Chapter Thirty Six
"I think he was lonely without you." Dr. Stapleton smiled as she unlatched a waist high gate in a lab at Baskerville and Ares came bounding out, circling and nipping at Lestrade's jeans eagerly.
"You missed me?" Lestrade grinned, leaning down and extending his hand.
Ares jumped away cautiously and Lestrade let him do as he pleased.
"I think he needed to see a familiar face." Dr. Stapleton sighed, shaking her head. "Couldn't get him to stop barking and biting for hours while we treated him."
"Ah..."
Earlier, on the moors...
"I hope you know what you're doing, Mister Lestrade." Major Barrymore said quietly as he and several other military men crept quietly across the wet ground in the darkness.
"Oh come on, even if it was nothing, you were dying for a little action." Lestrade teased. "A little surprise drill is good for the reflexes. You'll stagnate here without a little excitement."
Major Barrymore smirked at that. "I won't argue with you there."
"Alright." Lestrade nodded gratefully. "Keep your men fanned out over the moors and out of sight. I'm expecting another visitor. Keep an eye out. And if things get rough..." Lestrade patted him on the shoulder. "You've got guns."
Major Barrymore looked at him. "You're not armed?"
"I don't want to risk it." Lestrade said, despite realizing the irony of the situation.
"It's a bigger risk not to take a weapon with you, Sir." Corporal Lyons cautioned dutifully.
"Noted." Both senior combat veterans responded simultaneously, tones dry as bone.
"Well then, Major..." Lestrade nodded. "Keep an eye out and mark anybody who ventures into the woods. Glad to be rid of that damn map. Now you can send me texts and I'll actually see them."
Major Barrymore looked slightly confused, but nodded back curtly.
Lestrade jogged off into the woods and followed his ears to where Sherlock, John, and Henry were.
"Sherlock!" he called out when he saw them.
Then, he belatedly saw the gun in Henry Knight's hand.
"Okay." John was saying to the hysterical man soothingly. "It's okay, mate."
After a moment, Henry let John take the gun away from him and everybody breathed a little easier.
"What the Hell is going on?" Lestrade asked John as Sherlock attempted to explain his theory about the Hound to Henry.
"It was a drug." John said to him. "We were drugged."
"Christ, are you alright?" Lestrade asked, concernedly.
"Yeah, we-..."
John's sentence was cut off by a heart-stopping howl.
Everybody jumped and whirled around, eyes directed upward.
Lestrade discreetly slipped his hand into his pocket but there were no notifications from Major Barrymore.
He felt cold.
The sound of the sea in his ears was deafening as blood rushed through his body, fully triggering his fight or flight response. Distantly, he could hear Henry whimpering and groaning. John shouting something at Sherlock. And then John's flashlight suddenly blinding him.
"-...g, are you seeing this?" John's voice suddenly sounded too loud.
Lestrade turned his head just enough to look at John and Sherlock without having to fully turn from the spectacle in front of them.
"Right, he is not drugged, Sherlock, so what's that?" John snapped at his friend. "What is it?"
Sherlock screwed his eyes shut in concentration as he struggled to make sense of what his observations were telling him.
He was wrong. And he was afraid.
"Alright, it's still there!" the detective conceded. "But it's just a dog. Henry, it's nothing more than an ordinary dog!"
The Hound howled again and crouched, preparing itself for a gigantic leap.
"Oh my God." Lestrade muttered under his breath, backing up a few feet.
Screw Mycroft and anymore of his 'vacations'.
Just as they legends depicted, the dog had glowing red eyes like large nuggets of Hellfire coal and teeth that were easily as long as a man's fingers, only infinitely sharper.
Lestrade gulped as he briefly imagined those large fangs sinking into his flesh and ripping. "Oh, Christ!"
"No!" he suddenly heard Sherlock scream. "It's not you! You're not here!"
Funny, Lestrade always imagined that it would take more than this to drive Sherlock Holmes to insanity...
He turned to look for his friend and saw him gripping the lapels of a stranger's jacket.
There was a gas mask in Sherlock's hand and the stranger's face...
There was a brief flash of light in Lestrade's mind and he caught a glimpse of familiar thick auburn hair, eyes the colour of mahogany, and freckles dotting from nose to neck...
"... Lilies remind me of funerals, you know...?"
A smiling mouth with a gap tooth framed by lips that were always chewed to chapping...
"... You're always going to be there, won't you...?"
"... You always come back to this. So save me..."
At Baskerville...
"Mister Lestrade?"
Lestrade startled out of his reverie and smiled shakily at Dr. Stapleton. "Sorry, I was leagues away."
"I know." Dr. Stapleton nodded concernedly.
Ares loped over and brushed up against the back of Lestrade's legs, licking his hand.
"I'm sorry we couldn't hold him." Dr. Stapleton said grimly. "He just took off the moment someone left a door open. Major Barrymore mentioned seeing him on the moors but they didn't know whether or not to stop him.
"Ah, I can understand the confusion." Lestrade grimaced. "We were expecting a person to show up."
He squatted down to eye level with the massive dog and peered into the canine's face. "You're going to be okay, Ares. You're going to be just fine, aren't you? A bullet wound isn't going to stop the god of war, is it? Not even a crackshot like Captain John Watson is a match for you."
It had been a bit touch-and-go for Ares after John shot him on the moors. But luckily, Major Barrymore's presence so close on scene worked to their advantage and they were able to return Ares to Baskerville in time to get him medical treatment.
Ares rolled his pink tongue out of his mouth and panted, looking for all the world like he was smiling.
"That's right. You're already running around and stirring up trouble, aren't you?" Lestrade went on, scratching the dog fondly behind the ears.
This time, Ares didn't even move to distance himself.
"You're such a strong lad." Lestrade leaned in and buried his face in Ares's fur. "Such a good, stubborn, damaged dog."
Ares struggled briefly under the unnatural weight Lestrade put on him but quickly adjusted and regained his balance. It was not something he was going to get used to in such a short time.
Standing on three legs.
"Looks like we'll match just fine, you and me." Lestrade grinned. "You want to come back to London with me?"
Ares let out a sharp bark of agreement.