Four Winds: The Edge of Heaven
A Castle Fantasy AU
By Laura Picken

This story is in the continuing series of Castle fan fiction based on my fantasy alternate universe story "Four Winds". If you want to read the story, click on my author page, otherwise, here's a quick summary: Castle, Beckett, Lanie, Esposito and Ryan are struck by ball lighting in the loft on a dark and stormy poker night and wind up with superpowers: Ryan's a powerful telepath, Esposito can get your entire life story by shaking your hand, Beckett has five super-heightened senses and can speak to the dead, Lanie can heal the living by touch, and Castle's a wizard. There's other scattered abilities here and there, but that's the basic gist of it. Not freaked out by the concept yet? Then read on and enjoy :-).

For very loose timeline purposes, Castle fans can place this somewhere in the post-"Always" future: Castle and Beckett are a firmly established couple, Beckett's back on the force and Ryan has fought his way out of the doghouse. Season five might make it into the canon of this series if I'm still writing it in September, but right now I make no promises.

DISCLAIMER: Castle, Beckett, et al. are property of Andrew W. Marlowe and ABC. The legends described herein are inventions of my own twisted imagination and should not be taken to reflect the traditions of any particular group. All non-English language phrases are courtesy of Google Translate, so please forgive me if I get anything unintentionally wrong. And one more warning: this is a FANTASY fan fiction story set within the Parkour subculture. Anything I describe the Guardians or Dark Angels as being capable of doing would cause serious injury or *death* (with death being much more likely) if some moron decided they could do it in real life. So please, kids, do *not* try anything you read here at home.

Okay, enough business, let the adventure begin!

Kate Beckett paced the roof of her apartment building. It was bitterly cold; she stomped her feet to keep warm as she blew out a long breath of air. When her exhaled breath showed up as a visible white mist, Beckett started to wonder if that white part was made up of ice crystals. She drew in another deep breath and blew it out again, focusing her sight on that breath. Sure enough, the more she focused, the more she was able to see it as a combination of tiny snowflakes and water droplets.

Kate kept watching the snow in her breath as it formed and evaporated. A thought that was not her own brought her attention back to the world around her. Having fun there, Beckett? asked Ryan.

Beckett's mind-voice was tinged with annoyance. At least it kept me from focusing on how cold it is up here while I was waiting for you two. What took you so long, anyway? I thought you were coming straight from the precinct.

Esposito shifted his balance from one foot to another, which only served to make him look as guilty as he felt. Yeah, sorry 'bout that. Gates stopped us on the way out with questions about our report on the McMasters case.

Beckett tensed up almost reflexively. The captain had been going over all their reports with a fine-toothed comb lately, which was making it harder and harder to create rational, real-sounding explanations for the evidence that they had acquired through things like telepathy, supernatural hearing and 'acquiring' the memories of a key witness. What did she ask about?

How we knew that Jacob McMasters had been having an affair with his business partner, replied Ryan.

I knew that was going to come up, Beckett exclaimed in frustration. Esposito had found 'memory' evidence of the affair by shaking the business partner's hand. Ryan confirmed it when the man spent most of the interview thinking of his last date with McMasters...which was just before he killed him. The couple had been spectacularly creative and careful with the affair, though, so there was very little evidence that would have been caught through conventional methods.

Still, when the partner was pushed, they were able to get a full, detailed confession out of him. The guy even pled guilty. Beckett had hoped her captain would let the evidence-gathering process slide. No such luck, apparently. We are going to have to be a lot more careful with making sure our evidence trail lines up in the future, she told her fellow Guardians.

Yes ma'am, their mind-voices replied in unison.

And next time, Ryan, can *you* at least let me know if you guys are going to be late? If I had known, at least then I could have waited downstairs in the loft...where it's warm.

You got it, replied Ryan, next time.

Satisfied that her fellow Guardians had been properly disciplined for the evening, Beckett changed the subject. Okay, so why *am* I freezing my butt off up here, Esposito?

Esposito shrugged with a lot more enthusiasm that he would normally give the off-hand gesture. I just figured we might want to go for a run.

Beckett raised a eyebrow, instantly suspicious. 'Going for a run' meant entirely different things to a Guardian than it did to anyone else, and there was a lot to take into consideration...especially considering their proposed starting point. Aren't we kind of exposed up here, Javi?

I thought about that, Esposito replied, jumping into their plan with enthusiasm. We run crazy fast at top speed. You combine that with the fact that most people won't believe their eyes if they see any tricks we throw in, and if we dress in black and keep talk to mind-link only...

It wasn't hard for Beckett to complete Esposito's rambling train of thought. Then there wouldn't be a whole lot for anyone to connect to a normal human being doing it, let alone anybody *specific*. Esposito nodded, and another concern rose to the front of Beckett's mind. What if we slow down too much and get caught?

Esposito turned to his partner. I have an idea about that, said Ryan. I was watching The Shadow the other day-

That lame movie with Alec Baldwin? Beckett teased.

Ryan's mind-voice took on a slightly defensive edge. Yes, that one. Look, it's not like I'm likely to cross paths with another telepath, so I gotta get my ideas where I can. Anyway, one thing that the Shadow did to hide his identity was a perception filter. He was still the same guy, but he made people *think* he looked different. So I figured I'd try it.

Beckett watched, impressed, as Ryan's face wavered and shifted...until she found herself looking at two of Esposito. Very effective, Ryan, said Beckett. Uh...you *are* Kevin Ryan, right?

The real Ryan raised his hand in a salute and smiled. Guilty as charged. As his features returned to his own, Ryan continued, It takes longer to shift when there's a big difference between our original faces and the end result, though. So the plan would be that if we slowed down or got into a position where we could possibly be recognized, I'd change our features just enough so that no one could pick us out of a lineup.

Beckett considered everything she had heard carefully. It was a huge risk, and if they were caught and their identities exposed...well, she didn't even want to think about how their lives would be irrevocably altered. And yet...

The lights of New York City at night surrounded her, teased her, invited her to come and play...and play was something that had been severely lacking in her life lately, what with Castle on a deadline and Gates on their backs like a bad rash and one case after another after another after another...

Beckett took off at a full sprint, clearing the alley between her building and the building next door by a good ten feet. She turned back in the direction of her fellow Guardians with the first smile that had crossed her face in almost a week. Coming, boys?

Ryan and Esposito didn't have to be asked twice.

Beckett turned her neck as far to the right and to the left as she dared, stretching out the muscles any way that she could. Everything hurt. She was sore in places she didn't even realize she had muscles.

It was wonderful.

Beckett ducked under the crime scene tape at the entrance to the playground, gave her badge number to the officer at that entrance, and took in the scene in front of her. The merry-go-round let out several high-pitched creaks as it spun in the steady, cold breeze. The CSU techs were scattered around the scene, carefully bagging every bit of information they could collect and photographing the blood spatter patterns that they couldn't collect.

Ryan nodded to her in greeting, having to keep just about all his focus on his own task. He was interviewing a small, shivering blond-haired woman. Even though Beckett could feel her fellow Guardian's calming aura from almost thirty feet away, the woman was still visibly shaking. It was then that she realized that Ryan's witness wasn't a woman, but a girl who couldn't have been any older than thirteen...at the most. Poor kid, she thought.

Beckett passed the merry-go-round to talk to her best friend Lanie Parrish while she worked. Lanie couldn't help but notice how relaxed her fellow Guardian looked. "Girl, you are in the best mood I've seen you in all week!" she exclaimed. "What, did writer-boy finish early?"

"No, he's still in deadline mode," Beckett replied matter-of-factly, her focus never leaving the body in front of them. "What do we got?"

"Well, you'd think that this was an accident, the way it looks on the surface," replied Lanie, "but if you take a closer look at the skull of our friend here..."

Beckett knelt with Lanie next to the body splayed out on the concrete...checking carefully to make sure she didn't step in the pool of blood and brain matter surrounding the head. Lanie watched her friend wince as her knees flexed, but since Beckett wasn't bringing it up, Lanie decided to follow Kate's lead...for the moment.

The medical examiner turned her attention back to the task at hand, turning the victim so the back of his head (and much of his brain) was clearly visible. "You don't get this much damage to a skull from one knock on concrete." Laying the body back down, Lanie pointed out a spot of blood-matted hair on the victim's hairline. "And when you combine that with the fact that this section of his hair is sticking up like it was grabbed onto..."

"You think someone bashed his head in after he fell?" asked Beckett.

Lanie nodded. "That's my preliminary, yeah."

"Can you estimate the time of death?"

"Based on rigor, I'd say between 5 and 7am," replied Lanie.

Beckett thanked her friend, then continued her examination of the scene. They were in the northeast corner of the playground, where the red brick maintenance building was located. And it was in the building's decorative brick roof trim that she saw it. Sometimes a piece of evidence at a crime scene just sticks out like a sore thumb; it's that one piece of evidence that often gets the ball rolling in any investigation. It can tell you that a scene that looked like an accident was no accident, or it could tell you who the killer was...or it could tell you why they decided the life of the victim needed to be taken at all.

In this case, the empty space where a brick should have been was just too clean; it whispered to Beckett the possibility that even the victim's fall itself might not have been an accident. She looked up, instinctively calculated the distance from the ground to the roof target, and, almost without thinking, took a leaning step forward...

Ryan caught the temptation in Beckett's mind before she had a chance to fully act on it. Ah ah ah...that's kind of high up, isn't it? Normal, Average, Detective Beckett...

Beckett blushed, but quickly recovered...leaving her fellow Guardian as the only one who noticed. Making sure she stood *away* from the building as she waited, Beckett called out to the techs, "Can someone get me a step ladder, please?"

Ryan fought a losing battle to keep the smile off his face. Good girl.

Beckett rolled her eyes as she waited for the tech to set up the ladder and step aside. After she climbed the ladder, Beckett was able to confirm what she had seen from the ground: powdered dried cement chunks littering the area behind the space where the brick should have been...and an ice pick. Through the mind-link Beckett described what she was seeing to Ryan. It looks like someone came up here and chiseled away the grout behind a couple of the bricks up here...

So when our parkour-practicing friend here-

They're called tracers, Ryan.

Gee, I wonder how you know *that*, Ryan teased. Anyway, so our tracer here came out for a morning practice session, scaled the front of the building, and grabbed one of the bricks in that trim, expecting to find an easy handhold...

And ended up with a fistful of loose brick, added Beckett. He fell backwards, landing on his back on the ground, and before he had a chance to get up...

Ryan completed the story. Someone came over and bashed his head in.

This was a trap, set up by someone to catch a tracer, mused Beckett, so they could kill him.