This is my twenty-seventh NCIS Mystery and the seventh of my Third Season. The list of stories got so extensive I moved it, with summaries, to my profile.
There are also numerous stand-alone and spin-off stories listed in my profile.
The usual legal disclaimers apply. NCIS is owned by Belisarius Productions and I don't own anyone except Rev. Siobhan (Sha-vonn) McGee, SSAs Rosa Arnell, Melanie Kelman, Fred Higgins and other original Agents.
Please Review.
Rating: T or NCis-17.

On the Wings of Demons
by JMK758
Chapter One
Death Strike

Tim McGee hovers on the edge of blissful sleep, barely aware of being touched, that something gently tickles him out of sleep. He gets his eyes open with considerable difficulty, but it becomes easier when the sensations in his body sort out and he appreciates it's his wife who's touching him, her warm supple body moving sinually against his.

'Okay,' he mentally tells his writer persona which awakens faster than he does, 'so sinually isn't a word - it's her word and what would you call it?' He's glad for the silence as he reaches for his loving wife and they cuddle close, what she'd begun enthusiastically continued. His hand traces down her bare back and further, doesn't encounter anything but her warm body...

A portion of his mind reminds him she wasn't naked before, that after their 'fantasy encounter' she'd dressed for bed in her blue nightgown. He tells that portion of his mind to go away.

"Mmmmmm," Siobhan kisses his neck and the sensuous lick of the tip of her tongue wakes him down to his toes. "Happy First Lunarversary," she whispers, her body molding to his, doing wonderful things. She continues kissing his throat and–

His cell phone blares at him from the night table.

x

Siobhan's warm tongue on his neck is replaced be an equally warm but far less pleasant sigh. She falls out of his arms back onto the bed. "It can't be."

Vastly annoyed at the interruption that, as a Federal Agent, he dare not ignore, Tim turns away and fumbles for the button at the base of the lamp beside the cell phone. When the light blasts out he squints at the clock: 4:53. He's not supposed to be up for another half-hour, and not the way Shav was getting him. Who could possibly call so...?

Squinting at the name displayed on the ringing phone's outer screen destroys any prospect of returning to the pleasure of celebrating the first month of their marriage. He'd rather look at the lovely red-haired woman beside him; it's a very hard, unpleasant decision but he must open the phone. "Yes, boss?"

x

He's astounded when Siobhan pulls the small device from his hand and lays back down, brings it to her own ear.

"Jethro, you have disturbed the sanctity of the marriage bed. Kindly go awa–" Wide eyed, she sits up suddenly, the blanket flies from her body and Tim's appalled astonishment changes to distress as he watches the color fall from her face. "Oh God," she whispers and blesses herself as she passes the phone back to him, "Abby Sciuto and Sammy Sky have been shot on L Street. They're dead."

ooo

At 0417 Abby and Sammy walk the dark L Street, Sammy particularly basking in the glow of the full moon blessing the night. Abby glances down to the petite woman; Sammy's long pale blonde hair seems to dance about her white blouse and bounces with her jaunty steps. She'd been skipping before but she'd pulled ahead and Abby had made her stop.

"You are one heck of a trip, girl," she tells her impish friend. "I don't know what I'm going to do with you."

"Enjoy me," Sammy exclaims jubilantly, her arms flung wide, reminding Abby of a female Peter Pan. She'd swear Sammy's voice dances almost as much as her feet as she walks Cloud Nine. "I'm treating you to a world that Goth never prepared you for."

"Nothing's prepared me for tonight."

"I am so broadening your horizons."

"Can't argue with that." If not for her eclectic roommate, Abby's sure she'd never have spent the whole night in a Gay - sorry, an LGBT - Club, nor that she'd've had so good a time. It was so different from the usual clubs she parties at, even beyond the fact that tonight the women approached her while the men ignored her. But she fit in so well it didn't feel strange, though at one point, upon seeing a particularly luscious guy, she'd gotten confused.

Sammy's gift to her, the rectangular metal pin on her white Victorian blouse lapel, 'STRAIGHT' large on one line, 'but not narrow' fitting below it, saved an awkward moment or two. Rather, the people she met were generally much more open-minded than she'd expected, and her straight - pardon the pun - out stand had made her quite well received indeed.

Abby made more new friends tonight than she can recall doing on any other, even beyond Sammy's introductions of her friends and acquaintances. She'd gone to 'Sodom and Gomorrah' anticipating a period of discomfort and adjustment and it hadn't happened. In fact, she was very disappointed when 0400 finally came and the club had to shut down.

x

"If my horizons were any broader," Abby quips, stifling a laugh, "Gibbs would have a conniption."

Sammy laughs delightedly - Abby would've thought 'gay-ly' but doesn't want to press the pun. "He is so going to consider me a horrible influence on you."

"I was supposed to be the bad influence on you."

"Give me ti OW!"

"What's up?" Abby turns to where Sammy's halted, her hand covering her left eye.

"Red light flashed in my eye, nearly blinded me." She looks down. "Hey, what?"

Abby follows Sammy's pointing finger to the slightly moving dot of red light upon her right breast.

"SAMMY!" Abby grabs her arm, yanks hard but hears a muffled cough from behind her. Red blood erupts from her friend's chest.

x

The impact drives Sammy backward out of Abby's grasp. Pain and astonishment fill her face. Abby's too horrified to scream.

A muffled 'chock'. Red blood again gushes from Sammy's chest. Another gush erupts beside it, then another covers her left breast, staggers her backward.

Blood explodes from Sammy's stomach, doubles the petite woman over. Her long pale blonde hair flies to curtain her face. Red erupts from the center of her skull - knocks her off her feet - she crashes to the cement.

x

Abby whirls. Car twenty feet away - no cover. 'Pock'! A hammer slams into her left breast. She looks down, another hammer hurts the middle of her chest. Two red splotches spread.

Two more hammer blows hit fast, stagger Abby back, form a horrific triangle. Red spreads wide as her heart gushes.

She looks up, pain so bad she can't feel her heart stop. The red light from the car window flashes up across her eyes.

The bullet slams into her forehead. Her head snaps back. The red splash–

ooo

In the gloomy pre-dawn Leroy Jethro Gibbs' blue Charger rockets through Washington and up L Street. He ignores vehicles and laws with equal ire; anyone who doesn't get out of his way will regret it. Seeing dozens of multicolored lights flashing in the distance, he blasts toward them and stomps on his brake at the last instant. The locked tires screech the last hundred feet as he fights the car to a stop a quarter inch behind the last MPDC unit. He leaps from the car, is yards ahead before he hears the slam and woe to the idiot who doesn't jump out of his way.

He skids to a halt inches from Metro Homicide Detective Jeffrey Carpenter, pounding heart barely catching up to him. He looks about the yellow tape cordoned Crime Scene for the two white sheets. There aren't any.

"WHERE ARE THEY?"

Carpenter points, not toward an ME truck - NCIS' or Metro's, he doesn't see either - but to an ambulance whose banks of flashing lights seem to disguise the vehicle as a Christmas ornament. The back door stands open and two women wearing white blankets sit on the open deck.

The world flips upside down for Gibbs for the second time in fourteen minutes and he feels his out-of-control aging slow to a normal pace. He turns back on Carpenter, ready to cast him as Rod Serling.

"They're not dead," his old friend tells him.

"I CAN SEE THEY'RE NOT DEAD."

He doesn't waste breath in asking 'what happened?' as he crosses the open space to the blinking ambulance. He'll get it from his late living friend.

Once again no one is stupid enough to get in his way.

x

Abby and Samantha, having undoubtedly heard his shout, watch as he approaches. Abby's forehead is stained with a livid red splotch, Samantha's hair is matted by a burst of red on the crown of her head.

"What happened?"

Samantha winces more sharply than Abby and he suspects it's more from the shrieking tires that punctuate his demand. He glances left to the outskirts of the cordoned zone to see DiNozzo running toward them and raises his hand high to slow the charge.

"Please, Agent Gibbs," Samantha appeals, palms to her temples. "Besides being shot to death I've got a motherfu–" Abby elbows her through the white blanket. "Getaboudit headache."

"What happened?" Gibbs, who hates repeating anything, demands it for the third time. Relief that his friend who'd been reported shot to death - a head will roll over that - being alive doesn't counter the emotional chaos that'd torn through him in the past few minutes.

Abby opens the blanket to display an antique blouse, Victorian if he's any judge. Her left breast is stained red but a larger splotch covers the middle of her chest.

It's evident that much of the red that stains her forehead has been cleaned as well as it might be - not very.

Samantha opens her own blanket; bright red stains her white blouse, five shots as well as the one that colors the crown of her head. He can read the centers of impact from the density of the splashes. There are two shots, one almost dead center of each breast - perhaps her lungs were the targets - two others directly before her heart. A last one marks her stomach.

x

"How do you feel?" Tony asks. Horrible as the supposed wounds are, there's no apparent penetration - thank God - so he feels justified in asking the question.

"It freaking hurts, Tony," Abby's normal good spirits are obliterated by having been murdered. "I'm - we're - gonna be bruised for a month."

"Beats the alternative," Gibbs declares before another screech of overtaxed tires jangle their nerves. The men glance to the end of the queue of sector cars, recognize Ziva's car and Gibbs looks pointedly to DiNozzo.

He pulls out his cell phone. "'Slow 'em down.' Right, boss."