The Hunter and the Hunted

John shivered as the wind cut through him, but didn't pause in his steady stride along the alley way. Best not to seem weak along here - the homeless who inhabited this particular part of London had not made the grade for Sherlock's little network, and for good reason. They'd eat their own mother for a chance at a hit - some of them even volunteered to the local drug distributors as test animals on the newer cuts or designer drugs. Sherlock preferred his informants to be sober - they were more reliable that way. John had a sneaking suspicion that some of the denizens of this alley had known his lover through his own drug using days - Sherlock avoided them as a way of staying clean.

Moriarty was in this area. The tracing spells were unanimous in their results; John was working constantly to refine them in order to isolate his prey exactly.

The consulting criminal had first come to his attention the day after he'd met Sherlock. The mad cabbie that he'd shot for the fascinating man that had become his flatmate had screamed the name like a challenge at the thin genius. They'd become friends as time went on, but that friendship had been irrevocably changed at The Pool. Their brush with death had made Sherlock withdraw for a time, unwilling to risk his only friend in the fight against Moriarty. John had thoroughly disabused him of that notion. Moriarty had gone to ground - which John now knew was in an effort to master his stolen information on Magic - and John himself had 'come out' to Sherlock about his own practice of the craft. They'd already been lovers for six months by that point; the knowledge had only strengthened their relationship.

John had not suspected that Moriarty had access to a thaumaturgy lexicon when he'd first met the man, in fact it hadn't been until he and Sherlock became lovers that John realised there was something very wrong in the community in London. He hadn't taken up his role of Mage until After the Pool - his own health and well-being had precluded that. Several curses from Afghanistan had lingered for quite some time - the limp and the hand tremor were testimony to that - so he had made his presence known the day he moved into Baker Street and then done nothing more about magic and its practice for the next few months.

Once he'd decided to become more active in his practice - they needed better protection from harm than the Mundane police force could muster, especially with the way that Sherlock carried on - he'd realised that no one had contacted him about his status as Mage, because London's Mage was dead. One look at the crime scene photos had shown him that ritual magic had been attempted using the mans death to power said ritual, and careful questioning of Sally Donovan - of all people, the sceptical Sally had magical connections - had shown that Paul Pierce's lexicon had not gone to her family.

Neither had Jude Kinsey's. She had been Moriarty's first magical victim, entirely by chance. Her husband had wanted her dead in order to allow him to inherit her modest investment portfolio and run away with his secretary. It was all so sordid and boring, but Jude had not been as subtle as she could have been in avoiding the danger headed her way, which had caught Moriarty's attention. He had actually been present at her death and had taken her lexicon with him.

Whatever else you might say about Moriarty, the man had a first class mind. He'd taken the lexicon seriously enough to be able to decipher its meanings and attempt some of the rituals. Those attempts had called Paul Pierce's attention to him and Moriarty had spent no little amount of time undermining the mans standing in the community as well as isolating him from the Mundane world as well.

All of this had been discovered retrospectively. John had only found the trail leading to Moriarty during the Pool incident. When he'd leapt onto Moriarty's back he'd discovered that the Mundane was wearing a very powerful protection charm. Some careful casting and a bit of research had led John to Jude Kinsey's crime scene and the persecution of Paul Pierce. The teenagers and their misguided attempts at raising a water demon had distracted him for a while, but not long after he'd fully recovered from sending the beast back to where it had come from, John had begun to dig very deep into the darker side of London's magical community, which had led him to the photo's of Paul Pierces death.

John had realised that they had been very fortunate: Moriarty's attempt to capture and store Pierce's magical core for himself had not worked - in fact a Mundane would never be able to do so - but before Moriarty could step up his campaign, using Pierce's lexicon, Sherlock had caught the man's eye.

Not that John blamed him - Sherlock was an eye catcher and well worth attention for a variety of reasons. It was just Moriarty's bad luck that John had gotten to Sherlock first. He had no intention of letting go, either.

"Spare change?" a man lurched out of the shadows at John and he sidestepped smoothly. It was the third time that this particular person had attempted to mug him - each attempt beginning with a request for spare change. John wasn't sure why this man insisted on repeatedly trying to mug him, or why he persisted when the last two encounters had gone along the exact same lines, but he suspected that there was either a mental illness or fear of disobeying someone's command at its root. When his accoster snarled and pulled the knife from his sleeve, John merely pivoted on one foot and kicked the other man hard between the legs. As with every other encounter the man squealed and dropped to the floor, the knife clattering out of reach. It was the third that John had confiscated from him and he was tired of walking to the Thames to throw them in.

This knife was different. It had already tasted blood in a ritual... and it wanted more.

"Where did you get this?" John reached down, grabbed the malodorous collar attached to the man he'd kicked and hauled him upright, slamming him against the wall and pushing the knife against the other man's throat, "Tell me where you got the knife and I'll let you live. Or don't tell me and I'll spill your blood all over it."

His voice was cold, indifferent. It almost wasn't an act. He'd been away from his heart for too long - people said that he made Sherlock a better man, but the reverse was also true. Sherlock may have felt that the judgement he'd visited upon those teens on the abandoned Thames dock was deserved, but the rest of the community had been left reeling in shock and outrage. To remove someone's magic without first holding the formality of a trial was almost unheard of - only the fact that he was strong enough to do it to two individuals simultaneously and single handed prevented the community from mounting resistance against him. He'd allowed them to hold a mock trial after the fact - the tribunal had accepted his actions and sanctioned them, at the same time warning him against repeating his actions.

John had chosen not to inform Sherlock of all this - his lover would not have understood. Nor would Sherlock understand that it was himself that held John's baser nature in check. John could not be the man he was without Sherlock's love - and respect. If he ever lost that...

Mycroft had been right to be afraid of John and what he could do.

"H-he g-gave it t-to me! He s-said that I sh-should g-get money f-from you!" the misery in front of him stuttered, "He s-said i-it would p-protect m-me!"

"He lied. Where did you get it?" John pressed the blade a little harder against the skin, feeling its thirst as if it was his own. He smelt the urine that flooded the other man's legs and grinned, tight and feral in his face, tasting victory.

"Warehouse four seven two," the dry whisper ghosted across John's cheeks and he grunted, eyeing the sad specimen in front of him for a moment more before slamming his victims head against the wall hard enough to knock him out for a few hours. Without even waiting to watch the man fall, John turned and walked towards the Thames and the warehouses that clustered around the port.

This man had been given his face and a series of knives, along with a mission to attack John. He was not the only one - John had taken a total of sixteen knives from various men and women over the last few weeks. None of them had been charged. It seemed that Moriarty had finally realised that the newest Mage of London was on the hunt for him and was attempting to lure John into a trap. It had certainly taken the genius long enough to realise that he was being hunted - John had been sending bad luck his way via sympathetic magic for a month. He'd only quit Baker Street once Moriarty had finally begun an active hunt for him, not wanting to lure the man back towards his lover.

Whatever damage had been done to him at the Pool, Moriarty had spent his recovery time studying up. John had no doubt that he was walking into some elaborately dressed ritual designed to catch his magic and enslave it to Moriarty's will.

The master criminal had no idea what he was up against.

TBC

Disclaimer - settings and characters as depicted in the BBC series not mine. No money being made. Plot is mine