Venom
by Laura Picken

Summary: Crossover with Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. A practitioner of an ancient curse starts to murder those in Cascade who have escaped the law, and Jim and Blair are assigned to track him down. Can Caine, Peter, and Kermit help Jim and Blair find him before Jim becomes the curse's next victim?

Disclaimer: I don't own any of 'em. If I did, they never would have stopped making new episodes of KF: TLC and they would -never- have written someone as annoying as Cassie just to get a female supporting character on The Sentinel. No money is being made off of this. I just want to have some fun. Hopefully a few other people will enjoy it, too.

KF:TLC fans please note: I have looked all over the Net trying to find out exactly -where- Sloanville. Got an infinite number of answers, but most place it somewhere in the midwest. So I'm placing it somewhere in Illinois.

Many thanks to Danae, Zadra and Dawn Witherspoon for beta reading this for me. They kept Jim and Kermit from being a couple of big wimps (and Zadra kept Simon from being totally out of character, once I looked at her ideas...sorry it took me so long!).

Anyway, on with the show...

It was hard to breathe, but he was compelled to go on, even as the hot, heavy air tempted him to rest. He carefully picked through his surroundings, working to get past the jungle underbrush to the distressed howling he had heard in the distance. As he reached a clearing, he discovered that the anguished cries of grief were from a wolf, who seemed to be standing guard over a large black animal and mourning its impending death.

When the man slowly approached the black animal, the wolf's cries turned from grief to growls of protective rage, so the man soothed, "It is all right. I am not going to hurt you. I am just going to see if I can help your friend." The wolf looked up at him with an expression of concern, then slowly jumped off of its charge, still staying close by.

As the man turned his attention from the wolf to the cat, he finally recognized the black animal as a panther. The cat was profoundly ill; its breath coming out in short, shallow pants. He tried to soothe the animal, but to no avail. Focusing his chi towards it, he tried to impart some strength to the animal, but he was not able to reach it. Somehow his efforts were being blocked.

Frustrated, he turned back to the wolf. It was then that he noticed the powerful connection linking the two animals-one that might help the dying animal lying at his feet to survive. He called out to the wolf, "I can not save him alone. If you do not help him, he will die." To his disappointment, the wolf backed away from him, frightened, and ran off.

As the man, too, began to mourn the death of the panther, a fierce growling came from behind him. When he turned, he saw a white leopard trying to fight off a snarling, monstrous-looking beast. Yet it seemed that the beast was not interested in the leopard at all, but in the man. As the man stood to confront the beast, it breathed out a warning, "You can not save them, priest. They are mine, as they have always been."

"They were never yours," replied the priest, "And they never will be."

As the beast backed away, he called out, "We'll see about that, priest, we'll see..."

When Kwai Chang Caine opened his eyes, he realized that he was in his meditation room. The candles around him had burnt down to almost nothing, so he had to have been there for several hours.

Quickly he recalled the vision he had just experienced. [A most perplexing challenge...] He knew the vision had been something related to the future, to his future, but he had no idea how to connect the symbols from the vision to anything in his life or in the neighborhood around him.

A most perplexing challenge, indeed.

Blair Sandburg had a sinking feeling in his gut as he and his partner, Jim Ellison, pulled up to the crime scene they had been called in to investigate. The feeling only worsened when he realized there were only police-related personnel in the area - not a single morbidly fascinated spectator in sight. "Wonder what's going on..." he mused.

When he got no response from his partner, though, he grew even more concerned. Jim was perfectly comfortable with the normal sights, sounds and smells of a crime scene, to the point where he had often been able to perfectly filter out those sensations and find that unusual piece of information that was often the break in the case. So what was it about this crime scene that was causing him to zone out?

Shaking all suppositions of cause aside for the moment, Blair quickly placed a hand on the older man's shoulder and whispered, "Jim, man, come back. Listen to my voice..."

His soothing reassurances brought Jim out of his deep zone-out. The Sentinel shook off the disorientation, turning to his partner beside him. Remembering immediately what it was that caused him to zone out, he warned, "Stay in the car, Chief."

Blair's concern was evident on his face. "No way, man. If you zoned out on something at this crime scene from this great a distance, then you need me in there."

Jim thought back to the smell that had caused him to zone out. Even from here, it was repulsive enough that he had turned down his sense of smell as low as it could possibly go, yet he could still pick up faint traces of it.

The look of deep concentration on Jim's face was not lost on his Guide. Blair asked him, "What is it, Jim?"

Jim's mind tried to place the foul smell, and was failing rapidly. "It's the body, Chief."

Blair shuddered. That was -so- not what he needeed to hear. "Jim, both you and I are way too familiar with what a corpse smells like, man."

"I know that, Chief. But there's something different about this one."

"-Maybe- I can help you figure it out, but we need to be closer to the crime scene to do it."

Jim could tell right away that he was fighting a losing battle, especially if the normally squeamish Blair was pushing him to get -both- of them to examine the body. Sighing, he relented, "All right, Sandburg, let's go."

As they approached the alley, Blair was beginning to regret his persistence. The younger man started to cough, then gagged as the intense odors finally hit him as well. He exclaimed, "Oh man, Jim, is -that- what you smelled?"

Solemnly, Jim nodded. "Yeah, Chief, that's it."

Before they could see the source of that smell for themselves, though, Simon Banks approached them in full HazMat gear. He greeted them, "Good evening, gentlemen."

Confused, Blair asked, "What's with the 'Outbreak' gear, Simon?"

Ignoring the lame film reference, Simon replied, "Apparently some hospital intern was the one to find the body. The minute he saw its condition, he told us to bring in a HazMat team. The guy's at the hospital getting himself checked out right now."

Jim asked, "Why would he need to do that, Simon?"

Steering his men away from the crime scene and toward the HazMat truck, Simon explained, "The corpse shows all the external signs of having died from the Ebola virus."

Jim and Blair gawked at their captain in open-mouthed shock; memories of the threats Lee Brackett had made flooding their minds. Blair was barely able to ask, "Simon, are they sure?"

Simon shook his head. "No. They won't be a hundred percent certain until after the autopsy. Until then, though, we can't take any chances. So, gentlemen, let's get you suited up."

Although the body itself was intact, it has bled profusely from every orifice, and the smell had almost caused both men to throw up in their HazMat suits. Even though their Asian John Doe had only been dead six hours according to the medical examiner's preliminary exam, according to Jim, it smelled as though the corpse had been dead for almost six days.

So when Jim and Blair walked into the station that next morning, it was obvious that neither man had slept very well, if they had slept at all. The extreme condition of the body, combined with the memories of Lee Brackett and the sight of the forensics team combing the area in the HazMat suits haunted Blair so badly that he had given up all hope of sleeping sometime around 4 a.m.

And, as everyone around Major Crimes was painfully aware of, if Blair looked like hell, then it meant that his partner and roommate probably was going to be in equally bad shape, if not worse. In all honesty, that bit of conventional knowledge was pretty accurate. The exhausted Sentinel woke repeatedly during the night-each time his roommate's heart rate had spiked in response to a nightmare. So when Blair had finally decided that sleep was no longer an option, Jim looked at the clock, and, noticing the time, went downstairs to get a cup of coffee and watch late-night TV. For him, sleep was no longer an option either.

Simon took one look at the way that most of the department was trying to steer clear of his best team and wondered if the information he had just been handed would help them or just make things worse. He soon realized, though, that if the look on Blair's face was any indication, things couldn't get much worse. The last time the kid looked this bad was in the first few weeks after they had rescued him from David Lash. He walked over to the desks of the two men and quietly asked them, "Jim, Blair, could I see you in my office for a minute?"

The two men walked followed Simon into his office as the Captain closed the door behind them. Sitting down in the chairs in front of Simon's desk, Blair asked, "What's up, Simon?"

The captain announced, "We got the autopsy report back from the medical examiner."

At this announcement, both men perked up immediately, concerned. Jim asked, "How'd we get it so soon, sir?"

Simon handed the Sentinel a copy of the report as he replied, "Unfortunately, it's because there wasn't much of the body left for him to autopsy."

Blair looked back at Simon, confused. "But it looked like the body was in one piece last night?" Trying hard to keep down his breakfast as he read the report, Jim replied, "It was, Chief. Unfortunately, that one piece was literally all skin and bones. Whatever disease this guy had, it liquefied all of his internal organs."

"Gross," replied Blair. He then asked, "So it wasn't Ebola?"

Simon shook his head. "No, thank God."

Jim asked, "But then what -did- kill him?"

Simon took a sip of his latest gourmet coffee and replied solemnly, "No one knows. But that's what I want you two to find out."

"Pop?"

Ever since Detective Peter Caine had completed his Shaolin training, he was able to sense his father's chi from halfway across town, and he knew that his father could do the same with him. Still, it felt somehow impolite to not announce his presence.

"Out here, my son."

Peter walked through the house and found both his father and their friend Lo Si, who was known around Chinatown as 'The Ancient', sitting at the outdoor patio, drinking tea. Peter asked his father, "You were supposed to meet me for lunch today, right, Pop?"

Caine's brow furrowed in confusion, then his eyes widened as he remembered, "Ah, so I was, my son. Forgive me, I had forgotten."

[Forgotten?] thought Peter. "Pop, what's going on? You never forget anything."

Caine replied, "The son of an old friend of mine disappeared two weeks ago. The police have done little to help him, and my friend believes his son is in great danger."

Peter raised an eyebrow skeptically at his father. "That can't be all that's bothering you."

Caine nodded. "Last night, I had a disturbing vision, and I believe the vision might be connected to the young man's disappearance."

"Wow," exclaimed Peter, "That must have been some vision. Did you see what happened to your friend's son?"

Caine shook his head. "I did not," he replied, "In truth the vision was, how do you say, rather cryptic?"

[Cryptic?] thought Peter. That didn't sound good. He pulled up a chair and asked his father, "Why don't you describe it to me?"

As Caine described the vision to Peter in detail, the younger man's brow furrowed in confusion. "I don't get it, Pop."

"Neither do I, my son. That is why Lo Si and I were discussing it."

While Peter rolled his eyes at his father's characteristically calm statement of the obvious, Lo Si chimed in, "The only thing that I could tell about the vision was that it is connected to the disappearance of Wu Shin's son, because Caine was meditating on that when the vision occurred."

"Wu Shin?" Peter repeated, "That's your friend?" Caine nodded. Peter continued, "Where was his son last seen?"

Caine replied, "In Cascade, Washington."

"Do you have a name, a picture, anything I can work with?"

Caine picked up a picture from small group of papers sitting on the table and handed it to his son. Peter looked at the back of the picture, reading the name of the missing man. "Jason Shin...okay pop, if it'll help I'll ask Kermit to run a check on the man when I get back to the station."

"Thank you, my son."

Peter warned, "Well, just don't go flying off to Cascade without me, all right, Pop?"

At Peter's stern warning, Caine smiled. "All right, Peter. I will not go 'flying off to Cascade' without telling you first."

Peter raised a skeptical eyebrow in his father's direction. [He gave in too easy...] The younger Caine vowed to check in with his father frequently over the next couple of days. At that point, his stomach decided to interrupt the conversation, so he asked, "Well, now that's done, you still up for lunch, Pop?"

After lunch, Peter knocked on the door to Kermit Griffin's office, and was rewarded with a gruff, "Come in, Peter."

Peter poked his head into the office and asked, "How'd you know it was me, Kermit?"

The ex-mercenary deadpanned, "Little trick your father taught me."

He had known the 'Shaolin' cop since he was a child. Even though the -man- Peter Caine had become had changed considerably since his biological father's re-emergence in his life, some things never changed. And that included his friendship with Kermit. Ignoring the glare he was getting from his friend, Kermit continued, "Everyone else in this office, with the noticeable exception of our lovely captain, is too scared of me to even knock on this door, and I happen to know that Captain Simms is, as we speak, in a meeting with the commissioner. So what can I do for you, Pete?"

Getting down to business immediately, Peter pulled out the photograph that his father had given him and asked, "I was wondering if you could run a check on this man for me?"

Kermit took a look at the picture, then turned it over and noticed the name on the back. "Jason Shin, eh? What's this about?"

Peter shrugged, replying, "Don't know all that much. His father's a friend of my father, and Jason here disappeared about two weeks ago. So his father asked my father for help..."

Kermit waved off the rest of the explanation. If you asked Kwai Chang Caine for help, nowadays you were more than likely to end up enlisting both Caines in the bargain. And probably the ex-mercenary as well. Muttering something about another three for the price of one deal, Kermit insisted, "Say no more. What's our Mr. Shin's last known location?"

Peter smiled briefly, then told Kermit as the older man turned to face his computer, "Pop says he was last seen in Cascade, Washington."

As Kermit's fingers flew over his keyboard, he commented to Peter, "All right, first let's check the Snitchnet, see what our Mr. Shin might have been into..."

When information came up on the screen, Kermit read aloud, "Hmmm...Seems our Mr. Shin was a small time dealer, arrested for possession with intention to distribute in various areas of the country. Now, let's check on him in Cascade."

When the search came up with nothing, Kermit scanned the photograph into the computer, and checked the photo against the records of the Cascade PD. When the homicide and medical examiner's report came up as a possible match between the photo and Cascade's 'Asian John Doe', Peter ran a hand through his hair and declared with finality, "So Jason's dead. No wonder his dad had been worried he might be in grave danger."

As Kermit read the report in greater detail, he pointed out to Peter, "But that's not all. Look at how the ME's report says that he died..."

As Peter read over Kermit's shoulder, he grew more and more alarmed. He muttered, "Something about this sounds familiar..." then declared out loud, "I need to talk to my father about this."

Before Peter could leave the office, though, Kermit stopped him, then grabbed his coat and his gun. In response to the younger man's questioning look, Kermit replied, "Oh no, I know you and your father too well by now, Peter. When something like this comes up, most of the time you end up flying halfway across the country and getting yourselves into trouble. You need backup."

Peter shrugged in half-defeat. Apparently, Kermit -was- paying attention... "All right, then, let's go."