Castle and Beckett pulled up to the manicured lawn and posh estate of their victims, where let out a low whistle as he gawked at the homes surrounding him. "Wow," he exclaimed, "I never thought Queens has houses this...this..."

Beckett rolled her eyes even as she smiled at her partner. "I believe the word you're looking for is rich, Castle? You clearly need to get out of Manhattan a little more often..."

Castle smirked at his partner. "Ha. Ha. Very funny."

The partners ducked under the crime scene tape to meet up with the rest of their team. "So what do we got?" asked Beckett.

Ryan and Esposito met Beckett and Castle at the door to the house, informing them of the situation as they headed toward the basement. "When we went to the law firm," Ryan began, "we found out that the studio apartment had been reserved by one of the firm's partners, Colin Pendragon."

"Pendragon?" asked Castle, picking up on the name. "That's an old Celtic name."

Esposito picked up the story. "One month ago Mr. Pendragon started handing off all of his active clients off to other attorneys, and a week ago he stopped going into the office. The door was open when we got here, which is when we found this."

Beckett and Castle took in the scene before them in the basement. While Castle wandered around, taking in as many details of the scene as he could, Beckett couldn't help but notice that the scene included an unusually irritable medical examiner. "Everything ok, Lanie?"

Lanie sighed loudly, pinching the bridge of her nose to try and relieve her stress. "Sorry, guys. We've just gotten *incredibly* swamped downtown."

"So I heard," Castle agreed sympathetically. "All ritual kills?"

Lanie nodded. "At least as far as Sid and I can tell. You've been getting calls?"

"Yeah," Castle sympathized. "We just got through asking Captain Gates to help us get all the files together when we got the call."

"What can you tell me about *these* guys?" asked Beckett.

"Time of death within the past four hours," Lanie replied. "Which means they died after your Mr. Cacaw Te this morning."

"You seem pretty sure the two cases are connected," said Castle.

Lanie didn't miss a beat, shifting her attention toward her best friend. "I had just finished his autopsy when I got the call to come here. And honey, if I can smell it, I just figured it must be driving you *crazy*..."

"It? You mean that evergreen smell?" asked Beckett. "I just figured it was someone going heavy on the air freshener."

"It's mistletoe," Lanie informed them.

Castle's expression clearly showed his surprise and confusion. "Mistletoe? Didn't they know they were supposed to kiss *under* the mistletoe, not eat it and *then* kiss?"

Lanie ignored Castle's comment. "On top of the many ways our killer went after Mr. Te, I found mistletoe seeds in his stomach. Unless I miss my guess, that pitcher is filled with tea made from the stuff."

Beckett noticed the ornate cups near each of the victims and the pitcher that Lanie mentioned. She sniffed discretely at the cups, filtering out the scents to pick out the one scent that, underneath everything else, was bugging her. "There was human blood in this cup as well," she commented. "I think it's Cacaw Te's."

"How can you tell?" asked Castle.

She handed the chalice to a CSU tech to be bagged as she explained, "it's definitely human blood, of that much I'm sure. But the smell...it's just a little *too* similar to the smell at the apartment this morning. You'll send it for a DNA match to be sure?"

Lanie nodded. "I also need to let you guys know that there are no ligature marks on any of the victims and no signs of a struggle."

"This whole thing feels like a mass suicide," said Castle.

"That could be what it is," chimed in Esposito. He was standing near a large, ancient-looking book sitting on a pedestal tucked in the corner of the room. "Come here and take a look at this."

Beckett and Castle maneuvered their way around the techs and the circle of bodies to look over their partner's shoulders. "Uh, Esposito," Beckett quietly warned the younger detective, "this is in Gaellic."

Esposito took a second look at the ancient text, surprised by Beckett's statement. "It is? Wow..." After a brief pause, his eyes lit up as he recalled where he must have picked up the language. "Last St. Patrick's Day, Ryan and I went over to this great Irish pub to get a beer. Guess I picked up a little more than I thought...anyway, this page gives the directions for a spell to stop the end of the world. And it describes what went on here *exactly*."

Beckett wanted to check out this book for herself...but she needed some help to make that happen. "Castle? Would you mind?" Castle waved a hand over the book, casting a translation spell that allowed them to read what Esposito had discovered. Beckett then read the content in the translated document for herself. "Basically, it says that if you want to stop the end of days from coming you make a sacrifice to the gods and drink the blood of that sacrifice mixed with mistletoe while you chant this spell."

"So they probably sacrificed Cacaw Te to cover all their bases, since he was Mayan..." said Esposito.

"And if the blood *is* his it means that someone in here is most likely our killer," said Beckett.

That left Castle with only one question. "Yeah, but if you've done everything you needed to to stop the apocalypse, then why kill yourself?"

"They probably didn't," Lanie announced to the group. As they turned their attention back to the center of the room, Lanie then explained, "only certain kinds of mistletoe are lethally poisonous, and even then only certain parts of the plant. So if these guys just thought that all mistletoe was the same, it's *extremely* likely that they just didn't know that the drink they were making was going to kill them."

"So that's it, then?" asked Castle. "Cacaw Te was killed so these guys could prevent the apocalypse only to have their apocalypse-preventing ritual kill them?"

"Don't sound so disappointed, Castle," Beckett teased. "There are still a couple dozen more ritual killings for us to tackle..."

Beckett's comment stopped Ryan and Esposito in their tracks. "Did you say two *dozen*?!" asked Ryan.

"Yep," said Castle. "And don't worry. Captain Gates said she's going to have all the files waiting for us when we get back."

Ryan and Esposito groaned with dread at the mountain of paperwork that now awaited them on their return to the precinct. "Great," said Esposito through clenched teeth. "Just great..."

Esposito started looking around the basement and up at the ceiling...moves which his partner noticed immediately. "Bro," asked Ryan, "what are you doing?"

"If the world's going to end, I was kinda hoping it would come now, so I didn't have to spend my last day on earth doing paperwork..."


Two hours later, Esposito sat back in his conference room chair, flinging his pen down on the table with a frustrated sigh. "I think I can safely say that if the end of the world *is* coming, we're going to die buried in case files."

Gates entered the conference room, hoping for an update. "Any luck finding a connection between these murders?"

"Not much," replied Beckett, mirroring her teammate's frustrated sigh. "The only thing we have so far is that one of two symbols seems to have shown up at every crime scene." She pointed to the two piles they had made on the table. "Either a black sun...or a dragon." As to what the symbols mean...we don't know yet."

Gates frowned at the group, confused. "I thought the dragon was Celtic?"

"It is," Esposito replied, "so's the black sun. But there are different representations of the same two symbols in just about every culture."

"Well, the dragon is usually a symbolic source of power, isn't it?" asked Gates, sitting down in an empty chair.

"True," said Ryan. Beckett answered her vibrating cell phone as Ryan started reading from his notes, "but they're also associated with wisdom and longevity, where the black sun seems mostly to be associated with endings and death."

Gates took the information she was given and ran with it. "So the dragon murders are probably trying to stop this 'end of days' while the black sun murders are trying to get it going..."

"But that's just it," Castle added. "The murders, except for the Celtic group in Douglaston, all have the same human sacrifice type of feel to them. If there's something else that differentiates their intentions it's not in these files."

Beckett ended her phone call, repeating the topic of the call to the group. "Unfortunately, it looks like there might be another one to add to the pile. A body's been found in the Tropic Zone of the Central Park Zoo. It may be another ritual kill."


Castle looked up at the sea lions with his usual boundless curiosity. "Is it me," he asked, "or is that sea lion staring at me?"

"It's just you," replied Beckett with her usual mix of amusement and boundless patience. "C'mon Castle, we need to get in there."

Castle shrugged, turning away from the sea lion exhibit...only to have the sea lion in question follow him. He stopped and turned slowly back toward the exhibit to find the sea lion staring at him again. "Beckett!" he called to his partner in a loud stage whisper.

Beckett sighed as she turned around to respond to her partner...again. "Yes, Castle?"

"Tell me that sea lion isn't staring at me!"

"That sea lion isn't staring at you," Beckett replied matter-of-factly.

Castle rolled his eyes, annoyed that his partner wasn't listening to him. "No, Beckett," he countered with his own attempt at patience, "could you just *look* at the sea lion and tell me it's not staring at me?"

Beckett turned patiently, to placate her partner, and looked at the sea lion exhibit. "No," Beckett replied firmly to her partner's question, "the sea lion's not staring at you."

"It's not?"

"Nope." Castle's face fell with it's customary child-like disappointment...until he saw the slightest hint of curiosity pass across his partner's face. "I think it's staring at Ryan..." she finally commented with a clear level of surprise to her voice.

That stopped the group in their tracks. Having ignored Castle and Beckett's earlier teasing, he was confused by the way that his friends were looking at him. "What?"

"Ryan," Castle replied, "that sea lion is staring at you."

Ryan frowned at Castle in disbelief. "No way..." He turned to find that the sea lion was, indeed, staring at him. A barking sound persisted at the edge of his mind, and he turned to the left and right, scanning the area to make sure that what he heard he wasn't hearing with his ears. When Ryan realized that not only were none of the sea lions barking, but that the staring sea lion had been mimicking his movements exactly, he opened his mind to try and connect with the animal.

The barking quickly turned into a persistent stream of words. Is it them? I thought it was them. The turtles said someone would come help us. Are they them?

Ryan blinked and shook his head from the shock. Esposito noticed his partner's physical response. "What is it, bro?"

"I...I think I can hear him..." replied Ryan in amazement.

The sea lion jumped up and used his foreflippers to applaud. YOU CAN HEAR ME?!

Ryan nearly fell over at the sea lion's enthusiastic response in his mind. Yes...he replied, amazed, I can hear you.

So you are them?

Who's them? asked Ryan.

The ones who will save us from the big bad black thing...


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