Chapter 9: Vatican Dances

"Sherlock," John gasped, this day seeming to stretch into eternity. They were in the back of , trying to slip through a fence of the London Zoo. But he'd rather curl up into a man-sized fox-ball, and go to sleep, for a thousand years. Maybe when he woke up, this would all be a scary dream. In the morning the skull on their mantel, would be a plastic mold from a science study, used only for Sherlock's strange anti-social habits. In the morning young Caroline would be alive,and perhaps come for tea, and Sherlock would greet her as the long- lost friend that she was, and they would talk of all the days gone by, and then again she would float away like foam on the water, and all would be still and well again. But this was not a dream. Sherlock was digging a small hole under the fence to the Giraffe cage. Sherlock had a piece of John's shirt tied around his head for a bandage. And John still had no real idea what was happening. Why a young girl's life was the fulcrum for the balance of life as we know it? Why his dearest friend always had to take the Fall for him?...

"Sherlock..?" he said again, sighing sadly like the ocean on the sand. Like the fingers of the ocean, reaching over and inbetween the bars of it's prison beneath the sky,bound in by shores, he felt like he was always reaching for Sherlock and the dark world in which he seemed to live alone, but never could get to him.

"Please tell me what's going on..."he begged. The sound of his voice must've been like despair. Sherlock looked up, a brow raised in concern. He swallowed.

"It's going to be alright, John , just trust me..."

" I do, I trust you,...but .What .is . going .on?" he grit his teeth ,determined to have an answer. Sherlock stood up, and went to John, and took him by the wrists, and looked him straight in the eyes, and began to explain his plan.

"The torment they've been mentally inflicting on me_I did tell you didn't I?" ( a look of sick horror crossed his face, momentarily)

"You did.."John swallowed, trying to get him back on subject ,nodded fervently.

"Ah...well, I believe this group of serial killers, are also a team of professional chemists, seeing as that was what they were all majoring in when we were in school. I believe they are using a modification of the drug mist from Baskerville, to take hallucigenics to the chemical warfare level...They tested the prototype in Caroline's murder. They tested a modified form on me... I believe they plan to test a stronger drug than the two before on the animals in this zoo. To create in them a madness that could be used in a mass murder ,with no traceable guilty parties, tommorow morning when the zoo doors open. And how could there be a more perfect murder?Like the Caesar's of old, watching the lion's devour their victims, and not being guilty of murder, because the lions killed them out of insanity...Never mind that insanity was caused, how could they prove it?"

John laughed, "If anybody can, you can." Sherlock smiled. He clutched John's wrists more tightly then.

"You should know, I am still under the influence of these drugs myself...When we go in there, I may be a very diffrent person than the one you know...Don't be alarmed..."

John clutched at his wrists in turn..."I'm with you every step of the way." he said, reassuringly. Sherlock had a crease in his brow ,deep as a chain-gang's ditch. His anxiety was visible, and that wasn't like Sherlock Holmes...

"Right." he let out a shaky breath,and let John's wrists go,and went and slithered under the fence. Reached and pulled John in behind him.

The madness they entered!_

The dances, the mad beating of feet,the cries of the animals!The beasts were going to war, dancing the battle dance, to bring up the moon from her pale grave in the heavens, to call down the stars to fall from their thrones. Sherlock drew a heavy breath, and tensed, like a bird startled on the perch, listening..waiting...

"It isn't safe, John...you should get out.", he whispered.

John took him by the hand, his palms sweating, and fingers trembling. " I'm not leaving you...Remember, whatever you're seeing, hearing, feeling, it's just like Baskerville, all in your mind..."

He nodded, eyes wide as silver dollars. And the tiger roared, and leaped on his perch,and the Vatican dances officially began, as monkeys began to march forth like Gladiators, and the parrots chanted with the voices of Rome...