AN: I AM SO SORRYY! Between work, senior exams, and graduation, I'm so over-whelmed. I am SO sorry. Please enjoy! And thank you SO much for the reviews! Yes, I know, typeos are everywhere, and I'm so very sorry if they're so distracting as they take away from the story. I've looked and looked, but my brain just doesn't allow me to see them sometimes, ;-;-;-;-; Thank you for hanging on with me. I was afraid I had lost everyone. So really, thank you!


~*Close Call*~

I blinked slowly at Sherlock's departure, flickering my eyes about the now chilling room. Carefully I placed my bag down, opening up its cold zipper and pulling on some latex gloves. I then turned to re-inspect the bodies. Sherlock was right of course, they had been perfectly cleaned. There were no more sloshes of dirt and grime, no more flecks of blood. Chemical evidence all but completely removed, possible missed finger prints destroyed. Well, all but the girl's hair, anyway. I was suddenly very thankful that Sherlock had snuck those pictures after all. I admit that I trotted a bit faster to the crime room because of this. People working against us here? Christ. Did I really just say that myself? And I believed it. Christ.

Luckily, the room was still as completely obliterated as it had been all those short hours ago. The ribbons still swirled and gently swept along the glass laded wooden floor. I took a deep breath as I stepped as best as I could over large and twisted pieces of glass and metal frames from the destroyed mirrors; the air still tasted of dust and heat. The red ribbons had been cut carefully, while the golden ribbons were simply untied. The floor was so scuffed up now that I really couldn't make out any type of guess to how many people might have moved the bodies.

Regardless though, nothing else seemed a miss in a room full of stale air and broken bits. I decided that I'd try and stop the problem of interference by asking Madam Giry for the key—I had wanted to seek her out anyway. This was a dancer's wing—she had to have a key of some sort. I knew these poor people were scared, but, Sherlock was right. It's a shame these people had enough courage to touch a crime evidence in the first place. To hold the gored bodies of their friends and carry them elsewise. To disregard professional help like it was pointless. That must be the worst kind of fear there is, to think all help is worthless…

God, but I just couldn't wrap my head around it though. They're scared of a murderer—of a man? Of the super natural? Which was it? What were we supposedto be looking for? I halfheartedly tapped the top of my shoe against a shard of glass, and I watched it slide to the opposite end of the room. I went to turn to leave when its sparkle caught my eye. I stood where I was for a moment, chewing on the side of my cheek. Everything on that side of the room was destroyed as well, but it didn't hold any body, or blood, or seemingly useful evidence. Ah well. I made for the shard.

Focusing in on the view, I noticed that the mirror piece wasn't the only thing gleaming along the floor. It was rising up the wall as well. There was a second hole filled with a sparkling light. Then a third, a fourth. I saw that these were shimmering slivers of silver that peaked out from a roughly sewn together roll of red and black cloth. Interesting…

It took a lot of my upper strength to move that stupid tapestry—must be for some lavish production here—and it even fell to the floor with a noticeable thud. My heart leapt to my throat and I let out a startled gasp as a face suddenly met my eyes, but I took a deep breath when I realized what the cloth had been covering.

A full length mirror—completely intact and looking like it had recently been polished with the way it caught all sorts of light. The mirror waved a bluish hue at the bottom, which gradually changed into a light red at the top. I couldn't even begin to guess how that was done—what was a funny fun-house mirror doing hiding in a place like this?

I placed my hands along the sides, pulling at it a bit, trying to see if it'd change my reflection, but I stayed as normal as ever. Some kind of prop, then? The mirror had black painted sides, and bits of yellow stones cut into the corners. It really looked bizarre from every angle— I wondered briefly if maybe there was a point to this being the only surviving mirror—but the weight of the cloth along my shoes and the size of the thing just gave me a feeling of a missed opportunity of destruction for the killer.

I reached down to pull the heavy red cloth back over it when something in the background of my reflection started to wave in the still light. I kept myself still, my eyes slowly tracing over the bits of cloth. No. No way. The cloth…the angles that it was being tied. It was…it was forming letters. Long, curling abstract letters that folded and swayed along the center of the room right where the bodies had been tied. I turned around, disoriented. They seemed to be tied backwards, although the spelling seemed foreign to me either way. French—I swung around to face the mirror again. It must be French.

My eyes never leaving the mirror, (though my mind protested that I was just seeing things—really, really weird things, anyway) I reached into my jacket, pulling out my mobile and lined up the camera square for a decent shot. I didn't even want to bother writing down French letters backwards—Sherlock would kill me if I got even one letter wrong. I put my eye to the slot.

Suddenly a huge carcoffany of harsh, shattering glass exploded into my eardrums, physically knocking me back hard into the wooden floor, my phone clutched roughly in my palm as I had just managed to bring up an arm to cover my eyes. I brought my left foot down, kicking away hard and sliding as far as I could from the clash as I could manage, my heart going wild in my chest. Holy Hell! I nearly smiled at the thought of it happening again, staring into the darkness of the cloth of my jacket.

I pulled down my arm slowly, taking in the gaping, sharp looking huge hole that was now the center of the mirror. I glanced above me and to the sides—there was no sight of projectile or object that had been thrown from inside the mirror to have casted that kind of damage. I was almost a tad disappointed that there was nothing to inspect or toss back.

I rolled to my feet, not bothering to check for nicks on my jeans or neck as I crawled to the mirror. I kept low, and quiet, and raised my arm up in front of me, before slowly easing up and glancing into the backless behind the mirror…

Fffffshht! A small, skittering something suddenly leapt at me from the gloom.

Shit! I stumbled back, throwing my arms out protectively behind me and colliding onto the rubbish beneath me. I nearly didn't have time to take in whatever the hell that thing was it was, it was coming at me so fast. I kicked away from it, twisting on my palms and then jumping to my feet, making way for the door and slamming it closed. The sound seemed to startle the creature, as it stopped midway…just staring at me. There was it though—this thing wasn't going anywhere. And when I saw it had a sharp, intricately carved poisonous looking stinger, I realized that neither was I.

Breathing hard, I moved for my bag, twisting through it only to find nothing but my gun, Gladstone bag of medical supplies—nothing to stop venom, though—and that fucking translations book. It was just a bug though; I tried to reason with myself. There's no need for a gun. It was just a scorpion-

Then, as if just to break all my thoughts of logic, the scorpion made a sound unlike anything I had ever heard. It was low, and harsh—metallic. My eyes widened. What the fuck?

I didn't have time to think much more than that however. It was coming at me again.

Its eight gleaming and sparklingly legs furiously scrabbled towards me with a shuddering sound of nails clawing at thick wood. Its eyes were two perfect little rubies that swirled and zeroed in on me, godly metal pinchers that seemed to be spray-painted with a dark maroon colour. No, this thing definitely wasn't normal. Or animal. Its body seemed to hiss and spark with bits of light and tightly coiled wires—a flash of green, hint of pink—and it's tail- dear God, its tail—was as beautiful as it was deadly looking. It was narrow, cut into perfectly cyclical packets of glowing red liquid within each segment. It seemed so vicious with its intent to kill me that venom was already dripping from its tip.

And I watched, almost like I had fallen into my favourite science -fiction novel ( novels that Sherlock always scoffed at and reminded me that the inventions inside were so illogical), as that red liquid started to melt the old wooden floor, steam cracking and wisping into the stifling room.

I side stepped to the right of it, but it moved with the accuracy of machine—lethal and unflinching. I grasped up my shoe, throwing it at the creature but it seemed to not do any good. I dodged to the left now—but its claws moved with me, grasping up into my laces, its pointy tail narrowly missing my calf. I panicked, landing hard along the floor and frantically pulled through my bag again, bringing out the book and I began pounding at the creature—using the spine to keep its tail at bay.

I brought up my right leg, sweeping the surprising sturdy metal body away from me, and then used the bulk of the book and the weight of my body to finally crush the monster into its place. It was stupid of me now that I think about it, but I used my free hand to grip at its tail and hold its stringer straight up and away from me, feeling like I was arm wrestling a bloke back in Afghanistan and not some bulky bug.

Finally the blasted thing stopped moving, and I dropped to my knees, dragging myself away from it before bothering to suck in any air. I gripped up for my mobile, dialing Sherlock's number without giving any second thought.

It only took half a ring before he answered.

"Sherlock Holmes,"

"Sherlock," I gasped, "You've—you've gotta come back to the crime scene. Now"

"John?" His tone was strange now, surprised and confused.

"Now," I repeated before hanging up on him.

~*~ *~*~

"And you said it came from the mirror?" Sherlock ducked back through in a third time, against my near yelling tone to stay the hell away from it.

"Yes, Sherlock," I repeated for what seemed like the hundredth time since he had stormed into the room in a fury of adrenaline and black hair. I was sweating bullets now, even with my jacket off and socks tossed into my bag, but my heart still skipped its fluid beats as my eyes never left the slain scorpion…robot…thing.

"Damn, it's too dark to see how far this passage leads."

"It's a passage?"

"Of course! Didn't you look?"

"Sorry, I was too busy trying not to die."

"I'll have to get a torch for this—" He began excitedly.

"You're not going down there without me," I added threateningly.

"Yes, yes," Sherlock begrudged to me offhandedly. "So the room remains unscathed?"

"You mean any less scathed than it was before? Yeah, no one's touched it beyond moving the bodies. I'm going to get a key from Madam Giry to lock it up."

"Hm," was all that Sherlock responded with. He then turned from the mirror and glanced back towards me before finally walking towards the bug.

"John, what were you doing back by that mirror?"

I slowly lifted my eyes from the bug—nerves twitching at the thought that it could pop back up and attack me at any second—and I met Sherlock's calculating stare.

"How—" I stopped. Then I remembered. "Oh, God. Right." I got to my feet, walking carefully back to the mirror and standing in front of it before turning around. "It's backwards, but it's there."

Sherlock mimicked my position, eyes still on my face. "What's there?"

"Words," I grinned, glancing back at him. "Backwards, and in French. You'll need a mirror to see them. If only they were upside down, I could at least read off the letters to you."

"John, that's…." His voice trailed off. I beamed a little beside him. I slowly rose up my phone, managing to show the actually decent picture of the words in the mirror before it had blasted open.

"Malach HaMavet," Sherlock slowly said to me.

"What?" I frowned. "That doesn't sound French at all…"

"It's not. It's Hebrew."

My eyes widened. "Hebrew? Seriously?"

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at my phone as he quickly took it from me, typed in the words into my phone's browser. He smiled a wicked smile, before handing my mobile back to me. On the screen it read:

Malach HaMavet: Hebrew for: The Angel Of Death, or the Angel of Dark and Light. An Angel cast down from heaven to take the souls of the sinful and the innocent to Hell or the gates of Heaven. Never to enter either one itself.

"Huh. Hebrew." I repeated. "Fat lot o'good that French book."

"Besides using it save your life. Good thing I brought you the book, eh?" Sherlock grinned spitefully at me as we walked back to the crushed machine.

"Piss off," I glared, grasping up the book and nearly dropping it again as I realized how intact it still was, like it was mocking me. "We're trading places then—I'm burning up in here. I'm going to the theater. Did you ever find anything?"

"No yet," Sherlock murmured to me, sliding down to his knees and tilting his head to the side as he stared in awe at the twitching and still flickering mini-monster machine before us.

I stretched, calming down now that that thing was dead…or incapacitated or…something. "Well, I'm gonna go up and get some fresher air, and then I'll come back down and help you with whatever the hell thing is, all right? You're probably better at the chemicals and mechanics inside of it than I'd ever be anyhow."

"Leave your bag, John," Sherlock agreed to me. "We might need it to move this machine."

"Oh, you wish," I said, grasping up my bag. "I'll bring you down some other container, all right? No way are you using this bag. It's leather for God sake—did you seethe way its oil, venom," I struggled for the proper word. "stuff cracks the floor? — No."

I took another look at those still moving gyros inside of the scorpion's head, and held back a shiver. God this place wanted the best of me. I had to get away from this room for a while. I stepped out without hearing Sherlock's response, and made for the upstairs theater.


EN: Yes, another short, akwardly cut off chapter. Sorry, sorry, i am sorry! ;=; Thanks again all!