Sorry for the short chapter today. It just felt like it reached the proper length, besides the revelation at the end made a good stopping point.

Thanks for all the reviews...I wouldn't be doing this one without the interest so this is your story.

All characters belong to either Doyle or Stoker I choose to give credit where it is due.

thanks!

Bart

The Case of the Resurrected Flatmate

Chapter Four

You were still at your desk when I arrived back at the top of the stairs. The manner in which you were scribbling away was frenzied as if you were driven.

I was in no shape to carry on a discussion, my entire world had shifted in just those few hours, what were the Nosferatu, what did Constable Ferris say about the dead getting up and walking, why did Lestrade bellow about Gypsies, what did the Romani have to do with anything?

The question that over arched all was, how were you alive, dear Watson, by every definition I know you were a dead man the night before, and yet here you were seated at your cherry wood desk as you had been so many times before hard at work.

We were about to embark upon the most singular murder investigation of my career, yours. I must say a murder investigation abetted by the murdered was a unique experience indeed.

~o0o0o0o~

Holmes stared at his flatmate, everything empirical told him that he was looking at a dead man, but this was a corpse showing a remarkable amount of animation.

"What was that about?" Watson asked as he turned a page and started anew.

"It was nothing that need concern you, my dear Watson, just some gentlemen I sent away until a more decent hour."

Watson nodded and bent back to his work.

"Holmes you need to have a seat, I can hear your bloody heartbeat across the room," Watson remarked rubbing the side of his cheek with the pen in a heart wrenchingly familiar gesture that Holmes had taken so for granted.

Holmes crossed the distance and poked Watson in the back.

"Holmes! What the devil are you doing?" Watson spun in the seat his eyes flashing with anger.

Holmes walked over to the brandy decanter and poured himself a large glass. "I was trying to ascertain if I had ingested a hallucinogenic substance, what, might I ask, do you recall about your movements last evening?"

Watson seemed to drift off a moment. "I cannot recall much, it is all in a haze."

Holmes drank half the glass and offered his flatmate one.

"Please, Watson, a recounting of your actions may shed some light on this anomaly," Holmes encouraged as Watson accepted the drink, the man sniffed the substance, wrinkled his nose and sat it to the side as he recalled, "I had departed the underground, and decided to walk a bit before I hailed a cab, the night was a bit foggy but mild, I was passing my journey pleasantly enough, when I heard a woman's cry...I turned to give aid...and I cannot recall anything else until I awoke on a slab in the basement of the Yard in an embarrassing disrobed state."

Watson sighed. "I have no idea why I was mistaken for dead; I might have been injected with something to mimic the state, but why would someone do such a thing?"

Holmes decided that it was time for truth. He pulled a chair over to his flatmate. "Watson, you were dead, by any and every definition, a substance that would cause a perceived suspended animation would have worn off after a few hours, and yet you have had men of medical persuasion studying you for the entire day, there was no blood circulation, no heartbeat, even if it were a temporary state you would indeed be brain dead from the lack of oxygen."

Watson scoffed. "That is preposterous! I am clearly alive, a dead man cannot walk about, think for himself, pick up a pen and write, do any of the activities that I have engaged in these last few hours."

Holmes suddenly knew the question he needed to ask. "Watson, have you ever heard of Nosferatu, or the Undead? The visitors that just departed were called that by Mrs. Hudson."

"I fail to find that amusing, Holmes," Watson remarked with a glower.

Holmes sighed. "They could not cross our threshold without permission, they arrived and departed with no sound of conveyance, one of the chaps had rather alarmingly long incisors and their eyes glowed red when Mrs. Hudson held up a crucifix which lit up like a flare the closer it got to them..."

Watson was shaking his head. "I don't want to hear that superstitious nonsense especially from you, I've heard far too much of it lately."

Holmes felt that stirring that he only got when he was on the right scent.

He attempted to keep the excitement out of his voice as he inquired, "Oh? From who?"

Watson shrugged. "We have been getting an influx of anaemia in the charity wards here as of late. I've yet to ascertain a cause, but nurses and other doctors have taken to wearing religious iconography, and there have been reports of patients declared dead seen by those who knew them in life, in some of the poorer areas of London, the streets have become deserted after nightfall, which is not an entirely bad thing mind you, but it's all a lot of rubbish if you ask me."

Holmes sat back in the chair and studied his friend, to the man's snort of disgust. "What are you looking for, dear Holmes, some sign that I am lusting after your blood, that my fangs are slavering to be buried into your jugular?"

Holmes smiled. "Are they?"

Watson got a mischievous twinkle in his eye as he remarked, "If I were to lust after anyone's blood it would be a sweet young lady with a tender neck, not a hard smoking night dwelling man who won't eat a descent meal with any number of substances running through his veins, no telling what mysterious cocktail you've got circulating as we speak."

"Watson, you wound me to the quick," Holmes said with a sniff.

Watson shrugged. "Well, I'll save you as a last resort if that will soothe your ego."

"Splendid, old boy, one is always happy to be such," Holmes rankled with a grin.

"Back at the topic at hand," Watson stated with a roll of his eyes, "this night, I have crossed a threshold that belonged to someone else without needing permission, I feel no overwhelming need to give anyone a dreadful neck wound...as of yet mind you, and there is the matter of this," he finished while fishing something out of his nightshirt collar.

He held it glittering in the light.

It was a twinkling silver Saint Christopher's medal. "It belonged to Mary, I keep it close to my heart, I have been told by my superstitious co-workers that any item that was worn with faith will be proof against the Vampyre, I do not claim any devotion of my own, but the infusion of Mary's belief should make this impossible to wear if I were what you are asking."

Holmes fished out his pipe from his pocket and struck a match with a thumbnail to light it, suddenly Watson flinched, his foot shot out and with a nudge the chair slid nearly across the room on the floor boards.

Holmes doused the match with a quick wave of his hand. Watson looked deeply embarrassed as he stated, "Alright then, there may be some credence to this diagnosis."

Holmes glanced down at the marks on the floor that led to where his chair now rested, calculating the amount of strength that shove would have taken. "Indeed."

Watson crossed his arms, nonplussed. "So where do we begin?"

Holmes reached into his pocket and pulled out the card he had secreted from the visitors earlier. "I think we might begin with Jonathan Seward, he made a point to give me this card, I think they meant to retrieve it afterward, whatever dastardly action they had planned before Mrs. Hudson ended their task prematurely.

"Never mess with a Scotch landlady," Watson remarked fondly.

"Yes indeed," Holmes agreed, "however, I got the idea that the man in question was relieved, as if he was sent to perform a task he felt odious, so that means this group we are opposing is running at cross purposes at the very least."

"It also means we have a friend in their camp if your assumption is correct, and that these men were foot soldiers of some stripe with a general elsewhere," Watson finished, his eyes alight with purpose.

Holmes nodded. "This card shows that our Mister Seward is actually a doctor of psychology, and psychiatry, and that he operates out of a sanatorium in Horsham just off the Carfax."

"Holmes, if we are truly dealing with the Undead, then this will spread like a plague, unless we find the source and stop it," Watson reminded him, "if the proliferation of anaemia along my route is any indication, the disease is spreading up from the lower classes, it is only a matter of time before it crosses into Westminster."

"Worse," Holmes remarked carefully lighting his pipe, "if it spreads into Whitehall, we could be looking at a puppet government, what are the vulnerabilities, Watson, and why do you lack some of them?"

Watson crossed his arms, fingering Mary's medal. "I have no idea Holmes, the legends state that the Nosferatu rises after three days with a taste for blood, that they are little more than predators with human skin on, cannot tolerate sunlight, religious iconography backed by faith, cannot cross thresholds without the owner's permission, must sleep on their native soil, are extremely strong and from some sources, shape shift and fly."

"I can see that you have a sensitivity to fire, so we must add that to the list, however, the fact that you rose after less than twenty-four hours, and seem to have immunity to some of their vulnerabilities mark you as something...other," Holmes remarked with a few puffs of his pipe. He flipped the card over and checked the back; there was a hastily written scribble.

"I think I know who might know some of these answers," Holmes said with a victorious smile.

"Well spit it out man, this cat who ate the canary act grows tedious," Watson complained.

Holmes leaned back in his chair. "I propose we head over to this Sanatorium and visit a patient by the name of...

Abraham Van Helsing."

~o0o0o0o~

These three years later, I must say in hindsight that when I started this journey to end the Undead threat, I had a deep and abiding fear that at its conclusion I would have to kill you as well.

The possibility was there.

When you know the source of a plague, the zero patient as it were, you must take steps to isolate or eliminate that person to make sure that the epidemic does not spread all over again. You carried that source within you, Abraham said as much.

However, he was a zealot, a true believer, and he could only see one solution, as is the common modus among extremist, he had never encountered anyone like you before, my friend.

I think you quite unnerved him.

Next Up... Van Helsing meets Sherlock Holmes...and the one Vampire he never saw coming!

Bart