A/N: Those of you who have read my fics before may recall that I had planned a supernatural-ish fic that was OOC yet…not. I had given up on it partially because of holes in my intended plot. Well, those holes have been filled! What can I say except inspiration strikes when we least expect it. That said, I do have this fic planned out now, so I'm not anticipating any writer's block. I wouldn't begin another fic since I have some that don't get updated as much as I'd like, but I don't want to lose this idea since I've been toying around with it for so long. Please enjoy!

Seven Deadly

Chapter 1: Questions

A breathy curse ripped from the black shadowy figure as it ran, feet pounding against the pavement and sloshing through puddles. It had the scent. How could they have gotten away again? Who knew what sort of damage had already been done, how many lives had been lost already? It shook its head. It would find them, all of them. They were together, in one place, for the time being. Who knew how long that would last? It had to find them before they separated.

That same evening

"Got a live one here! Well, not exactly alive, but you know what I mean."

Booth glared at the man behind him, bringing in the body with his quieter and therefore smarter colleague.

Two interested heads snapped to attention from one of the lab tables while three voices groaned quietly. "I was just about to head home," Angela said wearily. Hodgins nodded in silent agreement. It had been a long day for all of them. Brennan and Zach, on the other hand, seemed eager for a fresh case. Booth directed them to the platform.

"Looks like I get first crack," Cam voiced aloud, noting the, for lack of a better term, 'freshness' of the body.

"Where was she found?" Brennan asked.

"A few miles from here. Her name's Angela Jansen."

"Well, that's kinda creepy," Angela commented. "Am I really needed?" The poor girl was identified, and she thought she felt a cold coming on. She just wanted to curl up in bed.

"Stay until Cam's done the autopsy please Ange."

Angela relented to her friend's pleading eyes. "Fine." She shot Brennan a small smile and moved to a chair across the room. It was late, and save for them, the place was empty. The guys who'd brought in the body were dismissed and Cam began her autopsy.

While waiting, Brennan and Zach continued whatever it was they'd been doing, and Hodgins returned his eyes to his microscope. Booth wandered around aimlessly, debating whether or not to go and bug Cam. The girl hadn't suffered any external injuries that he'd noticed. In fact, she looked perfectly normal, like she'd just fallen asleep. The few witnesses had said she was just sitting on a bench against a building, doing nothing when she'd collapsed. The only strange thing had been her clothes and her dirty, bedraggled appearance, as though she hadn't changed clothes or bathed in days.

He might have thought she was homeless except for the fact that her wallet had contained a lot of plastic and, surprisingly, quite a bit of cash. Upon learning her identity and alerting her family, it was found out that said family was quite well-to-do. It was like she hadn't done anything for awhile, just sitting on that bench.

Cam reappeared, a shocked look on her face, and Booth waited to hear the usual. It was a drug overdose, or she'd succumbed to some illness. He got neither.

"She's fine."

"She's dead Cam. She's not fine."

"Don't take that tone with me Seeley. What I mean by fine, is that there's no reason she should be dead. Aside from not functioning, her organs are in perfect condition. There's no sign of trauma, nothing."

Brennan glanced up. "That's not possible. Are you certain you conducted the autopsy correctly?"

Cam bristled a little at that. "I know how to do my job Dr. Brennan."

Brennan held her hands up in surrender and turned her attention back to a skull she and Zach were working on. "She had to die of something."

"Bones is right Cam. Something's gotta be wrong."

"Not that I can see. It's inexplicable."

The doors opened and Dr. Sweets entered. "Hello all! Just thought I'd stop by and see if everyone was doing all right."

"Could this night get any worse," Booth muttered to himself. "You shouldn't be out past curfew Sweets. Might get grounded."

"Funny…that's funny Agent Booth," Sweets mustered up a smile, and looked from one face to the next. "What?"

"We have a body that's in pristine condition," Cam explained.

"Named Angela," Angela threw in.

"No apparent cause of death," Zach added.

Sweets nodded, rubbing his chin with a hand. "Very mysterious indeed. We should investigate further."

"This isn't Sherlock Holmes Sweets. There's obviously something we missed, and we'll handle it. We don't need you yet," Booth dashed any hopes Sweets had about playing detective.

Unbeknownst to the group, in the autopsy room, a thin mist floated out of the girl's body and drifted through the open door towards the main room of the lab. It drifted unseen and was inhaled by everyone present.

Booth was about to tell Sweets more directly to get lost when he gasped as he crashed to the floor. Everything went black.

It followed the scent to a large building and sniffed. It was much weaker now, and it could tell that it went off in different directions. Five of them. Where were the other two? Gone perhaps, rotted away by believers. If only it were true. It climbed the stairs to find out for sure.

When Booth became conscious again, he sat up, rubbing his head and looking around. The lab was empty…except for Sweets, unmoving, over by the stairs with a huge black shadow looking inside his mouth. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, and then did a double take. He was not imagining things. He jumped to his feet, drawing his gun in the same motion and aiming it at the hulk of blackness hovering over Sweets.

"Hold it right there!" The man or whatever it was looked up and Booth saw blackness on the inside of the hood. No face, nothing. Just a void. Oh wait, scratch that. It had a circular hole, still black, but a different shade if that made any sense. After sizing him up, it chose to ignore him and continued its task, bending closer to a still out-of-it Sweets. Panic swelled inside Booth along with fear and it was those two emotions combined that made him fire. He might as well have been shooting at smoke.

He heard a hiss and a voice that sounded like it was saying 'two are no longer, five are left'. Then without a second glance, it blew out of the Jeffersonian, leaving a stunned FBI agent and an unconscious psychologist in its wake.

"What the hell was that thing?" Booth yelled out loud, then knelt by Sweets. "Sweets! Sweets! Wake up! We got problems!" No response. Booth pondered what to do, then, despite the situation, a wry grin crossed his face. He swung a hand back and slapped Sweets full on the face. That did it.

"What happened? One minute I'm talking to you guys and the next, everything goes black."

"I dunno, but everyone else is gone, and there was this black…thing hovering over you, looking in your mouth."

"My mouth?" Sweets' hand automatically went to his mouth.

"Yea, it said, 'two are no longer, five are left' and whatever it was, it wasn't human. I shot it, but it like it was made of air or something."

"Like a ghost!" Sweets said excitedly. "If such things existed, that is." He thought for a moment. "If there are five left and two are gone, then there were seven originally."

"Seven of what? We're missing people here Sweets. If it's looking for…whatever, then maybe the others are in trouble, if they aren't already." Booth was itching to do something, anything, and was quickly becoming impatient with Sweets.

"Look, we need to know what we're dealing with. Think rationally. We don't know what that thing was, what it's looking for, or even if the others have anything to do with this." Sweets wasn't ready to do anything without knowing what they were dealing with.

"Five left…two gone…The victim, Angela Jansen," Booth said suddenly.

"You think she was involved?"

"This is a stretch Sweets, but bear with me here. First off, do you believe in the soul?"

"Yes, although it hasn't been proven to actually exist. I think it was my parents who…"

"Ok, Sweets, that's enough." Booth paced as he talked, eyes darting around the empty lab as he voiced the theory. "Cam said there was no reason Angela Jansen should be dead. No physical reason." He looked meaningfully at Sweets until it clicked in the younger man's head.

"Her soul. You think she lost her soul, that it was taken? That's how she died?"

"Just humor me here Sweets. She was found on a bench. She'd probably been there for days. Her clothes were filthy, she hadn't bathed. She didn't do anything. Slothful, you might say. Couple that with the black thing's mathematical equation. Two plus five equals seven. Now, what does that sound like to you?"

"Sloth…seven. You don't mean the seven deadly sins? A sin killed her? How can that be? And how does that fit in with the soul thing?"

"I don't know yet. It's a theory in progress." More to himself than to Sweets, he mused, "The sin could have killed the soul, drained it. That could be the connection." He shook his head in frustration. He made no sense even to himself. This was impossible, all of it. And yet, that black thing had been impossible, but he'd seen it. And if he'd seen it and it did, in fact, exist, then maybe killer soul taking sins did too.

"And what happened to the others? Their souls didn't get taken cause they had to be alive to go out that door."

"I don't know what happened Sweets! Like I said, it's a theory."

"And whatever happened to them, didn't happen to us, cause we're still here."

"I know Sweets!"

"And what was the black thing and why was he looking in my mouth?"

"Will you shut up for a minute!?"

Sweets bowed in his head in contrition. "Sorry. It's just not logical, any of it."

"Look, I know it doesn't make any sense, and Bones would kill me on the spot if she heard me just now, but I don't know what else it could be. If you can come up something logical that explains everything, be my guest." He turned and headed for the doors.

"Where are you going?" Sweets called, hurrying after him.

"The only place I can think of that might have answers," he replied, striding purposefully out the doors, Sweets right behind him.

A/N: Ok, what do you think? I'll try to keep up with this as well as my other WIP's but my semester starts the 13th, so we'll see. I'll try hard though. Thanks for reading!