EDIT 5/15/2016: If anyone's posted reviews for this chapter and the previous one, I've received the emails for them but they've been removed from this story. I'm not sure how or why. I haven't done it and I'm confused as to what's going on. If anyone knows, please tell me. That'd be greatly appreciated.
A/N: Sorry for the delay. The Castle gang took over the majority of this chapter but don't worry. The main Shadowhunter teams will return next chapter. Promise. Part of it is already written. ^_^
Also, the unnamed character speaking at the beginning of this chapter is NOT an OC. He is a canon character who will be named later on.
Chapter summary: In which Dot's death is witnessed, the Castel gang investigate the Fray home, and Castle is a master storyteller.
12: Silent Witness
e wept for her because someone had to. He hadn't known her for long and a part of him suspected he was at least partially responsible for capturing her, but she had been nice to him when he'd woken up in confusion. His first clear thought at the time had been disorientation. He recognized the cage he currently sat in. It was what he usually saw these days when he was lucid and had almost become a safe haven of sorts.
But this time, he wasn't alone. She'd been there. He could tell she was a warlock from her warlock mark: leathery wings that were broken and useless on the floor behind her. It must have been hard hiding them with a glamour all the time. Her magic was probably too low to keep them hidden any longer. Her hair was brown, matted with dried blood, and hung lank around her too pale face. Sweat dripped down her face as fearful exhaustion clouded her eyes.
He just barely make out a puncture wound on her throat and felt himself wilt. She probably wouldn't make it, just like the others who came before her. But at least he had someone to talk to for a short while. He didn't know how long he had before his next dose drove him back into oblivion. It wouldn't be long though. It never was.
She hadn't trusted him at first. She refused to speak so he spoke until he had no more words left. It was nice to talk to someone who would listen, even if they didn't have much of a choice.
Finally, she started talking too. She said her name was Dot. She'd been captured trying to help a friend escape. He admired Dot's bravery and sacrifice and told her so. He kept to himself the thought that it hadn't been worth much. The woman Dot had tried to protect now hovered in cocoon of green magic not ten feet from their cages.
After a while, they fell silent and he'd let his eyes drift shut. When he'd opened them again, it was to the sharp clang of metal. He boinked blearily and saw the warlock woman Dot sneaking out of her cage. She'd gotten out? How? Somehow Dot had managed to muster just enough magic to escape, but she didn't run like he expected her to. He sat up and watched her. She stared at him when she saw him move, fear evident in her face. She must have expected him to scream and give away her escape.
He wouldn't.
After a tense few seconds of silence, Dot slunk over to the hovering woman in the magical green shroud and whispered to her.
"I know you can hear me," she'd called softly to the woman. "Clary is safe. She got away. She'll be okay, I promise."
Clary? Who was Clary? His thoughts were interrupted by footsteps. "Dot!" he coughed weakly.
She turned to him, her face contorting in terror when a Shadowhunter rounded a corner and saw her free. The man grabbed her by the hair and slammed her against the table of vials and syringes. She cried out and sobbed in pain, struggling against her attacker.
He couldn't help her from his prison. He could just watch helplessly as the Shadowhunter began strangling her. But somehow Dot stabbed the Shadowhunter in the neck with a syringe crippling her attacker. He watched her crawl across the floor in a desperate last attempt to get away when the man he -hated!- loved arrived. Valentine.
He couldn't help but lift his gaze and scoot closer to the bars, staring at Valentine, the man responsible for the mishmashed emotions roaring inside of him, in horrified awe. The soft white glow of a seraph blade lit the room before disappearing in Dot's body, killing her slowly.
He shuddered and swallowed hard over his dry throat. He could still hear Dot's screams in his head even after she had finally fallen silent and her body thudded limply on the floor.
"Awake I see?" Valentine said, turning to him. The man smiled and approached his cage, stepping over the dying Shadowhunter and picking up another syringe from the table as he did so. "Hear anything interesting?" he asked casually.
He shook his head and gazed longingly up at Valentine. "Don't do this," he whispered, his voice raw and weary. "Please."
Valentine merely smiled, grabbed his collar and yanked him flush against the cage bars thrusting the syringe needle into his throat. Tears leaked from his eyes as the substance burned through his veins like a physical blow making him dizzy and disoriented. It hurt but he had long ago learned better than to scream. It wouldn't be long before the darkness consumed him again. Valentine gave him a comforting pat on the head, chuckled, and returned to the table of chemicals.
The last thing he remembered was the floor racing up to meet him.
Then darkness.
When Kate Beckett ducked under the yellow crime scene tape, she immediately noticed the puddle of blood in the middle of the small green space that served as a patio. The wrought iron gate creaked in a breeze behind her giving the whole place an eerie atmosphere.
"That's a lot of blood," she heard Castle say as he stepped up next to her.
She nodded. Whoever this blood belonged to probably didn't live very long afterwards. She looked up to the building ahead of them. There was a small antiquities shop on the first floor and the Fray's loft on the second floor. It was a similar setup to the Bane place. She nudged Castle and strode into the building when she caught sight of Detective Esposito through the window.
The inside of the building was strikingly similar to the Bane place as far as the mess was concerned. "This doesn't look good," she said, eyes taking in the debris.
"It's not," Esposito said, walking up to her. "You should see the apartment upstairs. You think the Bane loft was bad." He whistled lowly. "One of the rooms was burnt and there's blood spatter everywhere."
Beckett turned to Castle who's usual excitement at the prospect of a new story was replaced by depressed silence. They both knew this would most likely end badly. "Alright," Beckett said, preparing herself for the worst. "Show us what you got."
Esposito nodded and turned to walk purposefully over to the stairs. "The first floor is trashed," he said. "Whoever did this was looking for something. It wasn't all just for the sake of causing mayhem."
He stepped out of the stairwell to what appeared to be a spacious, open floor plan loft with large windows and light colored wood and brick walls and cabinetries. Had it still been daylight, Beckett was sure the windows would have lit the place very well.
"This way," Javier called from a dark hallway on the other side of the stairs.
Beckett and Castle walked down the hallway and noticed the blood splattered across the walls and floor.
"This is where the action happened," Esposito said. "Can't tell definitively without a blood spatter expert, but it looks to me like a serious fight broke out. My guess is the Frays fought back and then booked it out of here fast."
"You think they're still alive," Beckett said, meeting her friend's eyes with interest.
"I know the daughter, Clarissa Fray, is alive," Esposito said handing his superior a camera. "Ryan and I tailed the Lewis kid and guess who he went to meet?"
Beckett took the camera and scrolled through the pictures, eyebrows rising to her hairline when she recognized the Fray girl and none other than-
"Is that Magnus Bane?" Castle asked, pointing to the dark haired man walking into the café with Clary. The next picture was a bit hard to make out through the café windows but Kate could still see Simon hugging both Clary and Magnus. "Well well well. Somebody's keeping secrets," Castle said in a playful tone, regaining his usual giddiness.
"When were these taken?" Kate asked.
"Literally right before Ryan and I got here," Esposito said. "Bane and the Fray girl left first then Simon left ten minutes later."
"Did you try to follow them?" Castle asked curiously.
The detective gave Castle an exasperated look. "Course we did. Ryan got out and followed them on foot," he said. "But get this," he said, looking back to Beckett, "he said they turned into a dead end alley and vanished."
"Vanished?" Beckett repeated.
"Yep. That's what he said." Esposito shrugged. "You can ask him yourself if you want. He's in the room at the end of the hallway." He waved to the room at the far end that several forensics techs walked out of.
"We'll do that, thanks." She handed the camera back to Esposito and made her way down the hall towards the bedroom.
"Did you hear that?" Castle asked excitedly. "Vanished." He made a barely contained giggle of excitement. "Books, Tarot cards, mysterious mixtures sold in small glass vials, a strange man who can string along an artist and a goody two-shoes nerd. You know what that means? Magic."
"Magic?" Kate deadpanned, tossing a flat stare over her shoulder at the writer trailing after her.
"It makes sense," Castle defended. "How many stories have you read or movies have you seen where the good kids meet someone who's just a bit odd and introduces them to Tarot or a ouija board or something like that and poof! Plot happens?" He rolled his shoulders proudly. "Slightly overused trope but still interesting."
"Whatever Castle," Kate said barely containing an eye roll. "This is the real world. There is no magic in the real world, just human nature."
"That you know of," Castle countered with a wink.
Kate groaned and stepped into the bedroom. She was immediately caught off guard by the sight. Esposito had told her a room had been burned but she didn't realize he actually meant burnt almost to a crisp. The walls were blackened from soot and burn scars. The bedspread and once colorful curtains were now threadbare and singed. Hardly anything was left untouched.
"What happened here?" she breathed.
"A small contained fire," a petite woman with brown skin and black hair tied back in a ponytail said. She stepped around Castle and Beckett so she stood in the room.
"Hey Lanie," Kate said. "Thanks for coming."
"Don't worry about it," Lanie Parish, the medical examiner, said. "I've got the lackeys getting swabs of the blood and anything we can use shipped back to the lab for analysis."
"We may need it," Ryan said, dropping a hair from the hole in the floorboards into a plastic evidence bag, sealing it tight. He handed the bag to Lanie as he stood. "Whatever burned in here was serious."
"It was a concentrated blaze," Lanie said stepping carefully around ash covered floor. "It burned hot and fast. From the looks of it, I'm surprised it didn't spread to the rest of the apartment. It should have but it didn't. It burned here around the bed area," she said, indicating the remains of a mattress and bedposts, "spread to the rest of the room, then just...stopped."
"Did someone put it out?" Kate asked.
Ryan shook his head. "Not that we can tell," he said. "There's no fire extinguisher foam, no water, no way to cut off the oxygen..." He shrugged helplessly. "I've got nothin'."
"Well hopefully I won't have nothing once I get back to my lab," Lanie said, looking back at the wall by the window. She brushed some ash away with her gloved hand. "There's something drawn on the wall under the soot. Hey Kevin," she called to Detective Ryan, holding out her other hand. "Give me an evidence bag, please."
"Sure."
She took the offered bag and scraped the soot into the bag. "Did Javier get the pictures?" she asked.
"Yep. Do want you want," Ryan said. "That okay with you?" he asked his superior.
Beckett nodded. "Yeah, yeah. Don't let me stop you."
Lanie waved and began scraping the soot off in earnest, careful not to damage whatever was drawn on the wall beneath. "What do you make of this?" she asked, pointing to the now uncovered symbol.
"What is it?" Kate asked, taking out her phone to take a picture of the symbol.
"No idea," Ryan said. "Never seen it before."
"Neither have I," the medical examiner said thoughtfully.
"I'm telling you," Castle said in a sing-song voice. "Magic." The three experts all shot him a look of disdain. Castle just shrugged. "Give me a better answer," he challenged.
None of them could. The strange looping symbol reminiscent of a down-pointing arrowhead wasn't something that they could easily forget. Come to think of it-
"Actually," Ryan said, turning back to the symbol and pointing to it as if trying the grasp a memory. "I think I have seen this before. Yeah," he said, warming to the subject. "It was spray painted on the Lewis kid's van. Hey Jav!"
"Yeah," came the answer from the hallway.
"Come check this out." Detective Ryan waited until his partner poked his head into the room before speaking again. "Remember this?" he asked, pointing to the symbol.
Javier's forehead crinkled for a moment then cleared. "Oh yeah. Simon had that on his van. Think it means something?"
"Now that," Castle began, stepping up to the wall for a closer look, "is interesting."
"This can't be a coincidence," Kate said. "Esposito, call the office and check if Simon's still there," she ordered. "He was filling out his statement when Castle and I left I think. "
"Will do." The Hispanic detective pulled out his phone and dialed the precinct as he walked down the hall to be heard over the ruckus from the forensics team.
"We need Simon back there as soon as possible," she said, turning back to the symbol on the wall. "This looks hand drawn," she murmured, reaching out to brush her fingers over the art. She turned around to study the room more closely. "And the decorations in here are young; too young to belong to a mother."
"Didn't Detective Garroway say something about Clary Fray being an artist?" Ryan asked.
"Yeah," Kate murmured. "He said she was accepted to the Brooklyn Academy of Art."
"So not just an artist, but a good artist," Lanie said, studying the symbol again with more appreciation now.
"If this was Clary's room," Castle said thoughtfully, "and she was alive what? An hour ago? With that Magnus guy?" He whistled. "The plot thickens."
"Is this a gang sign?" Lanie asked.
Ryan hummed and shook his head. "Doesn't look like any I've seen," he said. "But I'll check with Organized Crime just in case. See if they recognize it."
"It could be a cult thing," Castle offered after a moment. He refused to shrink back when everyone in the room gave him a chorus of doubtful stares. He raised his hands and said, "Think about it. A man moves into the apartment just down the way," he began. "He's nice, good with kids, a bit odd but nothing more than the average Mother Earth mystic type person. He's eccentric and different which attracts the local youth. They flock to him because he doesn't judge their oddities and out-of-the-norm preferences. He accepts them, welcomes them, befriends them, makes them feel special. Maybe introduces them to a few things. Nothing serious." He pauses. "At first."
"Over time, he draws them in like moths to a flame." He has them. "They become loyal to him, and only him, to the point they defend him to anyone who slights him." They're his. "Even a loving mother who just wants her children to be safe. But he has plans, things to do, and he needs his new followers to help him." His audience. "His cult is small, but it's a family. Everyone loves one another, everyone cares for one another, everyone..." He smiles. "Protects one another. Then it comes time for him to leave. He's been here too long anyway, there are more places he has to go, more people, more young people he needs to bring under his wing. They would all leave together."
"It was supposed to be a smooth break," he continues. "But something happened. Something he didn't anticipate. Someone discovered him. Someone who hates him. Maybe a parent of another child he took under his wing. Maybe a rival. Maybe he decided to break away from the cult to strike out on his own. Maybe the cult leader doesn't like such a charismatic underling and the bright young followers he drew in leaving. Whatever it was, our eccentric uncle is forced to flee taking his followers with him. But they can't go all at once, they have to spread out an-"
"And then the dread Cthulhu rises from the deep and slaughters everyone in their sleep," Esposito said strolling back into the room.
Instantly the mood is lost. Javier smirks in fond amusement as his partner Ryan blinks in bewilderment. Kate Beckett has a mildly annoyed expression on her face and Lanie merely rolls her eyes.
"Really?" Castle exclaimed to the detective. "I was just getting to the good part."
"You had me going there for minute," the medical examiner said, shaking her head.
"Yeah," Beckett said, eyeing Castle flatly. "Let's focus on the facts not fiction." She gave the famous author currently serving as her partner The Look and he wilted under it.
"Sometimes fiction is more interesting than facts," Castle said with a shrug, nursing his bruised ego.
"Well I deal with facts, not fiction," Beckett said, "and in my experience, reality is often stranger than fiction."
"I still say magic is a perfectly good explanation," Castle said matter-of-factly, straightening his jacket.
Kate rolled her eyes and shared a frustrated look with Lanie.
"Men," Lanie lamented with a fond smile.
Esposito straightened, his smirk falling. "What?" he asked. Lanie raised an eyebrow at him and he cleared his throat awkwardly. "I just called the office and Simon's gone," he said, turning his attention back to his superior after a quick glance at the medical examiner. "He left an hour or so ago."
"Do we know where he went?" Beckett asked attentively.
"No."
"Alright, we need to find him," she said taking charge. "I need some answers."
"Alexis may still be there," Castle said suddenly, pulling out his phone. "I'll call her and ask."
He speed dialed his daughter and waited patiently for her to pick up, but she never did. It rang and rang until it finally went to voicemail. Strange. He shot her a text. No response within the usual thirty seconds. Two more unanswered calls and voicemails later and the worried father opened the Find Friends app. Alexis icon appeared near the docks in the meat packing district of Manhattan Island.
"Why...?" he murmured. "Hey Kate," he asked as they stepped back out into the cool night air. "Do you know where this is?"
He held out his phone for the detective to see the icon's location. He wasn't sure what to make of the expression that crossed her face. "Club Hardtail," she said. "It's a bar and dance club. A local biker gang is based there." She shook her head. "It's not the best place to go alone although I hear they throw some popular parties."
"Hardtail, what?" Castle studied his phone screen in disbelief. "Oh Alexis, you are in trouble."
Beckett smirked. "Need a ride?" she asked, nodding to the phone.
"If you don't mind," Castle said. "If she thinks it's okay to sneak out, then it shouldn't be a problem to be escorted back."
Beckett snickered and twirled her keys around her finger before climbing into her car. "This should be fun."
