Chapter Twenty-One: Tempest
Thanks to my amazing beta, Greeneyedconstellations!
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The storm rolled over them, hot and dry and crackly. It brought loss.
They went alone. JJ moved slowly, as though aged inexorably by events, one arm hunched around her belly and the other clutching the box containing everything she'd given for duty. Hotch and Emily watched as the elf of ice and snow stood surrounded by humid heat and sand, facing the oncoming storm with her hair loose in the stinging wind.
Like the desert itself, it was fierce and openly dangerous, long forked tongues of lightning lighting up the purple clouds and casting shadows of grey and black on them. They waited.
Waited for the rain.
The rain wasn't her element at all, but as it swept in, JJ welcomed it and asked it to bring a taste of home.
It shifted. Emily knew storms; she hadn't been a part of Spencer's life for this long without him showing her the vibrant heart that they contained. She'd flown with him through them, curled up safe and warm at home and watching through his eyes as he beat his wings in the rain and whooped as the squalls tried and failed to throw him to the ground. He took no greater joy from anything than he did from flying in a tempest.
She knew the curious anger that was the closest approximation of human emotion a storm could manage. She knew they were savage, gleefully violent, utterly, fantastically merciless.
Because she knew all this, she was rigid waiting for the storm to deny JJ's plea. In this desert, far from home and the ice that JJ was born from, this was their only hope of absolution. Not like the winter would have; the winter would have mourned with them because winter was just as deadly, but far, far gentler. This storm didn't know nor care what had been lost.
There was a long stretch of time where the three of them stood in a lopsided triangle, Emily's shoulder brushing against Hotch's as the rain fell without cooling them at all. JJ stood in front with her shoulders straight and her face tipped up towards the sky. Her heart in her hands, her magic evading her.
Maybe it would have ignored her, but Emily felt for his magic she still possessed—that thin thread that felt like lightning and books and something that was familiar and comforting—and threw it out into the iron-scented atmosphere.
Please, she said, closing her eyes and mouthing the words with rain on her lips. The storm turned its regard towards her and she wondered if, somewhere, a demon flew within it. This loss is as much a part of you as it is the ice. He would have called a storm demon family. Take him home.
And the storm did. It allowed, just for this brief moment, winter to come to the desert.
The rain turned cold and sharp. The sand froze into shards under their boots. The clouds darkened, lost their purple cast as ice whirled around them. Whirled around JJ and her hands and the box and swallowed her. It was impossible to tell where storm ended and elf began, and Emily quickly stopped trying because there was a part of her that knew there was no real difference. For a single, haunting moment, there was a form in the ice that could have been a child or a sprite or even just an unlikely twist of the wind, but it was gone in a heartbeat and left behind an empty void.
Then it was over and the desert returned. JJ walked back to them as the humidity built once more, her hands empty and her eyes red.
Thank you, Emily said, and the storm took that remaining thread of Spencer's power and the gift JJ had offered it and laughed as it leapt away.
Emily wondered if any of this was worth it.
.
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The camp was eight miles from Riyadh, the atmosphere stifled compared to the hopeful air that had characterized the one at Ramadi. Unlike the neat rows that Emily had become accustomed to, this one was laid out in a circular fashion, each tent set on a point of a circle and connected to the next by deep incisions into the sand at Emily and Eris's strict direction.
The camp was a rune, and in the centre was Doyle.
Within the command post, he was bound by a demon trap strengthened by every rune in their considerable arsenal. There was no escape, even for someone who could turn to smoke and slink away through the smallest of gaps.
Around him, she had drawn a rune of her own devising. It was concentric, spiralling out in glowing blue on the canvas floor and creating three evenly spaced circles around him. They would allow others to join him in his casting without becoming physically vulnerable to him.
Within one, Emily sat cross-legged, hands on her knees and credentials gleaming blue on one palm, a simple sleep-rune inked on the other. If at any point her credentials changed colour to reflect distress, whoever was watching over her would only have to draw a finger through it and break a single line to wake her.
Within another, Garmr curled nose to tail. Within the third, Eris could crouch in the event that Doyle attempted anything untoward.
They were three days in, and he hadn't so far.
In fact, he'd been almost… helpful.
"Wink if you need us," Eris whispered on the third day, Hotch nodding along sternly. "I'll be there before he can say boo."
"Boo," muttered Doyle, right as Emily closed the rune on her hand. It was a quick plunge from being in the command tent, smelling sand and heat and Hotch's cologne to there being nothing but sand and scrub, interspersed with thin trees twisted from harsh sea winds. The end of the road she's standing on plunges suddenly into a cream-gold beach, waves lapping against the sand and deepening into azure as they vanish into the white-capped horizon.
Emily takes a breath that tastes of thyme and salt and the faintest hint of livestock, and sighs.
She hadn't told Hotch about this when she'd reported that Doyle was being… helpful. It hadn't seemed necessary.
"Beautiful," Doyle says quietly, stepping up beside her, and she feels her lip curl with disgust, because it is beautiful, and he's sullying it with his presence.
But when she turns to tell him this, he's looking at her instead of the view.
"I know how much you love Greece," he adds, and smiles like a memory. A memory of the man she'd fooled.
Her heart is hammering, scared of something, and she knows he can feel it.
The ocean blows away in a whirl of salt and sulphur and Garmr pads up to them. Hunt, he demands, snapping his jaws at Doyle. Leave her alone.
Doyle smiles again, sly this time, and leads them through the dream-paths. They're chasing the faintest hint of a storm on that far off horizon. That storm gets no closer no matter how long they walk, as the world around them twists like a dream, like a memory, turning faded and grey and patched at the edges. She wonders if Doyle is even really trying to help them find Spencer, or if he's deliberately staying five steps behind him.
She knows they're somewhat on the right track, because there are flavours of Spence here, sometimes.
A memory of her laugh. The sensation of Declan's arms around her neck. A fierce, predatory love clinging to a small boy's shoulder. They're only remnants, but she recognises them once Doyle shows her what to look for. Some of them. Some are unfamiliar.
And as they find more, he grows quieter. The hound snuffs and occasionally bays as he traces a scent.
"Problem?" she asks Doyle finally, when they've been walking for hours without him turning the ground under their feet to lilacs or scenting the air with the perfume he used to buy her. "You're not being as mouthy as usual."
He's staring at a battered toy, a rabbit, laying sprawled and forgotten with its limbs tangled in the brush at the side of the road, and he says, "That's enough for today."
She blinked. Opened her eyes. Doyle was hunched into himself, the others stretching out cramped limbs and preparing to leave him. Outside, the afternoon moved on. They'd begun at dawn.
"Come on," Clyde coaxed, helping her up when her legs wobbled under her. "Let's go see your friend before dinner. Give it a rest for tonight."
They weren't any further away from their goal, but they were hardly any closer either. One look at Doyle's grim expression and Emily couldn't help but wonder, how much longer will he help us?
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.
It was becoming an obsession.
So close, so hauntingly close; she couldn't get her mind away from the tantalizing prospect of the storm they chased. She ate a dinner that she couldn't remember; visited JJ in the medical tent where she was still tired and sore and furious to be side-lined; then, instead of returning to her bunk to sleep, she found herself waiting until the others had retired for the night in order to slip back into the dimly lit interior of the command.
"Missed me?" Doyle asked. He was curled in the confines of the circle, head on a pillow and his arm propping both up. A camp blanket was folded next to him, next to an empty bowl. His voice mocked her, but his eyes were fatigued, his skin grey and loose. He looked… old. Tired and old and sad, and Emily felt drained looking at him.
But she couldn't walk away.
"Have enough juice for another go?" she asked, and the hungry look returned to his dark eyes. She stepped forward. "He's close. I know it."
She felt as hungry as he looked. Something was happening. Somewhere, something important was happening and drawing her in. She could feel it in her mind, her blood, her magic.
"You know," he said with a wide grin. "If we were physically touching, my range would be stronger."
"You fucking wish," she snapped, and took her place in the circle. Ink on her palm, closing the rune. Doyle sighed, lowered his hands to the rune, and muttered something about her being incorrigible.
"This is different," Emily notes instantly, the world around them narrowing. Pointing them in a singular direction. Doyle is quiet for a long moment. The air tastes of rain.
"He is close," he says reluctantly. "My magic is tracing him. He must be asleep. Look." He turns on the spot, foot shifting the dirt, and the world widens. Emily blinks, her eyes blurring as the world folds over multiple times, each slightly different but also almost the same. "See. Others around us sleep. And if I focus on one…" The world narrows again, altered this time, and ice coats Emily's tongue and lips. The sky is darkened. Misery presses in on them.
"Get out," snarls Emily, backing up. "Get away from her, you bastard. Why the fuck would you even touch her after what you did?"
One final time, it shifts. The same as when they began, except Doyle is morose. Guilty.
Something in her chest tightens. It's hard, so fucking hard, to see him look this shattered and remember those hands are the ones who took her Sergio from her, those eyes watched him die, that mouth laughed as it happened.
"She is right," Doyle says, and walks down that narrowing path. "Jennifer, I mean. I never… I didn't realize she was pregnant. You know I wouldn't have harmed her if I'd known. But they appeared out of nowhere, came in casting, and I… panicked. Thought they were slavers. Thought I was going to end up like your beau, and then who would help Declan?" He looks sincere.
Looks can be deceiving, and she doesn't trust him an inch.
"Reid's not bound," she reminds him. "He's helping Declan. Why is that so hard for you to grasp?"
Doyle's mouth curls. "Helping him now, perhaps," he says, and the ground under them quivers with his temper. "But how long will that last, sweetheart? Don't you feel it? That mind we're following? It doesn't feel quite so clean anymore, does it?"
She ignores him, but she can't help but look towards the distant storm. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just magic. Familiar magic.
Familiar magic, but at its heart, somehow tainted. Darker. Hungrier.
Her hip itches. "Go to hell," she growls. "Like I have any desire to listen to a thing you say. Not after Sergio. After what you did to Reid. After what you did to me. You're so fucking sure that you're in love with me, and yet you would have killed me that night. Now you want my trust?"
"Oh, I'm not in love with you." Doyle is frowning, his magic testing the world. It coats her skin, making her feel oily, gross. Scratching at her hip, she tries to shake the feel of it from her mind. But it itches. It itches and burrows and there's a thread of it within her, as though someone is tugging a thin spool from her centre. "Not anymore. You made sure of that when you killed Lauren. But I could be, Emily, don't you see? I love the idea of you. Us, a family. More of a family than he can ever be—"
She's ignoring him, reeling. Pressing her hand against her hip and breathing deeply to try and focus, to regain some control. What the fuck is happening?
The storm whispers her name.
Doyle hasn't noticed. "—you and Declan. He loves you. Thinks the world of you, dreams of you as his mom, his real mom. And I know you dream of him, despite you blocking me out with your precious runes. Know you want to see him grow, see the man he's going to be one day… do you think Spencer fucking Reid can give you that? A child? He can't, you know—"
The heart of the storm is spilling over, the darkness within lashing out. Emily is trapped in its path. Frozen. Doyle doesn't stop.
"—half-breeds can't sire children. I'd happily… what is that?"
Emily doesn't know.
But it's hungry and hurt and terrified and she's somehow connected to it.
Doyle snaps her out of it. "It's him!" he roars, and blurs as he draws his magic up and shouts for Garmr, reaching for the hound's sleeping mind. "He's casting! We can track him!"
He's casting. Spencer's casting.
Her hip is on fire, and it doesn't feel like him at all.
The hound bounds out of nowhere, nostrils flaring, and charges towards the storm with a wild howl and someone was shaking her, grabbing her shoulders. Her eyes snapped open, finding Hotch inches from her face with his mouth slack with shock and his expression wild.
"The hell do you think you're doing without backup?" he shouted, but she shook him off and looked past him to where Doyle was still limp on the floor, his eyes white and form faded at the edges.
The flap of the tent ripped open, Carrick bursting in with his coat half on and shoes undone.
"We found him," Emily stammered, smelling sulphur. Carrick eased back and grinned. "He cast and we found him."
"Excellent!" Carrick boomed, turned on his heel and striding out. "I thought so when Garmr had a bit of a turn—I'll alert Cruz, get everyone moving."
"Why don't you look happy about this?" Hotch asked, before the sound of Carrick's footsteps had even faded. Emily shrugged helplessly, her eyes aching and head throbbing, and she could smell the faintest hint of a foxy musk nearby. Clyde. Watching. Hiding himself from even her.
Listening.
"He didn't feel right," she said finally, despite not wanting Clyde to hear her admit this, because Hotch needed to know. "His magic. It didn't feel right and…" Her hip seared and she twisted under his hands, staring at the pale, unmarked skin. "Something is wrong, Aaron. Something is so wrong."
Their gazes met, and his was resigned. "Something's been wrong since Doyle started this," he murmured, helping her up. "All we can do is hope it's something that we can fix at the end of it all. Come on. We're close now, and I need your help."
Following him, she frowned. "With what?"
His laugh was bitter and filled with regret. "JJ."
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Like a demented tennis match, Emily's head followed JJ as she paced across the tent with her back ramrod straight, shoving belongings into her bag. Back, forth, back, forth.
Hotch and Cruz stood together, both looking oddly similar in their shared irritation with her.
"You're not coming," Cruz said, folding his arms. "We've already organized for you to med-evac out with one of our healers and meet with the recovered children in Israel. We have allies there working to smooth over the treatment process of any slaves we free, but we need someone on site."
"You're sidelining me." JJ's mouth thinned, face pinching. It was testament to the limited effects of the painkillers and healing she'd been undergoing that even a shred of her discomfort was visible on her countenance. "Are you doubting my ability to do my job?"
"You're still unwell," Hotch said, quieter but no less firm. "I have absolute faith in you, JJ. Which is why I want you to take the med-evac to Tel Aviv. Those children need someone steady, someone who can protect them from anyone who still wishes them harm. Until this cell is wiped out, they're in danger."
"Hotch is right," Cruz added. Emily watched JJ carefully, for any sign that she was listening. There was a slow, cold anger still burning in her that had Emily worried… it wasn't the kind of anger that gave way easily to logic or calm rationality. Emily and Spencer both had tempers that flared and burned out quickly. JJ's temper, in comparison, felt a lot more durable. Glacial. But just as monumentally destructive. "There is every chance that if anyone from the cell discovers the children's whereabouts, they will attempt to retrieve them. If I thought you were injured beyond your ability to work, I'd be sending you home. You know that."
"Emily?" JJ turned on her, expression unreadable.
Emily didn't answer, not immediately. There were several outcomes here, and goddammit, her brain was starting to work like Spencer's if she was considering outcomes and probabilities.
JJ might, unhappily, agree with their points. That was best case scenario. Worst case? She refused, decided to tag along come hell or high water, and Emily would 'offer' to draw a pain-assistance rune on her to alleviate her discomfort, and accidentally switch it out for a sleep-rune so they could pile her onto the med-evac chopper before she woke up. That was worst case because, while it didn't end with JJ following Reid's route to what appeared to be Dubai, of all places, it would end with JJ never speaking to any of them ever again.
Not one of her outcomes resulted in JJ coming along to retrieve their wayward demon.
She decided to be savage. "I think," she said, swallowing down the Machiavellian-feel of this moment, "that when we find Spencer, I'd rather tell him that the children he risked everything to save are safe with you… rather than tell him they're still in danger because you were too proud to know when to quit."
JJ stared at her. Her eyes were ice. "Okay," she said, finally. "Okay. I'll go. But don't you dare come home empty-handed, Emily Prentiss. And don't you dare die."
The grin that she slipped on for JJ's benefit was crooked, sly, and only a little bit amused. "I try not to make a habit of it," she said, and it was only really half a lie.
.
.
Emily took the chance to grab an actual nap three hours out from Dubai, and as soon as she did, Doyle pounced.
"Finally!" he yells, barging into her mind, and she groans. "I've been waiting—come with me."
Before she can tell him to shove it up his arse, he's grabbed her by the arm and dragged her further into the dream. Furious, she readies to call for Eris, for Clyde, for anyone, when she does hear it. A shout.
A familiar shout.
Doyle!
"Is that Spence?" she gasps, stunned at the whispering sound of his voice.
Why would he call for Doyle?
The world around them twists and moves and, faraway, she's vaguely aware of someone touching her body, shaking her. They've noticed Doyle has her. Too soon. Not yet.
They need to—
The world steadies and Spencer is laying on the ground in front of them, back against the wall in a small, rune-locked cell with a man asleep on his lap, face lined with grief and strain. "Spencer!" she cries, stepping forward, but Spencer doesn't react. Doyle is fucking hiding her from him, the bastard! When she tries to turn on him, to scream at him, the ground sinks around her, the air closing in, and she's immobilized and can't do anything but watch.
Spencer's eyes snap open, and he looks up. Meets Doyle's gaze. Swallows and juts his jaw out into a stubborn, determined line, hate tracing his wasted face.
He's skinny. Bloodied. Hair short and choppy and face scratchy with stubble.
And he is different. Painfully different. She burns, in that moment, to crouch next to him and drag him into her arms, smoothing away that difference with her hands and covering the misery lined around his mouth with her own lips, to see if she can coax a smile from him. See if he still tastes the same.
"You're in trouble, pet," Doyle says, his grin wide and bladed with animosity. "You're trapped in a clever, clever cage, and I don't think even a slimy little thing like you can wriggle your way out of this one. Oh, I was going to kill you… but you called so loudly for me, I figured I should at least say hello." Staring at him, her blood turns to ice. He's been ignoring Spencer's cries until she fell asleep so he could bring her to witness this. To watch how he'd planned on betraying them. "Let you know that I'm not going to kill you, because they'll do it so much slower. Maybe they'll bind you first. Oh, how delightful if they do…"
The nausea is violent and she buckles around it. She'll damn him for this. Damn him herself, and she's never learned how to exorcise a demon, but she'll fucking learn for Doyle. She'll throw him down to hell and laugh while she does it.
"I called you to ask for your help," Spencer says, and Doyle laughs. Emily stares. At the cell, the runes, the strange man Spencer wraps his arm around protectively. "Not for me. I'm not asking for myself. I know you'll watch me burn."
"Gleefully," Doyle replies, and his eyes flicker to Emily, with a secret smile just for her. "Who am I helping, demon? Emily? My Emily? Truly my Emily now. Perhaps I'll show her this moment. I think I will… show you caged and beaten and dying, and how alone she is without me."
"I'll fucking kill you," she whispers, and now there are more hands on her body, the cool touch of Eris, and their time is running out.
Eris. Eris needs to see this.
"Eris!" she howls, as loud as she can, and Spencer is still talking like he can't hear her. Because he can't, Doyle is still hiding her, and, "I'm right here! Spencer! Here, look at me! Where are you? Tell me where you fucking are!"
"Declan," Spencer says, choking, his unfamiliar/familiar face crumpling with guilt and grief and she can see love there, too; Spencer isn't the type to protect someone without loving them just a little, or a lot. "He's alone. I can show you where, show you how to undo the shields I placed around him."
Doyle is silent now. He takes a step back, his shoulder almost bumping Emily, and she'd laugh at how shocked he is suddenly, but it's really not funny. "Ask him where," she coaxes, despite her fury. "Where Declan is and where he is. Ask him, Doyle, or I swear to god, I'll be the end of you."
Doyle nods, half a nod; it's for her and Spencer should notice that, but he's hyper-focused on saving Declan and doesn't, despite Doyle doing everything but handing him a sign saying 'Emily Prentiss is standing right the fuck there'. "Why would you give him back to me? After running from me for so long, why now? I would think you'd go happily to your grave knowing you'd thwarted me to the very end."
"Because he's not you!" she spits. "Now fucking ask him!"
"He'll die on his own," Reid says. "I promised to protect him. The slaving cell is based in Greece. Do with that information as you please, but remember that you're not the only one who wants them destroyed." He stops, choked up, and Emily feels the world shifting again, waking, the dream and Doyle and Spencer all fading, and she doesn't know where he is yet, and not yet not yet please not
"No!" she shouted, shooting upright, and almost head-butting Hotch. "Put me back, damnit! It's Spencer—he's with Spencer!"
They exchanged glances, Hotch and Eris. "Where?" Eris asked, shuffling backwards until she was out of the car, leaving Emily struggling to unbuckle her seatbelt where it had wrapped around her while she slept, Hotch still hovering protectively from the front seat.
Before she could answer, Carrick yanked open her door, his face savagely gleeful. "Doyle just gave us an address," he announced to the disconcerted group, and behind him, Garmr growled with anticipation. "We've got the bastards."
.
.
They moved in slowly towards the car the address led them to. Disgustingly slow, with their magic alive and testing every step.
None of them were stupid enough to think they could approach a demon-shielded car without care. Especially not Emily, who was well aware of this particular demon's abilities. Reid was quiet and bookish, and that meant he probably knew all kinds of grossly effective traps for someone wanting to touch something he didn't want touched. Emily had once tried to steal his coffee while he was engrossed in a psychology journal, and had found herself with her vision flipped upside-down and the disconcerting sensation that gravity had reversed itself, while he pulled the journal up over his nose and giggled into the pages.
Garmr wuffed from deep within his chest. "Clear," Carrick said calmly, and they stepped forward again. Emily growled furiously. This. Was. Frustrating.
Each word was a wuff, each wuff was a step.
"Clear," he said again. And again. Once more. Emily rose up on her toes, peering forwards into the darkened, grime-streaked windows of the tan sedan. It looked empty. Looked being the operative word there.
"Prentiss," Carrick said finally, and she crouched with her mind whirling over every detection rune she knew. Think like Spence, she thought, and smiled at the idea. He's not going to rig it to hurt, he doesn't know who'll find it… auditory shielding, innocuous-sight spellwork…
Mind still turning, she placed a palm down carefully on the asphalt below the car. Her skin gleamed slickly with the protection rune she'd placed on the back of her hand to avoid triggering anything, and she found…
Nothing.
There was no spellwork on the car. Or if there was…
"Fuck," she said, standing and ripping open the door to multiple startled outcries at her recklessness. "Shieldings down. Shielding is fucking down!"
And the car was empty. There were bottles of water stacked messily on one side of the backseat, a pile of non-perishables, a folded blanket with runes for cooling stitched through. Books, gouges in the surface of the seating, some half built origami animals made by clumsy, bored hands.
Cruz strode up and his hands flickered with light that burned her retinas to look directly at. "Taken down from the inside," he announced, gritting his teeth. "Looks like the kid did it. Probably watched your men put the runes up and then just undid what they'd done… clever little thing. How long since anyone has been here, Agent?"
Carrick answered for the mute hound. "Seven hours. What are we thinking?"
"He's followed Reid," Emily said, closing her eyes and exhaling angrily at Declan's idiocy. "Reid left him here to be safe and he followed him."
Garmr growled, lowering his muzzle to the ground and snuffing deeply. Barking once, a long, booming sound, he limped away with his tail held high.
"He's got Declan's scent as well," Carrick said, jogging after the dog. After a beat, they followed, holstering guns and slipping illusions over themselves to avoid excessive attention. "They can't be far if they're on foot. Come on. Be ready."
They were over-ready, and the hunt closed in.
.
.
"Do we have the authorization to do this?" Emily pressed her back against the doorframe of the safety exit, smelling the acrid rotting scent of the alley where they were waiting for a signal. Gun in hand, Hotch on the other side of the door, and two more men waiting behind them to move in.
"Absolutely not," Carrick hummed through their earpiece from where they were following Reid's scent through the front door. Hotch's mouth curled very slightly up at the corner as he ducked his head away to attempt to hide his amusement. "Try not to draw any attention to our operation, please."
The men's hands flashed gold. Time to go.
They were unmarked and silent as Emily traced a quick minor-incendiary rune onto the heavy handle on the iron door, feeling the heat radiate out as the lock-and-barrel melted and unclipped, the door swinging open with a low whine of complaint. The halls were silent. The sounds of their footsteps were muted by the luxury carpeting.
"Nice place," Emily said sourly, clearing endless empty rooms decorated with swanky furnishings. "Hate to make a mess." If it wouldn't have been recklessly noisy, she would have shoved one of the over-the-top gilded vases with their haughty ferns, just to prove a point.
Then they stepped into the foyer and found that someone had already done her proud and made a mess. At first glance, there was nothing notable in the room except for how damn empty it was. On second glance, the glimmer of an illusion gave it away.
Cruz destroyed the illusion with an irritated swipe of his magic, proving one more time that Emily never wanted to get on the wrong side of an elf with reason to use magic against her. It revealed destruction. Long streaks of blackened marble stretched across the floor, flaring out at a target point where the molten magic had splattered against a frantic shield. Above and behind that point, the front door was a twisted hulk of glass and steel, both warped almost beyond recognition.
On the unmarked marble between the two points of destruction, blood. Garmr hovered over it, his eyes on Emily, and she swore loudly. And then again, just because couldn't her goddamn shit-fucking-useless boyfriend stay in one piece for a single goddamn day?
"This place is empty," Carrick announced, as his men filtered in, all shaking their heads. "It's been wiped clean. Looks like…" He stopped, expression shifting to concern as he picked something off the floor, laying it flat on his palm and staring at it oddly.
"Looks like they got made," Hotch finished, his gun clicking slightly as he braced it against his knee and crouched forward to trail his fingers across the soot-marked marble. "Surface is still warm. Considering enough heat was applied to warp that steel frame, they may still be alive. We're not far behind them, and they're unlikely to have been executed immediately…"
The rest of that sentence was unspoken, but Emily's blood ran cold despite that.
Not until they've been questioned.
"Can you follow the boy's path if you've lost Agent Reid's?" Carrick asked Garmr. The hound nodded, snuffed the air, and ambled towards a side door, casting a red-tinted look back at them from over his shoulder. "Cruz, can you get your men to bring the vehicles? We're now rushed, if we wish to bring them home alive."
"Aye." Cruz gestured to his people, ducking back out the warped doorway through the small sliver of cleared space. It left them with Carrick, the hound, and two of Carrick's mages as the hound led them back along the path Hotch and Emily had cleared. Back out to the alley. Towards the street. Emily didn't say a word as they tracked Declan, her heart in her mouth and gut twisting painfully, desperately trying not to imagine what was happening to Reid right now, whether Declan had been caught, what they were going to find…
"Wait." Carrick stopped, not even waiting for them to pause before moving faster than Emily had ever seen him move before. Emily jogged after him as he reached a dumpster shoved crookedly against the wall. "Garmr says he moved down here before leaving the other way. I…" Voice trailing off, he squeezed his hand shut before letting it fall open so she could see what he held. A single blackened feather, the tines tangled and singed. "It's a long shot but…"
To her shock, he boosted himself up, a significant feat considering he wasn't exactly a lean man, one foot bracing himself on the side of the dumpster as he rifled through it without a care for his, until now, clean clothes.
And abruptly ripped his hand back, blood dripping from three ragged scores along the meaty part of his thumb. Emily blinked.
"There, there," he murmured, soothing, and reached his hand back down. "Come on. Come on, lad, no fear. Oh, you're hurt, aren't you? Let's get you out of there and fixed up…" A thin hissing noise followed his voice as he continued soothing, turning his head slightly to jerk it at Emily. She inched forward, Hotch following closely, and they both peered past Carrick's hip to where a huddled mass of grey and black and red feathers lay amongst the greenish garbage, almost invisible among the muck. A beak gaped, eyes wide and staring, and Emily could see bloodied skin amongst the mess of feathers.
"A bird, Carrick?" Hotch asked, tugging his jacket off nonetheless and boosting himself up on a crate against the dumpster so he could lean in easier. "Is this worth the diversion?"
"Not just a bird," Carrick said, and Emily thought of Sergio and her heart sunk. "Careful with him… there should be two."
The bird screeched furiously as Hotch threw the coat over-top of him, bundling him up with the easy movements of a man who'd, many a time before, caught a struggling toddler in a towel before he could escape. Unfortunately, the struggling toddler didn't have tearing talons, and the coat—and Hotch's bare arms—were instantly shredded by beak and claw. Despite this, Hotch dropped back to the ground, gripping the bulging coat tightly, and Carrick sighed mournfully.
"Protection detail's over, Gambit," he said softly, and the bird stopped fighting within the confines of the coat, much to Hotch's relief. "I've got her now."
Emily watched as he wrapped his own coat around a smaller, horrifyingly inert bundle, and climbed down with it held as though it was fragile and endlessly precious. If it was what Emily suspected, it absolutely was precious.
"Move out," he ordered, voice forbidding. "I dislike the callous manner of Revenir's disposal. She deserves much more… and her partner will wish to honour her with such. Let's ensure we're not burying them together."
.
.
Emily bailed on the car where Hotch was struggling to hold the furious Gambit still on his lap while the mage worked to heal the weeping burns on the bird's wings before they crippled him. Instead, she climbed into the back of the heavily runed truck where Doyle was an anxious, pacing figure.
"Where is he?" Doyle demanded. "Where is Declan? I told you exactly where to find him, why has he not been found? Why is nobody telling me anything?" The last line was almost shouted, his hands clenched and shoulders shaking.
"If you betray me now, he'll die," she said in lieu of greeting, and Doyle fell quiet. "We need to find Reid, now. What's the fastest way to do that?"
Doyle arched his neck, eyes unfocused. "If he's close enough… I can drag him to us. You have enough of him left within you that I can use that to trap him. But it will be disorienting for all of us if he is awake when I do it, and take a monumental amount of power on my behalf. Can you guarantee my son?"
Emily couldn't. No one could.
"Yes," she lied, and then softened that lie with the truth. "I'll do anything to save him, Ian. Anything."
Doyle smiled tightly. "Well then," he murmured, and stepped aside with a sweeping gesture at the demon trapped floor. "Step into my home. This is going to be a wild ride."
It took every iota of strength she had to breach that final barrier between them. The physical barrier of the trap, and the mental barrier of her absolute abhorrence of his hands on her. But she did. It took an instant. An instant where her breath shortened, her heartbeat raced, and the skin of her chest burned where his brand had marked her.
She initiated the contact because he seemed content to let her make this final, irrevocable move. Their hands touched. Instead of making it painless and gripping her wrists as they kneeled, their knees inches from one another, he slowly trailed the tips of his fingers over her hands, the bone of her wrists, finally gripping her gently with his fingers on her pulse points and a grossly smug smile on his face.
I hate you, she thought savagely, and fought the urge to rip her hands away.
"Ladies first," he said, and dragged her down into the chaotic dark.
.
.
"What?" Spencer cries, blinking at them, and then he's gone. Doyle drags him back. "Stop! Stop! No!"
"Stop fighting us!" she shouts, freeing herself from Doyle and flinging herself towards him. The space around them is a void, distorting as her eyes try to make sense of it, and Spencer is struggling to wake until she wraps her arms around him. "Where are you? Quickly—we're close, we're coming, just tell us!"
He's warm and solid and becomes more of both as she holds him and he realizes who she is, what she is, that she's real and there and begging. There's a wild, staring terror to his eyes when he looks down at her, sagging suddenly as his body catches up to the fact it's not conscious anymore.
And the world slams into existence around them.
"There we go," Doyle says conceitedly, and then moments later, "oh, well, shit."
Because they can see where Spencer is now, exactly where she saw him last, but he's not alone with the man anymore. The man is gone. In his place, there are others. And she'd know them for what they were even if they weren't chattering excitedly about their new 'conquest,' red magic dark enough to be black bubbling from the floor around their feet as they summon it. Send it roiling across the cement to where Spencer is a crumpled, discarded form on the floor, his wings spread-eagled around him and his torso twisted disturbingly from falling.
"What is wrong with him?" one of the necromancers asks in Arabic, magic pausing. Doyle paces, eyes tracing the rune carefully. Emily clutches Spencer's waking mind close, the physical representation of the man under them, and he's shaking convulsively with his face buried in her shoulder and heart hammering so hard and fast she can feel it against her breast. "Why did he fall?"
"Is faking," the other says. "Continue."
On the ground, Spencer's eyes are white, rolled back, victims of the violent force Doyle had used to drag him out. His nightmarish magic pins Spencer to this dream, adding to the fear and confusion of this moment.
"Help me," Spencer moans against her, his pupils huge with fear and breath rasping. "I can't… can't think…"
"Pull back!" she snarls at Doyle. "You're crippling him!"
"They're binding him," Doyle retorts, as the magic resumes and the horrifically familiar magic oozes up Spencer's limbs, peeling the silver binds on his arms away to replace them with their own slick touch. "If I leave, you'll have barely a minute before my magic fades and you'll both wake. And if he doesn't wake up, he has less than five before he's theirs."
A minute.
Her mind races. They can stop this. They've done it before. The rune is seared into her mind.
Plenty of time.
"Get out," she says again, and Spencer's nails scratch against her arms as he scrabbles to stay upright. "Now!"
Doyle does. As soon as he's gone, Spencer straightens, clarity returns, and time begins to run out.
"Focus," she says, grabbing his chin and yanking it around. His eyes widen, stunned, and he gasps, "Emily, oh god, Em—"
"No time, no time," she yammers, and he wavers in her hold. Below them, his body twitches. "We need to replace the rune. Help me."
A deep breath that presses them closer. He hums and the sound rumbles.
"I'm shielded, this binding will kill me," he murmurs out loud, eyes focused on nothing. "It will stop us resuming our bond…"
"Spence," she whines, hating the whine and unable to stop it either, and she can feel him slipping away, falling, and not like this you bastard, not like this. "Jesus, no. Think, fuck you, think! We're on our way, you need to live—"
"I intend upon it," he says, and her arms slip as he fades very slightly. She clings and slides her hand into the narrow space between his pants and hip, dragging her nails across his skin in the shape of their rune, feeling his shield resist her, burning her fingers. He brings his mouth to hers, suddenly, hungrily, tasting her and memorizing her without really noting what he's doing, mind visibly still elsewhere. "I… the shield. It's runes. Made of… fuck, no…" Fades more. His body shudders. Eyes close. "Runes. Help me rework it. We need to remove the part that's fatal."
It's a familiar drop to plunge into his mind properly, not in the weird space of his dream where Doyle had left her. She slams against a shield, thick around his self, and skims along it feeling him working underneath. She can't hear him. Doesn't know what he's doing.
But she knows him well enough to guess.
They work together. Unwinding the shield rune by rune by rune without even pausing to admire the skill in the working. Like a noxious fog racing towards them, she can feel the binding triggering fatally defensive runes, lashing out at him from within and causing blindingly painful agony, slowing him minutely.
Move faster, she screams at herself; he's waking and dying and she's slow, too slow, speeding up, moving faster than she's ever moved before.
Dragging the shield into herself, turning the unfamiliar magic familiar, and returning it.
Searing it into his hip and his heart and feeling him burst suddenly into her mind, the remainder of the shield shattering between them.
"It's done, it's down," he rambles, voice thin, "Now, the rune, quick—"
He vanishes. The room snaps away. She's sitting upright, Doyle hovering overhead and his mouth was moving, shouting, and she screamed something at him and dived back, reaches, reaches, brushes very slightly against a thin, sweet thread of something—
"Fucking work," she shouts at her magic, thrusting it towards him, and he lunges at her voice. Her face felt weirdly hot, blinking as Doyle shook her. "Help me," she snapped at him, and he raised an eyebrow and didn't. She's on her own except for Spencer, and he's dwindling.
"Last go," he says calmly, and she bites her lip hard enough to draw blood and reaches deep into herself again for that magic, that rune. "If this doesn't work, I love you."
"Don't say goodbye," she said angrily, and Doyle laughed.
Their magic touches. She slams the shield back, different but the same, turning the working that should kill him when he's bound into instead something that repels the binding. Uses it to bind them together. It's their rune. The rune they made, the same, but different, and if it works, he'll live. He'll live and she'll be with him. Her hip burns until it doesn't.
He wakes and vanishes.
"Spence?" she calls into her mind, and there's nothing.
Nothing. She can't find the thread. She can't find him.
But she has to try anyway. "Cast!" she calls into that nothing, just in case he's somewhere listening beyond her reach. "Cast as much as you can and we'll find you! Anything!"
The nothing doesn't reply, but from within, it turns dark and hungry and intoxicating. She keeps away, because it's dangerous now and she doesn't know it anymore.
But she calls out once before fleeing.
Live, you bastard.
Please live.
.
.
There was no rune on her hip when she checked. No familiar presence in her mind.
There was, however, a darkling power that simmered and grew and threatened to draw her in. Not threatened.
Called.
And she wanted to go to it. The power was seductive, thrilling… euphoric. She wanted.
As the car they were in drew closer and closer physically to that disturbing power, she brushed against it in her mind. Gasped as it brushed back. As it purred and coiled and sunk into her mind and her body and sent a sharp shock of heat down her spine to pool delightfully between her hips. Hoped the others didn't notice her heart rate or her pupils or the way she folded her legs tightly and pulled away from it before it could devour her.
Clyde's head snapped around, his expression sharp. "Are you okay?" he asked, and she couldn't speak through the wanting. Closed her eyes for a moment, just to collect herself, and when she opened them, they were there. At the compound where Reid was dying.
She hoped.
She kept behind Hotch as everything moved terrifyingly quick. There was a building, modest and unassuming and large enough that Emily groaned. They'd have to split up.
Garmr burst through the door, and they went in casting. The men inside didn't put up much of a fight once Cruz rotted the wooden floorboards out from under them, coaxing the timber into growing up and around the men as Emily and Hotch disarmed them.
Gambit leapt from Hotch's shoulder, and took off one way with a squall.
Garmr went the other.
Emily made her choice and sprinted after Garmr. He was going to Declan. She'd promised to look after Declan.
The hunger grew.
Hotch wasn't at her side anymore. He'd followed Gambit. Her earpiece was alive with orders being barked, Carrick's voice, Cruz's, and gunfire. Mage-fire. She ignored it all.
Found six men clustered around a rune-locked door. She recognised the rune in a heartbeat. Only Reid used that particular type of lock; outdated and overly complex and completely pretentious.
They didn't even know she was there. She shot two men and set another aflame. Garmr made short work of two more. All died and she wasn't sorry because they were between her and that power. Wasn't sorry yet, but maybe later she would be. The last dropped with a scream, his hands on his head, so she leapt over him and snapped the rune with ease, shoving the door open with her shoulder.
Found bodies. The ground littered with bodies, three of them. No Spencer. He wasn't here.
Declan was.
Huddled over a motionless, bloodied form, Declan stared blankly at her with shell-shocked eyes. Garmr growled. Declan's hands and face were red.
"Lauren?" he asked, blinking. His eyelids were white and stark against the men's blood on his cheeks. "They were going to kill Romain. I stopped them. I stopped them. I stopped—"
Her earpiece crackled. "Found cells to the east. Moving in. Hostiles detected." Hotch.
There wasn't time. Two steps forward and she dragged Declan into her arms, checking him swiftly for injuries even as she hugged him. Plenty of them, but none immediately fatal.
The blood came in handy. She lifted her hand to his cheek and drew the sleep rune with three strokes. He crumpled, out cold in seconds. Feeling numb, feeling empty, she laid him alongside the terribly pale man he'd killed to protect, noting the blood pooling around dark curls and matting them to the floor.
"Guard him," she told Garmr, and ran without checking to see if he'd listened.
Ran and ran and the power grew.
Turned a corner and plunged into it. It was a storm and a seduction all at once, and she felt like she was wading through it. Drowning. Barely clinging to her self, out of sheer force of will, knowing that she had to hold on because Hotch had walked into this first.
Found a door. It gaped open. Splintered.
Walked through. Was she holding her gun? Maybe. No? Come here.
Yes.
She almost walked right into Hotch. He was standing, expression blank. His arms held oddly, crookedly, gun almost cocked back towards his chin. Like he'd jerked it away from his target, or turned it on himself, or forgotten it was there. Somewhere, Gambit was screeching, screeching, screeching.
"Report," someone was saying in their earpieces. Neither answered. There were other men in the room. Dead. She was among the dead men.
A living man.
"Spencer," Emily choked, as the power hummed and whispered, die. Gun in her hand for sure now. Gun against her jaw. Why?
"Report, Prentiss. Hotch! Where are you?"
The demon in the middle of the room snarled without snarling, his lip curling back. Hunched in a ball on the ground with his wings arched outward and eyes staring. Black eyes. No whites, just black and staring and wanting and, die, now. Do it.
Not a demon. Not.
Spence. She tasted iron. Tasted copper.
"There's serious casting in the east wing. Cruz says get away. Agents? Agents! Easter, get back here!"
Don't. It's me. The barrel was cold and hard. It cut her lip. Her hand shook.
Please…
Nothing answered her and he was lost.
I love, she thought, and found the trigger.