Chapter 10: In which there are dark things
Returning to the flat, soaked to the bone, John and Sherlock had completely forgotten about the green goo until they walked through the front door and were swooped upon by Mrs Hudson. John decided that the woman, as lovely as she was, had a swift ferocity in her that reminded him of a particularly narked vulture.
"All night that damp spot's been growing! Finally dare to poke my head round your door and the sight I find! Well believe you me Sherlock Holmes, you are paying for all the redecorating! My ceiling is green! Green!"
Sherlock waved a hand in dismissal and turned Mrs Hudson towards her kitchen. "Of course, of course. John, could you make our good landlady a cup of tea? I have some clay to make bricks with." He pulled the black pouch from his coat pocket and tossed it in the air, catching it while grinning like a fool then abruptly leaving John with their angry and confused landlady.
"If he turns my walls purple or anything I'm kicking him out tonight!" She sat at her small kitchen table and folded her legs. "I take one sugar and a generous splash of milk, Doctor Watson."
The water boiled slowly on the stove, the whistling of the kettle the first abrupt sound in ten minutes since Sherlock had retreated upstairs. John had been listening for any bangs, shouts or explosions and, thankfully, thus far there had been none.
John sighed as he poured hot water into the tea pot and watched the loose leaves swirl as they steeped.
"You're in love." John didn't move. "Don't deny it. You've been sighing all month." John sighed and placed the tea set on the table and sat down heavily in a chair. "Just as I thought." He silently poured Mrs Hudson's tea and added milk and sugar as he contemplated his answer, if any.
"It doesn't matter." His whole left arm was cold, the cup of tea he poured himself did nothing against the chill in his hand as he cradled the china.
"Don't sell yourself short John. He's a great man but so are you." She leaned forward, swirling her tea around the cup almost consiprationally. "Indulge an old woman. Let me read your tea leaves. My mother taught me, sometimes it's quite accurate."
John huffed a laugh, a lot of the women in Folkestone enjoyed the practice, especially when it came to foreseeing romance. "I don't think you'll get anything interesting from mine." He turned the tea cup in his hands three times anti-clockwise and finished off his tea. Before he could glance down at the leafs he heard a shout from upstairs.
"JOHN! Damn it all to hell.. JOHN!"
"Oh dear..." Mrs Hudson had stood quickly from her seat and walked to the kitchen door glancing anxiously at the damp spot on her ceiling. John passed her by and ran up the stairs, sensing the urgency in Sherlock's call.
"What's happened?" He asked as his eyes scanned the room for any danger. The only danger in the room was a few heaped piled of pale green... something. The goo from earlier had shrunk and solidified in little piles around the room looking like giant versions of something a child would pull from their nose while their parent wasn't looking.
"Nothing's happened. And nothing is going to happen. I can't figure out what this blasted plant is." Sherlock stood at the table, looking through his microscope. "Whatever this is it's as rare as a blue star fallen on the fifth Monday of May."
"What?"
"You need to take it to someone that can... help." The word help was ground out through his teeth. "No. No, it needs to be done. It needs to be done now and He will know more about it than I do." He turned to John, an almost eerie smile on his face. "You can go for me!"
"It's the middle of the night!"
"That's all right, I don't mind." Sherlock strode over to John and slipped the pouch of dried plants into John's hand along with a small business card. "Off you go and don't dawdle." With that he was pushed out of the flat and onto the stairwell again. Mrs Hudson looked round the banister from downstairs.
"Is everything normal up there?"
"As normal as it will be." John huffed. Mrs Hudson let out a sigh of relief and went off into the kitchen. The doctor glared at the door before glaring at the card in his hand. His glare slid into a look of amazement as he turned the card over in his hand. The ink was changing colour, every colour of the spectrum slid through the ink in every shade imaginable.
Ostanes Club
He turned over the card.
It was blank for only a moment until ink flowed like colourful rain down glass to form the words,
Doctor John Watson
A moment later the words disappeared to be replaced by the words
Please Hold
A moment later John Watson disappeared.
In the silence he left there was the sound of clinking tea cups and serene humming. The humming was broken by a gasp and Mrs Hudson stared down into John's tea cup and into the eyes of a human skull formed by black tea leaves. She quickly swilled the cup out in the sink as though washing away the terrible omen would make life better. If only things were that simple.
John Watson reappeared. None the worse for wear but rather annoyed at being pulled this way and that through a business card.
The room he was in was plush to say the least. A grand entry room if he had ever seen one; paintings lined the walls, a soft chair to his right that he would guess cost more than a year of his earnings, the carpet had a spring to it that he had never felt before except in fresh grass. The room only had one door and it opened slowly.
An elderly butler hobbled in and closed the door behind himself, so gently that there wasn't even a click.
"Doctor Watson," He whispered, "If you would please follow me. Do not speak outside of this room."
With that the old butler opened the door silently and hobbled out, not even checking over his shoulder to see if John followed. In the hallway there were numerous doors. One was open and contained several men who were reading books in absolute silence. The silence was disrupted by the unfortunately loud sound of a man sneezing, he earned several glares immediately and sank an inch further into his seat.
After a short walk across the springy carpet the butler stopped and opened a door that had a shining plaque on it reading "Strangers Room". John walked through cautiously but unafraid, Sherlock had sent him here. He wouldn't send him knowingly into danger.
But maybe he didn't know.
John's heart gave a hollow thud that vibrated in his chest. There, sitting comfortably in a plush chair, was the man from the warehouse. The wizard. Sherlock's enemy.
"Do sit down Doctor Watson you're making the room look untidy."
After the exhausting day he had John chose to sit down, uncaring that this man could be dangerous. Since the damn curse his life had been dangerous. Nothing had been as comfortable as this chair though, maybe Sherlock's bed had been.
"Sherlock sent me."
"Of course he did. How is my dear brother today? Caused quite the mess back home didn't he."
"Your... your brother?" John leaned forward to get a better look at the man. There was no obvious family resemblance, except the height but that's where similarities ended. "He's never mentioned you."
"No.. He wouldn't. There is sibling rivalry, Sherlock was always throwing his toys out of the pram, so to speak. I wonder what his latest toy is doing at the Ostaines club." He tapped his chin thoughtfully and eyed a jam scone sitting on the side table next to his chair. "You are fortunate I named you as an associate of Sherlock's or the card would have transported you over the Thames. Why are you here Doctor?"
John pulled the pouch from his pocket and tipped some of the contents onto his palm, it looked like black tobacco. "He says you would know what this is."
The wizard raised an eyebrow and leaned forward, taking a pinch from the small pile. He held it up to his nose then rubbed it between his fingers, grinding it into powder quite easily. He spoke two indiscernible words that were lost to John's ears that had popped at that precise moment. The powder ignited and disappeared instantly in a flash of blue flame that left behind a small cloud of grey smoke, it lingered like a dark cloud on a sunny day.
"This is possibly the most lethal and dangerous substance in London at the moment, Doctor Watson." There was a heavy pause as John waited for more. "I believe this is the root of a black orchid grown deep inside the dark marshes. To grow one is an evil deed. The fertiliser is ground children's bones and the blood of the pure is its water, no sunlight must ever touch it or a good deed even considered near it."
"...What is it for?"
"Binding a soul."
It went deathly quiet after that, John hardly knowing why one would want to bind a soul but knowing it was an evil thing. Sherlock's brother sat watching the cloud swirl on itself as it waited suspended in the air, his lips were a thin line. John stood to leave, his information gathered he had no reason to stay. Before he reached the door, the wizard spoke some very powerful words.
"They found some in the bullet you were shot with."
His arm instantly felt heavy and cold, his tongue like lead in his mouth and his vision almost tunnelled.
"I can only assume it didn't work; you're still here and sane. But... Short of a miracle, John, I don't expect you to see a pleasant afterlife."
"So that's it then?" He didn't turn, he spoke only to the dark wood of the door. "Just give up. This witch is too untouchable. Curl up and die... Thank you for not leading me on with hope."
He wrenched the door open, it banged against the wall loudly and echoed through the quiet club.
"Hope is your best weapon John."
John didn't stop, the soft carpet did nothing to quiet his angry march through the hallway and he easily found the front door, its frosted glass showing a darkened street. He flung that door open too and slammed it shut behind himself, not sparing a look back at the seemingly dilapidated building he had left.
The cold air of the night did nothing for his head and aggravated his arm. It felt much heavier and he could now feel the solidified veins creaking as he moved his arm. His limp returned with a vengeance and he missed the cane that he had slowly abandoned in his joy of a more fulfilled life.
But his mind. His mind fared worse and filled with dark thoughts, almost darker than the shadows that followed him. They dodged street lights and warm windows as John walked through London aimlessly. They played with his shadow and melded with him so subtly that he didn't realise how dark his thoughts had become until he stopped still in the middle of the dark road and wondered when the world became so unbearably light.
The lit windows and streetlights were too bright, like a thousand suns that burned his eyes and made him cringe away.
That's when he saw them.
They had circled him.
They batted at his shadow and he felt every shadowy claw on his skin, they pulled and pinched and bit until John was on his knees. His mouth open in a soundless scream as he curled in on himself. The darkness swallowed him up and the last shred of hope was like a single match in the dead of night. The lightest breeze would blow it out and leave him stranded in the black and endless sea of dread.
But then he came.
He was alight from within.
Sherlock ran toward John through the shadow covered street, every step he took burned away at the darkness sending it away like a scared beast. John watched with disinterest as his only friend struggled through the shadows as though it were a physical force.
"JOHN!" Sherlock swept a hand out against a tendril of shadow that attempted to wrap around his neck, there was an echo of an unnatural screech and then another patch of shadow took its place. "JOHN! HANG IN THERE!" The shadows crept over John's prone form, his black eyes uncaring and still.
And then there were words.
Words John heard and were as clear as a bell on a beautiful Sunday morning in the summer. He remembered his family back home, his friends that still fought abroad, welcoming strangers that became friends.
And Sherlock.
Sherlock Holmes standing in front of him in the quiet, peaceful street.
Sherlock Holmes, who gently grasped his wrist and warmed him to the bones.
Sherlock Holmes, who was, without any doubt, a Wizard.
A/N: Many thanks to WyvernTheGreat and Kat for reviewing! I'm so grateful for your reviews, if you hadn't reviewed I don't think I would be posting this chapter. I'm not going to stop updating unless no interest is shown in this story any more. There are about 5 chapters left (maybe 6 or 7) and I'm going to finish this. As long as I get one reviewer on each chapter I will post because I know someone wants to read. If I got more I think it would motivate me so much. I'm not saying I write for reviews but feedback is always loved. The next chapter is called "Moriarty".