SHARK FIN COVE

DAVENPORT, CALIFORNIA

FEBRUARY 23, 2000

10:13 PM

Her bare feet slipped on the ice plant as she made her way toward the edge of the bluff. The chilled night air had made the sprawling carpet of succulents slick with dew. She seemed to be in a hurry, but the reason why escaped her addled mind. A fine mist of seawater sprayed her face telling her that she was near the edge. Utter blackness was all she saw ahead of her even though the light from the waning gibbous moon was bright in the sky.

She blinked, trying to make any image appear, and before long the outline of Shark Fin Rock was clear, its border looked to be on fire. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, the raging flames frightening her, and when she looked again the rock changed shape from that of a shark's fin to a gigantic shark emerging, menacingly, from the water. "No," she whispered.

There was quite a distance from where she stood on the bluff to the rock. This information was somewhere in her brain, but when the impossible vision of what now looked like a beastly sea monster leapt from the ocean straight at her, she jumped to the side to evade the clutches of its mighty jaw. Her foot got tangled in a ropy tendril of the hardy weed and she tried to right herself but lost her balance. Her body pitched over the edge of the cliff into the icy water below.

FBI HEADQUARTERS

WASHINGTON, DC

FEBRUARY 24, 2000

2:22 PM

Scully winced as she read the file. She had celebrated her birthday yesterday and this poor woman had fallen to her death. Her eyes skimmed the rest of the details then she looked up at Mulder. "Back to California for us, it seems."

Mulder nodded his agreement. "Maybe we should look for secondary housing. It feels like the past few months we've been out there more than we've been home."

This was true. Scully thought about those cases that had sent them out to the West Coast. There was the brain-eating Lucky Boy monster of Costa Mesa, the magician bank heist in Santa Monica, then the horrific case of Amber Lynn LaPierre that had uncovered a mass graveyard of murdered children at Santa's Village in Sacramento. Just last week they had found themselves the unsuspecting cast of an episode of COPS as they scoured the streets of Los Angeles for a werewolf.

A lot had happened out in California, but none of it was more jarring than the LaPierre case. Mulder had finally found a peace surrounding the disappearance of his sister, and she was glad for that, the closure was long overdue, but the pain he felt from his mother's suicide was still raw no matter how much he played it off, insisting that he was fine. And what had happened between them the night following her autopsy hung heavily over them both.

Scully closed the file and placed it on the desk. "What time is our flight?"

"6:40. I'll pick you up."

"All right," said Scully, going to the coat rack to retrieve her things so she could go home and pack.

When she got to the door, Mulder called out, "Oh, Scully." She turned around and looked at him. He seemed kind of small behind the desk; there was some sadness in his eyes. "Happy belated birthday."

Scully quirked a grin. "It's every four years for you, Mulder. You're a year early." He huffed out a laugh and looked down, shyly, as if he wasn't sure he wanted to be let off the hook. "And besides, you got me that personal baseball lesson, remember?" she said, playfully. "See you in a bit."

"Yeah," he sighed, still avoiding her gaze, taciturnly running his finger along the edge of the desk blotter. When he did finally look back up at the door, she wasn't there like he'd expected she'd be, standing there with her forehead scrunched up in worried concern. Scully had been giving him that look a lot lately and it pained him. But now he was, at once, relieved and disappointed that her vigilance over his mood might be waning.

His feelings for her were now wrapped up and tangled with his grief. He knew they were separate and independent of each other, but the line they had crossed because of it had muddled everything and he had trouble reconciling the barrage of emotions. Mulder picked up the file she had placed on the desk. Regardless of what he was going through, there was work to be done.

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY MORGUE

FEBRUARY 25, 2000

8:31 AM

Scully removed the latex glove with a snap just as Mulder came through the door. "Find anything?" he asked.

"I did. Since they were ruling it an accidental death they didn't do a tox screen, although they should have, but I ran one and found a large amount of α-Pyrrolidinopentiophenone also known as alpha-PVP in her system. It's a powerful stimulant and would explain why she went out to that bluff."

"Why would it explain that?"

"The drug affects the user's energy levels, giving them the urge to do vigorous physical activity—running, climbing, dancing. This particular type of stimulation is known as forced, where the body can't be still. Also, there can be hallucinatory effects in high dosages."

Mulder hummed, thinking. "Well, this information doesn't jive with my theory."

"The evidence rarely does, Mulder," she said, smirking. "But, let's hear it."

He made a little bow of his head in gratitude. "I'll show you. Get changed and meet me out front."

COURT OF MYSTERIES

9:02 AM

They got out of the rental car and approached the gates of the property. It was locked with heavy duty chains, so they peered through the iron bars at the odd structure.

"Is it some sort of temple?" asked Scully.

"No, it was built as a personal dwelling by a bricklayer named Kenneth Kitchen in 1946. His brother Raymond built a similar structure up the street but it's since been torn down, and it wasn't known to have the same purpose as this one." Scully's eyebrow arched on the word "purpose" and Mulder grinned, continuing with his historical account. "The brothers only built at night with just the light of the moon because of the powers they believe it held."

"Or they were just avoiding having to get building permits," Scully interjected.

Mulder chuckled and shook his head. "After the Japanese submarine attack off the coast of Monterey, Kenneth went about devising a submarine interference device which consisted of a spoked wheel of railroad ties buried in the yard and connected to the two obelisks," he said, pointing at the towers. One was a tall, slender pillar of red brick inlaid with white stones and the other had a large pyramidal base of the same brick adorned with shapes of abalone shell mosaics. "One pillar sent radio signals to submarines and the other received them, supposedly jamming up the signals for enemy crafts. It's rumored that it actually worked and that the government attempted to steal his plans."

A gust of wind eddied, hissing as it passed through the deadened lower fronds of the palm trees creating an eerie sound. Mulder looked up, then took Scully by the arm, guiding her to step back. She followed his gaze up to the arched entryway. "It's called the Gate of Prophecy," Mulder explained. At the top of the arch was a large stone triangle embedded with intricate astrological symbols in the same shell mosaic fashion that embellished the other structures. A circle at its center resembled a heliacal clock with a crescent moon at twelve o'clock and the sun at six. "Kenneth believed that it was possible for these symbols to move and when they lined up over a point on axis with the temple's fireplace it would signal the end of the world.

"Both brothers studied Eastern occult practices and were known to perform moon magic rituals and spells against their enemies, sort of an antithesis to the 'positive' magic of Pagans and Wiccans."

"This place is ten miles from where Sonia Tripp died, and it's been abandoned for quite some time. It's a cool story, Mulder, but I don't see what it has to do with this case."

"A similar obelisk has mysteriously popped up near Shark Fin Cove. Nobody knows who built it. And Kenneth Kitchen disappeared without a trace."

"So you think he's back and doing moon magic?"

"I think it's worth looking into. While you were doing your autopsy, I went over the other reports of strange behavior since the full moon last week, and it seems something is going on, affecting the people of Davenport."

"I'd like to look at those reports because it's possible that there's just an upsurge of narcotic usage, of alpha-PVP being distributed around town."

"We can look into that, too, Scully," he said with a brazen grin.

"Moon magic," scoffed Scully. "At least you're not claiming it's vampire influence."

"Oh, is there a history of vampiric activity in this area?" Mulder asked seriously.

Scully smirked. "No, The Lost Boys was filmed here."

"Ha ha," he deadpanned.

They both swiveled their heads towards the building when they caught movement in their periphery.

"What is that?" Mulder asked as they stepped closer to the fence.

There was something on the roof of the main structure, but they couldn't see what it was. Then a bleating sound carried through the air and the head of a goat popped up over the edge. It bleated again, looking right at them.

"How and why is there a goat on the roof of this abandoned building, Mulder?"

"I don't know, Scully. Pretty spooky, if you ask me." His waggish smile was infectious, and she tried to keep the corners of her mouth from going upward. She walked away from him, shaking her head, and he followed after her to the car.

SCHOFIELD RESIDENCE

11:21 AM

"No, there's no way Sonia was on drugs," Sandra, Sonia Tripp's sister, stated adamantly. "She was very particular about what she put in her body. She was vegan, didn't drink, the only recreational drugs she did was some pot in college. There has to be foul play, she was drugged or something."

Mulder turned to Scully. "Did you find anything in your autopsy that would indicate she was drugged?"

"There were faint needle marks all over, but that's consistent with acupuncture."

"She did acupuncture treatment once a week," said Sandra. "In fact, she had an appointment the evening she died."

"Do you know the purpose of that treatment?" Scully asked.

"To manage her anxiety. She had only gone a couple of times, but said that it seemed to be helping."

Mulder and Scully shared an ineffectual look, this information giving them nothing to go on.

"Please keep investigating," pleaded Sandra. "The police seem happy to just chalk it up to an accidental death, but I know something happened to her. And now that you say she had drugs in her system, I'm even more certain of it."

"We'll do our best, Ms. Schofield," Mulder said. "Do you know if she had any enemies? Anyone that would want to harm her?"

"No, I can't imagine anyone having ill will toward Sonia. She was a kind, gentle soul." Her lip quivered, and she apologized for her sudden onset of emotion. Scully handed the box of tissue that was next to her on the side table to Sandra. "Thank you," she sniffed, dabbing her wet eyes.

Mulder took a card from his coat pocket. "Call us if you think of anything else."

Sandra nodded, taking the card, then stood up to walk them to the front door.

"What do you think, Mulder?" asked Scully as they made their way to the car.

"I agree with her—this is not an accidental death."

"Why don't we go back to the station and go through those other reports to see if anything else looks connected to Sonia's death."

"You do that, Scully. I want to go to the site. Since the local police aren't investigating it, I doubt they searched the area very well." He gave Scully the car key. "It's a short walk from here."

"All right, let me know if you find anything and I can get the sheriff to get forensics out there."

SHARK FIN COVE

11:57 AM

Mulder sat down on the bench near the cliff's edge. Having found nothing around the area where Sonia took her deathly fall, his thoughts began to shift to his own personal loss without his permission. He tried to dull his emotions to the onslaught of anxiety by taking in the majesty of the sea in front of him. The sun was lightly filtered through a cloud cover, making the surface of the ocean glitter and sparkle.

His breath hitched as a gray whale breached, rising out of the water in a grand spectacle just for him. There was no one else around, no boats or whale watching tours out to see this magnificent beast in its own environment. Mulder instantly wished Scully was with him. She would love this. He wondered if her own thoughts would've turned to her father like his had gone straight to his mother once his brain was left to its own devices. Of course, it had been many years since her father had passed—his grief was still fresh.

Too fresh. He couldn't help but rehash everything that had happened, going over what his mother's mindset must've been like to come to that decision. How she had sought closure for herself in the only option she saw fit just as he found the answers he had spent almost a lifetime searching for. Mulder still questioned it although he forced himself to let it go—that both his mother's and sister's fates were just as they appeared to be. They were at peace now and probably wanted him to be as well.

That was what Scully wanted for him. She had told him the truth knowing it would be near impossible for him to accept, and then she comforted him in the ways that he needed, or perhaps she thought he needed, maybe against her better judgments. This is what continued to tear him up inside. He felt he was at a place to move on from their deaths, but what had happened between him and Scully had erected another immovable wall in its wake. They weren't talking about it, and he knew he couldn't put it all on Scully and her usual tendency of avoidance. He was avoiding it, too.

The water whirled and whipped in the spot where the whale had now resubmerged, foamy white caps the only evidence that something spectacular had just occurred. He tried not to correlate that with him and Scully. What would the evidence be for them? The awkward silences with which they were now plagued, too painfully and too often.

Mulder stood and walked down the narrow footpath to the road. Highway 1 ran along the coast, separating the beaches and cliffs with the main part of the town. There were no cars coming in either direction so he jogged quickly to the other side instead of going up to the pedestrian crossing. He took a side street between two rows of businesses—which included an acupuncturist, Mulder noted—that led to a residential area and the entrance of an abandoned cement factory. The tower that resembled Kenneth Kitchen's monument was in a small grove nearby. All the while, he made valiant efforts at tamping down feelings that emerged every time he was free of distraction.

The beachgrass came up to his hips, obscuring the faintly worn path. The wind swished through it with a soothing sibilance that seemed to die out suddenly once the obelisk came into view. It was constructed of small red bricks with some white granite ones interspersed throughout. At the bottom was a row of whole abalone shells. Near the top were pieces of the opalescent shells formed into mosaic shapes, mostly triangles and crescents.

Mulder walked around it, studying it. At about twelve feet high, Mulder struggled to see the details at the peak. He crouched down, inspecting the base. There was a carving in the red brick which looked like two Ks. He was just about to lean in for a closer look when something rammed into him, laying him out onto the sandy ground. Mulder scrambled up and turned around to see a goat nonchalantly chewing the dry grass, a look of indifference on its listless face.

"What the hell?" Mulder muttered as he rubbed his lower back where the goat had head-butted him. It responded with a whining vibrato, the scrawny beard on its chin wagging at him. He kept view of the animal as he took another look at the carving, careful not to be rushed again. It was two Ks engraved deeply and neatly into the brick, almost like a bricklayer's stamp. He backed up the pathway, eyeing the ornery goat, and took out his cell phone to call Scully.

COAST INN

6:36 PM

Scully had the files spread out on the table in Mulder's room. She had just shown him several where the atypical actions of the townspeople could point to the use of alpha-PVP. She had one of the files in her hands. "I'd like to question this guy tomorrow. His roommate called the police when he tried to force himself on her. She said it seemed he had suddenly gone mad. One of the effects of the drug is tactile enhancement and an increased libido. They held him overnight and the next day he had no recollection of the incident."

"Did they test him for drugs?" asked Mulder.

"No, just a breathalyzer which came up clean."

"When did this happen?"

"Sunday, the 20th."

"The full moon, Scully."

She stopped the eye roll she felt itch within her sockets. "So, we'll go visit Mr. Grayson in the morning. Maybe this will shed some light on what's going on."

"Would the drug still show up in his blood? I mean, if he agrees to take a drug test?"

"Probably not in his blood, you usually only have a window of 72 hours for that, but we can test with a hair sample."

"All right, sounds like a plan." Mulder stood and fidgeted, wiping his palms on the front of his slacks. He was confounded by his emotions again, wanting Scully to stay, but also feeling the sudden need to be by himself. "Uh…" he said, not knowing which notion to follow. "Wanna order pizza or something?"

Scully glanced up at him as she gathered the files into her briefcase. She noticed his hesitancy, and it made her want to get out of there as quickly as possible. "No, thanks," she said, standing. She slipped back into her heels and went to the door, tossing a terse goodnight to him over her shoulder as she left.

Mulder sunk down onto the bed, rubbing his face with his hands, then he shook his head sharply back and forth to keep himself from over-analyzing what he had said, how he had said it, and her prompt departure. She had left the file he had assembled at the station with photos and reports of activity at the Court of Mysteries going back years. Mulder picked it up and laid down on the bed, hoping to bury his thoughts in this mystical place.

Hours passed and Mulder felt the strain on his eyes. He had found the same carving of the two Ks in several photos as he scoured over them with a magnifying glass. There had also been a report of the neighbors calling in a noise complaint back in 1989. They said it sounded like an animal bleating, but when the police searched the vacant lot, they found no goats or any other animals that would belong to such a sound.

He stood up and fished around in his pant's pocket for some change, then went, sock-footed, outside to the vending machine. Scully's room was two doors down from his and he hesitated at her door before scoffing at himself and walking on, breathing into his hands and rubbing them together to warm them. Armed with a bag of sunflower seeds and a soda on the way back, he did the same little faltering dance and then he was knocking on her door before he realized.

Scully opened it and seemed surprised to see him standing there. "Oh, I thought you were the maintenance guy."

She stepped more into the light from the outdoor hallway and he saw that she was bundled up in what looked like all the clothes she had packed for the trip.

"Maintenance?"

"The heater broke in my room."

He leaned in and felt that it was just as cold inside as it was outside. "You must be freezing, Scully."

She shrugged. "They gave me extra blankets."

Mulder gave her a concerned look. "It may be California, but it's still winter, and lows for tonight are in the 30s. You won't be able to sleep like this." He made a motion with his hand. "C'mon."

"It's fine, Mulder."

He shook his head. "Look, I can practically see your breath. Don't be silly."

Scully shifted her feet and looked back into her room, thinking about her options and his offer. "Uh," she sighed, reluctantly, "okay."

Mulder held the door open as she shed some of her layers down to her pajamas, threw her coat back on, and grabbed her room key. Scully followed nervously behind him, thinking about the one queen bed that they would share tonight. They had slept in the same bed once a little over a year ago while on that case in Kansas, but that had been well before a certain New Year's Eve kiss and a night of grief-filled intimacy that had happened just weeks ago. Scully had been unable to wrap her brain around the feelings that these events had brought to the forefront, and she was certain that being in such close proximity to her partner would blur things even further.

He tossed his seeds on the table and opened the soda, offering her some. She shook her head and stood awkwardly next to the bed. Mulder started to ramble, telling her about what he had found in the reports and photos. All Scully heard was muffled words, her self-consciousness taking up every square inch of her brain, filling her head like cotton. She was too worried about her own awkwardness to notice that Mulder was rambling because of his.

Scully shucked her coat off and hung it over the back of the chair, her movements in slow motion, and she nodded her head as if she was listening to what Mulder was saying. Mulder absentmindedly began to undress as he spoke, coming to sudden realization once he was down to his undershirt and boxers. He stopped talking and looked at Scully, seeing how uncomfortable she was. "I can sleep on the floor," he blurted out.

"No, no," Scully said. "If anyone should take the floor it should be me."

"I'm not going to let you sleep on the floor, Scully." They shared a long look, stuck in some weird stalemate, then Mulder tutted, waving his hand between them in an attempt to dispel their mutual unease. "I'm fine to share the bed if you are."

Scully shrugged as if she wasn't sure why he was making a big deal of it. "Yeah, of course, me too. It's fine."

Mulder nodded. "Okay then."

She returned the nod. "I, I'm gonna, um…" Scully gestured toward the bed. "You can stay up if you want. I'll be okay with the light on."

"No, probably best if I call it a night, too." He took another swig of the soda, then went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. Scully got under the covers on the right side of the bed, knowing Mulder took the left. Such an intimate thing to know about one's co-worker, she thought. It was just another thing that put them well outside the category of platonic partners.

The light went off when he came back in, and she felt the dip of the bed as he laid down beside her. Scully was curled up facing away from him. She cleared her throat and said, "Thanks for letting me sleep in here."

"Of course, Scully. I just want you to be comfortable." She didn't say anything to this and Mulder felt the urge to fill the silence. "Are you ...comfortable?"

The question felt loaded whether he intended it to be or not. "Y-yes, Mulder. Are you?"

"I am, Scully," he said, earnestly. They weren't talking about the temporary sleeping arrangements anymore, and they both knew that.

Scully thought that now would be the perfect time to address what had happened, but her mouth went dry and instead she just whispered goodnight, closing her eyes, feeling like a coward.