Today's Prompt: Holmes aids the Vatican (from Ennui Enigma).
They descended through gilded halls. The walls, interspersed with portraits and other fine paintings, were plain compared to the ceilings, covered with intricate frescoes of angels and crosses. Watson barely had time to take in it all, his neck craned toward the heavens like a pious supplicant.
"We've received a warm welcome despite our Anglican origins," Holmes remarked with a wry smile, his voice low. His eyes flitted around, examining everything and everyone as they passed, more interested in the people than the artwork.
They did not have long to admire their opulent surroundings. Watson glanced one last time up at the ceiling - it seemed to glow golden in the light streaming through the windows - and then followed the others down a narrow, musty stairwell, into the heart of the archives.
Their guide led them by lamplight through the endless stacks, lined with ancient documents, rotting away in the dark. At last, he stopped and put the lamp down on a table, as he went to retrieve an ancient tome.
"It's happened many times over the centuries," their guide explained in a hushed voice that echoed into the shadows. He carefully lay the book out on the table and opened it. "See here, this whole town vanished without a trace." He returned to the stacks and took out another tome. "And some centuries later, all of these people disappeared in the same fashion."
He drew out volume after volume until the table was piled high with them. And then, at Holmes's request, he left them in the archives to pour over the tomes themselves.
"There must be some common thread," Holmes declared.
For hours they stayed in that dark and musty library. They had no sense of the passage of time, but the slow exhaustion of the lamp. Any trifle could hold the key, the only question was which.
At last, Holmes let the book he was examining fall shut, pushed his chair away from the table and leaned back, his eyes only now gazing up at the ceiling. Watson knew better than to interrupt his thoughts; Holmes would speak in his own time.
"It could not be the work of a lone individual, as much is obvious, with so many victims at a time spread over centuries. We must then suppose an organization. There is some suggestion of a ritual, but there is no pattern. These remarkable disappearances occur approximately every hundred years, but they could not align with some natural phenomenon. Instead the time between disappearances correlates most closely with the number of people taken previously, as though some quota is being filled - some appetite being met. And then there are the corpses that were found - centuries apart - exsanguinated…" he trailed off.
"It does not do to theorize before one knows all of the facts!" Holmes hoisted himself to his feet. "Come, Watson! We must go and shine a light upon things that should perhaps be left in the dark."
Note: I don't know much about the Vatican, and a quick wiki search didn't bring up much to work with (though the Vatican Secret Archives were in fact opened up to historians during the time Holmes and Watson were active), so I went with the only thing I could think of - the Volturi from Twilight.