garrick, who has spent centuries studying the mind. MacLeod saw Garrick in the 17th Century, when MacLeod barely escaped being burned as a witch. What MacLeod didn't know was that Garrick was not able to escape as well. Garrick convinces MacLeod that the dark-hooded figure is a racial memory that haunts all Immortals and that the way to defeat it is to not fight it, to accept it for what it is. When MacLeod, haggard and exhausted, faces the specter for the last time, puts down his sword and refuses to fight it, the figure goes for MacLeod's head -- until at the last moment MacLeod realizes the figure is Garrick, seeking his revenge after all these years. In the Tag, Anne, frustrated that MacLeod won't open up to her despite their intimate relationship, leaves him.

Friends become enemies and the past is revealed when Immortal Andrew Cord in gunned down and MacLeod discovers the sniper is Charlie DeSalvo, his good friend who used to run the dojo. Charlie, who left MacLeod to fight the good fight in the Balkans with his love, Maria, is after Cord, who murdered her. Dawson knows Cord as the man who saved his life in Vietnam after a mine explosion took his legs and he begs MacLeod not to fight him. MacLeod agrees -- until Cord turns the tables and sets his sights on Charlie.

Are MacLeod and the police seeing a ghost when the evidence in a diamond theft and poison gas murder points to the very evil, but very dead, Xavier St. Cloud? CID Agent Renee Delaney returns to ask for MacLeod's help in finding the killer. Could it be Xavier or simply a memorial to a fallen teacher by Xavier's former student, Morgan D'Estaing?