Jacob Frye: Endgame

by SlushBro19

and so it ends...

The crutch clacked on the hardwood flooring of the courtroom, loud and clear in the absolute silence of the Old Bailey. Its bearer was observed by all present in the large chamber with caution, distrust, and compassion. Caution and distrust from the male half of the public who'd come to see what promised to be one of the most interesting trials of the decade and compassion from the female side, tears and handkerchiefs dripping with salty moisture that a handsome young man like this - albeit a little bit for worse for the wear - would most likely hang before achieving his full potential. The twelve jurors sat impassive, watching closely as the accused approached the witness stand, hesitated, sighed, and then had to almost hop up, his right hand, shoulder bandaged, holding onto the edge of the wooden box, with a grimace. For a moment he sat composing himself, catching his breath, the crutch leaning against the side of the box until a bailiff came to collect it for safekeeping. This one was dangerous: no point in allowing him access to what could be a weapon. These proceedings were going to be orderly, despite the accused's wild reputation for mayhem.

'He is all yours, sir prosecutor,' the judge intoned from his seat to the right and above the accused who had finally managed to gather himself. Having his leg and shoulder re-bandaged every day under the keen eye of Dr. Watson, whose hands were amazingly deft, had taken its toll given the additional fact of having pus drained from each wound between the bandaging sessions. He looked thinner, slower, more withdrawn. Evie, sitting among the crowd at the back where it was darker, had caught her breath for a moment when he'd come in. If not for the stony glint in his eye, the wry twist of the mouth and the scars on his face she would not have known her brother. She glanced at Henry, always at her side now. His shock was as evident as hers: he too had not expected to see Jacob like this: a shadow of his old self, the habitual energy and bounce of his stride gone in a flash of a revolver. He'd regain it - if he didn't hang first. If Mr. Evans of Scotland Yard had had his way, their incorrigible reprobate of a Brother would have been swinging long since, no Queen to come to his rescue this time.

'Mr. Frye,' the prosecutor addressed him, black suit and well-groomed appearance contrasting harshly with that of the ragged gang boss, whose eyes watched the other warily. 'Could you tell us please what you were doing on the night of November 15?'

'You already know,' he replied, clearing his throat as his voice sounded like sandpaper, observing the brief flash of annoyance in the smartly presented prosecutor's features.

'Be so kind as to inform us all in any case,' he insisted, his tone taking on that hard tint of authority that Jacob despised so much. Evie bit her lip, stifling a groan: he would never learn, would he? He'd always cut edgewise instead of crosswise. He'd always say 'yes' when he should say 'no'. A contrarian, a non-conformist. That was her brother: the turmoil within him boiled down to that one trait - he'd never liked to be controlled. And he wasn't going to back down here either. Which only served to make matters worse for him. He'd not be presented sympathetically to the jury. She truly thought he didn't care about the jury at all: they were nothing to him - except for one tiny detail: they could decide on his death or life. Thus, he was playing a dangerous game in not coming across as repentant. Simply put, he was innocent and had been insisting on that fact for the past four weeks, ever since his arrest in Coventry.

'Mr. Frye,' the judge said warningly. 'You have continuously maintained your innocence in this matter.' One eyebrow lifted in disbelief at that. 'Here is your chance to explain why.' A gesture of the hand at the courtroom. 'I strongly suggest you avail yourself of it.'

Drumming the fingers of his left hand on the wooden top of the witness box, Jacob stared morosely out at the courtroom and then the floor.

'Very well.' His mouth twisted cynically. 'Let me tell you all a story…'

'He needs proper medical care!' Watson snapped with a glare over his shoulder at the chief inspector of Scotland Yard. 'And it's not here, in this!' He gestured with contempt at the holding cell where the feverish Rook was shivering on the bench, the only 'bed' available at the moment.

Mr. Evans, regarding him and the indignant doctor indifferently, intoned, 'He is a dangerous criminal. He cannot be allowed to leave these premises.'

'He will not make it to trial,' the good doctor pointed out reasonably, controlling his temper with difficulty. He couldn't understand it himself: why suddenly was he so concerned about the wellbeing of the criminally-minded youth? 'I assume that is what you have planned for him, chief inspector Evans?'

The other man, moustache quivering in anger at being baulked by what to him was only a civilian medico, sighed sharply and turned away. 'His bail has been set at five thousand pounds,' he said over his shoulder. 'Should he be able to pay it, he is free to go on recognizance.'

'I'm sorry, Freddie.'

'Yes, you said that already.' A note of strong asperity in the harassed inspector's voice.

'I meant it then and I mean it now.'

The beleaguered inspector of the Met studied the incorrigible rogue's face for a long time. The usually sly features of the younger man bore absolutely no trace of ridicule or flippancy. In fact they were downright sombre.

'You truly mean it don't you, Frye?' he whispered at last.

'Would I lie to you Freddie?' There. The usual Jacob Frye was back on display: smirking and looking all innocence. He just couldn't help it, could he? And now that he thought about it: Jacob had not lied to him. Ever. He was reckless, feckless, fearless, without regard for what tomorrow brought. He was a criminal who paradoxically stood by those he cared about. And that apparently included him, Frederick Abberline, the agent of Her Majesty's government charged with enforcement of the penal code against the very kind of man he'd somehow befriended.

'No… I guess you wouldn't,' he had to admit, a little bitterly. 'But that doesn't change the facts. If I had never met Green or you and your sister…'

'Your life would have been staid, respectable, and boring,' finished the smiling Assassin.

'I…' Abberline could only shake his head. Frye was at it again. Some things it seemed would never change, not even in death. 'I forgive you, Frye,' he said, giving in. 'For what it's worth.'

'That means a lot, Freddie,' Jacob said, surprised to find that he meant it too. Abberline was a good bloke. He didn't deserve to suffer on the account of a hooded rebel, not if that selfsame rebel could help him and get his aid in return.

'So what is it you want me to do?'

'Did you get it?' Henry asked, anxiously wiping his face with one hand as he stood in the darkness of the park not far from Scotland Yard. She'd been gone a long time and that had made him nervous: had she been spotted? Caught? Would she join her brother in the dock? He had no wish to see either of his friends tried and executed, especially not Evie, whom he loved and who loved him back. That still surprised him: a woman of strong will and high passion had finally given her heart and hand to him, a failed Assassin who'd been disgraced and set to be a spy in Templar-controlled London. No wonder Jacob's attitude had been so dismissive: he fancied himself a man who never failed. Until he'd come to the big town where things were not done the same way as in Crawley - small town tactics would not suit or go unremarked by the authorities of the central pulse of the sprawling Empire.

'Of course I did,' Evie said, briefly opening the bag in her hands to show him the Assassin gauntlet belonging to her brother, intact. 'Now we had better get as far away as possible.' She closed the burlap sack and hung it over her shoulder. 'Is the carriage ready?'

'Yes,' Henry jerked his head in the direction of the other end of the park. 'It's at the other entrance.'

'Then let us take a late night stroll, Mr. Green,' she said, smiling and taking his left elbow.

'Where is it, Abberline?' erupted chief inspector Evans, barreling through the door of the detective inspector Frederick Abberline, whose face expressed his incredulity and annoyance at being interrupted so rudely by a man who was technically his superior in rank but lacked the true qualities of a real policeman. He was a traitor, a servant of another. A snake.

'Where what is?' he asked calmly enough, setting down his pen and raising as imperturbable a face as possible to the angry twisted features of the other whose leaning posture was supposed to be threatening but instead conveyed nothing more than the hot air of a man lost at sea.

'The damn contraption we took off Frye!' growled the pugnacious agent of the criminal justice system, striking the well-built table of his colleague with a precise strike of an angry fist.

'Whatever contraption do you mean?' was the innocent inquiry. Evans inhaled, about ready to launch into a tirade when his inferior continued in surprisingly cool tones. 'I would remind you, chief inspector, that I have absolutely no involvement in this present case of Lord Buxton's murder and therefore,' he smiled thinly, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. 'I cannot and should not be expected to know the whereabouts of some thing that pertains to your case.'

'You worked with him!' Evans accused, finger pointing at the smugly naive expression of the subordinate copper. 'I have proof. I can ruin you!'

'Please try,' Abberline invited ironically despite himself (Frye was rubbing off on him, gods sakes!). 'And in the meantime I would like to get back to my work.' He picked up his pen. 'And close the door on your way out, Mr. Evans. I do prefer quiet during my work.'

'You have to tell them you did it,' Abberline hissed bending closer to the Assassin's ear in the living room of 221B Baker Street, two constables on the bedroom door staring straight ahead like statues, mute and apparently not listening in.

'What!?' The pain-wracked Rook sat up, his face expressing his shock. 'Freddie, that's insane!'

'If you don't, I lose my job!' The agitated copper was just about to rip his hair out of his scalp. 'Evans said as much.'

'Evans?' Sharp gang boss eyes regarded him. 'So Evans put you up to this, eh?'

'He wants to ruin me!'

'And serve his master at the same time.'

'His master?'

'The good professor Moriarty.'

Abberline stared at him in dawning comprehension. 'Oh Lord!'

'Exactly, Freddie, exactly.'

'What have you found Mr. Grimsby?' the long-faced detective inquired, his grey eyes observant of the coroner and of the young lord's corpse laid out in the mortuary of the London morgue.

'What haven't I found,' the coroner replied, half disgusted, half impressed. 'Arsenic, strychnine, cyanide, antimony…,' he counted off on his fingers. 'Shall I go on?'

'No…' the only consulting detective in the realm rubbed his chin, thoughts flickering in his voracious mind. 'A veritable plethora of poisons.'

'Who would want to pump him so full?' the coroner was honestly puzzled: one poison usually would be enough. Take arsenic for instance. No need to add anything extra to it: small doses over a long period of time would do the job or one large dose all at once.

'An expert experimenter, one who had laid his plans well in advance,' was the rather cryptic reply of the deductive mind of the century, whose fingertips drummed on the metal table of the morgue.

'Would it be the same one who had those kids poisoned last year?' was the shrewd inquiry of the keen minded medic of the dead.

'Indeed, Mr. Grimsby,' confirmed the secret agent of the law, his eyes moving over the naked corpse of the son of the man who'd wanted him dead. 'The same man who had tried to use strychnine on a friend of mine.'

'The same friend who stands accused of this one's murder.' Mr. Grimsby lifted one knowing eyebrow.

'You seem to know a great deal about this case already,' remarked the unflappable deductionist.

'I use my mind, not only my hands, Mr. Holmes,' the coroner asserted, his eyes glinting with amusement. 'And I rather like that young rogue. Don't want to see him hang, really. Not again.'

'I see you have heard about that too,' Holmes grunted, chewing his lip a little bit.

'Who hasn't?' the large man laughed softly before becoming serious. 'I will be testifying at the trial, Mr. Holmes,' he added heavily. 'I can't but present my findings as they are.'

Holmes nodded, shaking the other's blood-stained hand.

'I understand you completely, Mr. Grimsby.'

'He must've bought the poisons from someone, surely,' Jacob insisted, shifting in the armchair with a slight grimace of pain. The wounds were healing slowly, too much so for his liking. The two slugs had not struck any bone but the damage to the muscles and blood vessels was of a graver nature. Hence the need to drain the wounds daily and change the bandages. And he resented it, the necessity, the doing of it… Moriarty was out there, Abberline was on the ropes and he was just sitting here doing NOTHING!

'That many?' Holmes shook his head, lowering the cigarette. 'Too suspicious if it's only one druggist,' he remarked, completely ignoring the two constables outside the apartment doors. 'Probably two and probably less than legal,' he added off the cuff.

'Black market?' Jacob smiled, eyes narrowing in thought. Here was something he could do. 'I may know a name or two.'

'I thought you would, dear Mr. Frye,' the great detective commented idly tapping the ash into the tray on his side of the table. 'Unfortunately, you cannot leave at present,' he pointed out, eyebrows raised in the direction of the apartment entrance. 'Your injuries and the good doctor's insistence on caring for you are the only reasons you're not in the holding cells of the good messrs of Scotland Yard.'

'Not to mention the bail,' grunted the restless and increasingly impatient Assassin. 'I still have no idea who paid that.' He wiped his forearm across his forehead. 'Not that I'm ungrateful.'

'The person or persons unknown certainly have your best interests at heart,' was the mysterious remark of the detective, who'd received an anonymous note informing him of the payment of the young Rook's bail. He had his suspicions as to the writer and the payor of that rather insignificant for them amount of money. And he wasn't going to reveal their name or station to his young friend here. Better if he remained ignorant. For now. He had enough to deal with in any case.

'Don't they just,' was the somewhat cheeky growl of the accused murderer of Lord Buxton, who'd almost ended up in the holding cells again after his outburst of yesterday when he'd been pressed and pressed by the prosecutor to admit to killing the young idiot who meant nothing to him except more of Moriarty's dark meddling. It had been only through the graces of Watson, Holmes, and Abberline that he'd not been packed off to the welcoming confines of the Met. 'I need to arrange a meeting.'

'Frye sent you?' asked the bespectacled young woman in a dapper man's suit, sitting behind her desk in the offices of the smugglers of London and studying the tall spare gentleman before her.

'Indeed,' the not quite unknown visitor replied, sitting down in the chair sat before the sturdy desk and reaching inside his coat to extract a piece of paper. 'He suggested that you would be able to help him.'

'Oh?' She tilted her head, dark grey eyes expressing ironic interest. 'What has he done now?'

'Presumably he killed the young Lord Buxton,' replied the laconic detective with a thin curve of the lips.

'And you want to prove that he didn't,' she guessed, two fingers on the paper with the names of the poisons found in the lord's body.

'I know he didn't,' was the unruffled rebuff of the older man, his hands folded in his lap. 'I seek to prove that to the courts and the man who is framing him. Again.'

'Frye must be slipping to fall so easily into a trap like that. Again.' The young woman's tone was tinged with sad joviality: she'd heard something of the current case of the death of the young aristo. Frye's name had been bandied about in the circles they'd both frequented. She rather thought that he'd done it until rumours of poison had come her way. And that was not possible: the hotheaded Rook was anything but a subtle poisoner. His preferred method involved guns, knives, and fists - brutal, physical, memorably visual and visceral. Using backhanded means just wasn't his style.

'He has had a lot on his mind of late,' was the somewhat defensive comment of the unofficial deductive agent of the penal law.

'I bet he has,' she sniffed, finally picking up the paper and scrutinising it. A low whistle escaped her lips. 'My, my, these are nasty… arsenic… strychnine… cyanide… whoever killed this aristocrat really wanted to make sure he stayed dead.'

'The quantities differed,' Holmes murmured idly. 'A bit of antimony, more of the cyanide, with strychnine and arsenic rounding out the lethal brew.'

'Arsenic is fairly common,' Wynert noted, scratching at a spot on her scalp. 'You can find it anywhere and everywhere. Strychnine and cyanide…' She tapped her lip, looking off into space. Holmes waited patiently, not moving a muscle, as the head of the smuggling operations of London went through her mental files of who, where, and what was sold. 'How much time do we have?' she asked at last, refocusing her intelligent eyes on her unexpected visitor.

'I and the city coroner will testify in two days,' he said calmly.

'Hm…' she tsked. 'A little tight for time…' She shrugged. 'But the prospect of having Frye in my debt is so delicious,' she said, smiling gleefully. 'I will help him get his fool neck out of the noose this time.'

Watson's eyes followed the irritated pacing of the skittish young man, pacing that was frenetic and filled with pent-up energy. He'd been cooped up inside the comfortable confines of their mutual partner's apartments for several weeks and it chafed on him: his impatience was beginning to show in moody snarls and abrupt gestures of the hands, his regard appearing at times stoic and resigned, at others launching daggers at anyone who so much as glanced in his direction. Clearly, Jacob Frye was tired of the familiar amenities of the gilded prison he'd found himself in. He was sick of just sitting here, doing absolutely bloody nothing while others decided his fate. He should be out there hunting down the frail professor who liked to play fatal games with people's lives, not caged up like some exotic but dangerous animal.

'Where is he?' he finally asked glaring moodily out of the shut window, the first words spoken since this morning when Holmes had gone out right after breakfast, silent and mysterious as usual. The energetic detective would not say where he was going or what about. Given the fact that he was working on extricating the unlucky Assassin from yet another of Moriarty's traps, it was safe to assume that it had something to do with the discussion about poisons. Wynert surely had something by now: tomorrow was the day for the coroner and the consulting detective to testify, and his presence too would be required as the all but hung accused.

'He is on the trail of something,' Watson attempted to be reassuring, only to receive a snort of derision in return.

'I bet he is,' groused the healing Rook, massaging his shoulder which was more or less functioning properly now. 'Why don't I know about it?'

'Because he is not ready to tell you,' the practicing surgeon noted. 'That's how he is. When he's on a scent, he is all focused on it. Distractions irritate him.'

'And sitting here irritates me,' snapped the jumpy gang boss, his fist smacking the window glass, alerting the two Bobbies on the door. 'I'm going for a walk.' He was just about to walk through the door of the sitting room when a large hand on his chest stopped him dead. His gleaming eyes travelled along the length of the thick blue sleeve of the copper's uniform to the round and stern features of the constable on guard, the other one to Jacob's left tensing up, ready to jump in should the occasion warrant.

'You cannot leave, sir,' was the firm refusal of the older policeman. A veteran of the force, twelve years of service. He knew his duties and his man: gang boss, smuggler, racketeer. Trouble all around. It wasn't that he was unsympathetic: a vigorous man like this one would go insane in the confines of two rooms for days on end. But bail conditions were bail conditions and he had his own livelihood to think about. He would do his duty to uniform and Crown despite the menacing fury that rolled off the caged Rook in tidal waves. If he'd been a weaker man, he'd probably stepped aside and allowed the tide to roll on.

Jacob, eye to eye with the stoic agent of the penal code, inhaled, slowly and deeply, aware of doctor Watson's eyes on his back assessing him. What would the impetuous and wild young man do now? In his experience, Mr. Frye did not like to be baulked and usually took immediate action of the most violent kind to overcome any opposition to his intent, consequences be damned to hell.

'I need air, constable,' the imprisoned and hotheaded youth explained with what sounded like bitten off patience. 'I intend to take it.' His lips pulled into an unhurried smile. 'You are free to come along with me and Dr. Watson here.'

The surgeon started, opening his mouth to object. How like Frye to just invite him apropos of nothing and actually expect him to follow! He seemed to assume that others were there to do as he said, to fall for his charm and wit. What did Holmes see in him? Really see?

'Fresh air and exercise, doctor,' he added conversationally, not even looking away from the stolid copper. 'Isn't that what you advise your patients?'

'I…' the low whisper of cloth as the former military man stood up, hoping to prevent an impending explosion which he'd clearly heard in the undertone of the last words. The young rogue was a bomb about to go off and had to be headed in a different direction. 'Constables, why not come with us?' he suggested, reasonably enough. 'You may stay at a safe distance.' A loud sniff from the young man almost ruined the polite impression he was trying to achieve. 'Safe' distance indeed! There was no 'safe' where the leader of the Frye syndicate was concerned. That was a mirage, pure and simple.

'He would have to be cuffed,' said the blue uniform on the left of the Assassin who had not budged one bit, still as a statue.

'Mr. Frye?' Dr. Watson glanced over at the immovable gang boss who obviously was contemplating whether or not to agree to the handcuffs around his wrists. 'Jacob…'

That ever-present smirk on the most expressive face he'd ever laid eyes on, the whimsical rebel held out his hands.

'Please do, constable,' he invited with the thickest irony of bitterness he could manage. 'I promise to be a good doggie.'

'Help the good woman, constable, why don't you?' the caustically-tongued youth, attached to the official representative of Her Majesty's criminal justice system at the wrist, gestured at the frantically screaming woman who was wringing her hands as she appealed to someone, anyone, to catch the thief who'd just stolen her purse. 'That is your job, is it not?'

The well-proportioned copper sighed, half in exasperation, half in resignation. All along the route of their stroll, for lack of a better word, the young renegade had been egging him on with snide little comments, thrown out of the side of his mouth, sarcasm and mockery like salt on raw wounds, simply to rub the hapless policeman's face in how ineffectual he was, now that his freedom of movement had been reduced by the necessity of having a dangerously undependable criminal joined to him at the wrist like some sort of macabre malicious twin that whispered cruel words into his ear.

'Mr. Frye,' he addressed him, politely, piqued and annoyed. 'My colleague is more than capable of resolving this little situation.'

'Oh I'm sure he is,' drawled the irrepressible criminal on trial who behaved as if his neck were not about to end up squeezed by hemp once more. 'I can already see him running, really quickly too, to catch the cutpurse and bring him to justice.' The intonation was so caustically and contemptuously cutting and yet innocent that the copper could only gasp for a moment, struck by the open disdain shown by his prisoner whose eyes were those of a hardened street thug daring him to do something.

'Mr. Frye,' the policeman remonstrated, attempting to stifle the urge to wipe the arrogant sneer off the other's sharp-chinned visage. 'Please… you are not making your current situation any better.'

'Oh?' A coy but somehow challenging bat of the eyelashes. 'You foresee some dim prospect of me not swinging for a crime I didn't commit?' He glanced at the second copper who'd lost the thief in the crowd down the street outside of a candy shop. 'While a true criminal gets away.'

'Mr. Frye,' said the veteran copper who'd heard stories like this before. 'You keep insisting on your innocence.' He glanced at the unhappy woman who was crying and having herself tended to by two passersby who were trying to console her. 'As yet you have given no hard evidence, the story about this 'professor' who wants you dead for whatever reason notwithstanding.'

'Oh of course!' the upset and contrary captive nodded ironically. 'How silly of me to have forgotten that the Met operates on cold hard facts.' He brought his face closer to the Bobbie's. 'Here's one for you, free of charge.' Another sneer, all teeth. 'Lord Buxton was already as cold as a fish when I found him.' Scarred right eyebrow went up. 'What think you of that?'

The irritated copper was just about to answer that remark with something scathing of his own when the slick tones of the raspy voice of the premier detective in London spoke behind them in mild reproach.

'Dear doctor, I see you have permitted your patient to leave the premises of our apartments.' Watson would have blushed like a little girl at being reprimanded so harshly if his friend hadn't turned his keen attention to the one responsible for this excursion in the first place. 'Mr. Frye, you are aware that there are two gentlemen observing you with utmost interest in that carriage over there by the Espon drug shop.' His icy grey stare held the younger man's pert regard. 'Are you not?'

'Of course, Holmes,' he tried to shrug it off. He'd not noticed them in truth: baiting the steady constable had been occupying most of his attention. 'Is that what brings you here?'

The lanky slim consulting investigator sighed, fiddling with the chain of his watch, and gazing off seemingly into empty space, his eyes skimming over the carriage casually as if assessing it as part of the street decor.

'Not quite,' he said at last. 'I have news.' A quiet sombre tone that alerted the Assassin and the doctor that this was something grave, something that did not bode well. 'Which should not be spoken of here.'

'Ah, a not so subtle hint that the good doggie's walk is over and he needs to go back to his kennel,' drawled in silkily scathing tones the frustrated Assassin. 'You wouldn't mind me having a quick word with those gents over there first, would you, detective?' Without even waiting for a response, he took off, tugging the not truly resistant copper with him. It would be good to get a look at more potential suspects in this truly bizarre case of the young lord's murder: Mr. Holmes hadn't mentioned them by accident, surely. He was crafty, was the old Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Whatever he said was never by accident.

'Fancy meeting you here, gentlemen,' was the conversational greeting offered by the hard-eyed gang boss to the debonair pair inside the four-wheeler who regarded him with the same interest as a lynx might its prey. They did not seem unduly worried at being found out. 'Enjoying the fine winter weather in London?'

'Why, if it isn't Mr. Frye,' was the somehow unthreatening and yet menacing reply of the slimmer of the two men. His stockier partner was silent as usual. 'I hadn't been expecting to see you among the living.'

'I bet you didn't, good sir,' was the toothy response of the youth, head tilted to one side as if deliberately exposing the fragile skin of his neck. 'I've got to give you credit though: you're an expert marksman.' His eyes caught and held the other's gleaming stare. 'The bullet didn't miss.' He paused, biting his lip as if holding back a laugh. 'By much.'

'I never miss, Mr. Frye,' was the low-voiced response of the Torturer, who had leaned toward him slightly. 'Never.'

'But you did,' objected the Assassin sweetly, an idea coming into his mind in a flash of inspiration. 'You missed your mark when you eviscerated Hodge and had Chief Inspector Evans plant that stag token on him.' He knew he'd hit the bull's eye when he saw the sudden flinch of the shadowed man behind the Torturer, the silent one, and the indrawn breath of the constable beside him who'd had no idea of any of this at all. 'You and your master wanted me to kill Lord Buxton.'

'And so you did,' smiled the Torturer. 'Much obliged.'

'Mr. Frye…' the astonished policeman beside him tried to interject but the young man was like a runaway train: stubborn and unwilling to stop now.

'It was you, wasn't it?' he hissed softly. 'You killed that young idiot. You poisoned him.'

'What outlandish accusations!' laughed the other. 'Why don't you prove it, Mr. Frye?' A mocking challenge rang in every word. 'Before you swing one final time.'

'Oh I will,' promised the short-tempred Assassin. 'Just you wait.'

'I will await your proofs with infinite patience,' threw back the Torturer before signalling the driver to move off. 'Good day to you, Mr. Frye. Enjoy it while it lasts.'

'What did you mean?' asked the bemused constable as the statue-like young renegade glared after the departing coach that had two of his enemies in it. 'Mr. Frye?'

'What?' he snapped, angrily turning his head towards the copper with the pinched look of an irate man who was rapidly running out of patience. 'There are the real murderers, constable.' He gestured after the vanishing carriage. 'Getting away.' He shook his head, bitterly, and spat. 'While you and the Met waste time on the wrong man.'

'Mr. Frye,' the constable said, putting one arm on his elbow to stop him from rushing off. As if he could, handcuffs and all. 'What did you mean about the chief inspector?'

'He's been bought, constable,' was the breathy reply of the leader of the Rooks, who absently shrugged off the restraining hand. 'Those two fine gents hold the reins.' He met the calm but not reassured gaze of the shaken copper. 'And they're barreling down on your friend Abberline.'

'You mean to say,' the smartly-presented policeman said with a sudden insight. 'You mean to say that those two made a deal with the chief inspector of Scotland Yard to help him dispose of Mr. Abberline in return for his services in capturing you?'

'Precisely, constable, precisely,' The young man's tone had lost any sort of insolent overtones. He was grave and frustrated by the inaction of the past several weeks: time was slipping away, Abberline's neck was on the line as was his own and all he could do was sit and heal. 'It is easier to attach blame to a well known criminal than to believe that one's fellow comrade is a traitor, is it not?' he muttered, morose, half-growling like a leashed chained hound that wants to bite someone out of simple hunger at not being fed for a week.

'They are using you to bring down inspector Abberline,' the officious copper added, thinking out loud more than addressing his prisoner directly. 'I remember you now…' His face lit up with unexpected recognition of who the young Rook was. 'You were working with Mr. Abberline on those bounties that'd been uncollected!'

'And Evans is using that to browbeat Freddie,' the Assassin said, walking slowly towards the two other gentlemen who had erupted into his life on that memorable day two years ago. 'If Freddie doesn't do what Evans wants him to, then he will be exposed.'

'And what does the Chief Inspector want?' inquired the constable, his hazel eyes sharpening.

'To ruin Freddie… to kill me.'

'And we cannot have that, can we, Mr. Frye?'

'So, the poison sellers are dead,' Jacob said, slowly drawing his hands down his face and then locking them on the back of his neck. 'Marvellous.' He let his eyes slide from the consulting detective to the doctor to the two constables. 'Now we have nothing.'

'Au contraire,' the long-legged seeker of truth disagreed. 'The two poison sellers in question were given the same treatment as Mr. Hodge.'

'Butchery,' Watson said in disgust, puffing his cigarette and shaking his head.

'They were marked with the same sigil as your gang,' continued the calm investigator ignoring the good doctor's sniff.

'Trying to implicate me,' Jacob said wearily, massaging the back of his head. 'How kindly consistent of them.'

'Not only that,' Holmes smiled thinly, stirring the honey into his tea. 'The transaction books were burned at both shops.'

'Which means there was something in them,' Jacob looked up. 'The names of the buyers and what they bought.'

'Exactly, and also witnesses.' The detective threw an amused glance at the leader of the Frye syndicate. 'Members of a certain avian group.'

'You sly dog!' The Assassin chuckled. 'You had them followed.'

'And they answer to the descriptions of the two gentlemen that you had the most delightfully threatening conversation with today,' the smug detective added, pulling out two sheets of paper which he handed to one of the constables. 'Perhaps you should talk to Chief Inspector Evans about finding these men,' he suggested, cheekily, pointing to the papers now in the policeman's custody.

'Would that not suggest that we're onto him?' Watson asked reasonably. 'Who knows what he may do then?'

'Attacking our young friend here certainly would be one answer to our challenge,' Holmes remarked, one knee crossed over the other. 'Another would be to seek out his colleagues and warn them.'

'And another option is to get rid of Freddie,' the young Rook interrupted in a curt almost abrasive manner. 'I won't allow that to happen.'

Watson gazed at him for some moments, struck not for the first time by the loyalty the leader of a criminal organization showed for a man who could easily have him put away in jail for life if not killed. Apparently Mr. Abberline wasn't just any policeman: he was a partner - dared he think it? - a friend. And the one thing he'd learned about this whimsical uncontrollable Jacob Frye was that he didn't throw his friends to the wolves. He'd put his neck into the noose for Holmes, for gods sakes! He'd DIED!

'And how do you plan on preventing Chief Inspector Evans from accomplishing his end?' Holmes inquired, idly.

'By placing myself under his very nose,' was the fox-featured Assassin's reply as he stood up, unhurriedly, as if simply stretching. 'Apologies, constable,' he said - just as his fist swung and hit the man square on the jaw. 'I assure you it is not personal.'

'What the devil?!' Watson jumped to his feet in indignation - only to be stopped by the calm hand of his friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

'You can be sure, dear doctor,' he said suavely, staring knowingly at the now restrained young man. 'Mr. Frye has a plan.'

'Frye?!' Frederick Abberline gaped in open astonishment at the sole occupant of one of the holding cells in the basement of the Scotland Yard HQ. 'Are you completely off your rocker?!' He glanced around, a bit furtively. He was supposed to have gone home by now, the hour being late. Nevertheless, here he was, uncomprehendingly staring at the one man he had thought safely ensconced within the relative security of Mr. Holmes' quarters. 'Why did you hit Mr. Hutton?'

'Freddie,' the self-satisfied rogue began in what were unruffled tones as he patted the seat beside him. 'Do come in. Sit down. And listen.'

Huffing in exasperation, the less than happy inspector opened the grated door to the cell and cautiously entered, taking care to hide the key. No point in giving Frye any opportunities for sleight of hand.

'Relax, Freddie,' the wily criminal said, guessing the nervous policeman's intent. 'I don't bite.'

'Of course not, Frye.' The weary inspector sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. 'So, what insanity do you have planned now in that brainpan of yours?'

'Freddie!' Jacob said, only half offended. 'I have only ever sought to help you. Remember the Bank of England?'

Abberline rolled his eyes, snorting. He remembered, alright. Really well. That'd been a disaster of massive proportions. He didn't think he'd ever forget that.

'You can keep that kind of help to yourself, you know,' he groused. 'Out with it, Frye. What dastardly deeds are you conconcting?'

'I'm touched, Freddie, truly,' was the insolently amused response of the imprisoned Rook, who didn't appear to be too concerned about the consequences. The spur of the moment idea of hitting the constable - Mr. Hutton, he DID have a name! - had come to him in a flash of inspiration: what he had wanted was to get close to Freddie and Evans, in a spatial sense. Afterwards, he had been planning to wing it based on the situation at hand.

'First things first, Freddie,' he said seriously, tucking one leg in and turning to face the attentive inspector. 'Does Evans still have copies of those bounties? If so, where?'

'I can't tell you that.'

'For god's sake, Freddie!'

'Why do you want to know?' he asked suspiciously. No more trusting Frye blindly, not after all the brouhaha he'd caused in the last three years.

'They must be destroyed,' was the somewhat curt response of the piqued Assassin. 'No evidence, no pressure, Freddie.'

Now that he'd said it, Abberline began to wonder why HE hadn't thought of that himself. But then… he was so damn BUSY! One case, another… or was that on purpose? Was Evans keeping him diverted enough so that he'd not stop to think of something to do about the impending doom? Had that been his plan…?

'Freddie….' The rebel's voice interrupted his partner's reverie. 'You're wandering.'

'Yes I….' the harried policeman exhaled noisily and slapped his thighs. 'Fine. Have it your way.'

'I'm all ears, inspector,' the smirking exuberant gang boss said, eagerly listening.

'I would think he keeps the file in his cabinet safe, under lock and key.'

'The key presumably stays on his person at all times?' half stated half asked the master thief. 'I would need to take a look at the lock.'

Abberline gaped at him. 'Are you insane? You want to pick the chief inspector's safe?' Madness was one thing but this… this was taking it to another level, into the realms of utter absurdity.

'What did you think I was going to do, Freddie? Sit here?' asked the Assassin with some heat. 'I'm here to help you and that's how it's going to happen.' He sat forward. 'I sneak into the chief's office, take a gander at the safe, pick the lock, find the documents in question and burn them.' He dusted his hands as if he'd already done the deed.

'And what makes you think you will be able to get inside his office?' Abberline hissed, not liking this off the wall plan but unable to come up with one of his own.

'You will arrange it for me, Freddie,' explained the principal creator of this little conspiracy. 'By creating a little 'situation' in the station during which I can slip inside and dispose of the incriminating evidence.'

'And how exactly were you going to open the safe without a lockpick?' the tired copper asked, about to give in to the charming rogue's rough and ready approach. Might as well try it, right?

'Now that would be telling, dear inspector Abberline.'

He'd just about picked the lock when he heard the one voice he'd not expected to hear behind him.

'What the bloody'ell are you doing here?'

With a sigh of annoyance and a roll of the eyes, Jacob turned around to find Chief Inspector Evans standing in the doorway and glaring at him.

'Why, the very man I wanted to see,' the young mischief maker said in sweetly poisonous tones. 'You wouldn't mind giving me a hand with this safe, would you, Mr. Evans?' His posture appeared to be relaxed, that of a thief caught red-handed. His hand, however, was clasping the longer straighter lockpick, its end sharper end just peeking between the fingers.

'I knew you had to be behind this, meddlesome fool that you are,' Evans grated, taking a couple of steps inside the room and shutting the door on the fracas that was a tiny bit of 'mutiny' at the Met. Jacob had counted on the Chief Inspector being hustled away but it appeared that he'd misjudged the man's character. Evans wasn't anyone's fool. 'You have no idea of the game you're butting into.'

'I know enough,' demurred the Assassin's, easily shifting his weight from one foot to the other. 'You want to destroy Abberline's career.'

'He matters not,' the bigger man said waving his hand dismissively. It didn't look like he had any weapon. But then again… 'He's just a means to an end.'

'What end?' Jacob demanded, about ready to spring.

'Your death,' Evans said before rushing him only to find empty air where the agile youth had been.

'Been there, tried that,' was the insolent taunt of the Rook chief, large desk between them now.

'Not after I am finished with you,' Evans said, smiling and drawing a very very very sharp knife from the sheath on the belt at his back. It had an almost surgical look and feel.

'It wasn't them!' Jacob whispered, a sudden stroke of lightning quick recognition hitting him when he saw that long too well-crafted piece of steel. 'It was you!'

'Ah, you're not as stupid as you pretend to be, Mr. Frye,' he was congratulated by the inspector who moonlighted as a butcher. 'That just means that your death is inevitable now.' He advanced to come around the well-made hardwood desk which due to its size was immovable. 'Come now, boy, it doesn't have to be ugly.'

Realizing that the other man was in deadly earnest and at this point in time most likely stronger than him - being shot twice did that to you, didn't it? - the young scarface decided to take the initiative and leapt up onto the table, sliding across and hitting the bulkier man with all the force of his two feet right in the chest. The chief inspector, having thought his prey cowardly and spineless, felt that double kick like a mallet. For a moment he was disoriented, breathless. Which should have been enough for Jacob to make a run for it. But he was so fed up with sitting on the sidelines, doing nothing except waiting and hoping for something, that he wasn't going to miss this chance, o no sir!

'How does that feel, eh, Inspector?' he asked with mock politeness, knocking the beefier foe against the door of the safe - and belatedly becoming aware that he was breathing too hard. Just how out of shape was he that a simple boot kick had already taken most of his wind?

That distraction cost him as Evans slashed him across the ribs, driving him back and aiming a kick for his jewels that never connected because Frye wasn't there anymore. Somehow he'd slipped under another slash and had ended up near the work desk where he'd grabbed a heavy inkstand, gilded metal and wood. Throwing it at Evans in an expanding stream of airborne black and blue ink, he lunged to hook the other's right ear to make him sufficiently dizzy for a shove towards the wall once more, the long steel waving in a wild swing to keep him at bay while the inspector recovered his bearings. Having ink splashed on his face and forearms and hair didn't improve his mood any. He roared and leapt at where he thought the wretched bastard would be, managing to barrel into his midsection and take him down to the floor.

'How does this feel, eh, boy?' he taunted the struggling gang boss who stopped trying to push him off only when the long blade laid its sharp edge against his neck. 'You should have run,' he said, his knee pressing hard down onto the other's chest, the other knee holding down the young man's arm. 'Now you die in vain.'

Short of breath, what with the heavier man basically pressing him into the floor, the desperate Assassin lashed out, the long steel implement still clutched in his hand which was yet free. He would have gouged the side of the chief inspector's neck if the man hadn't proved to be alert for a cornered criminal's blows. He was a copper, a well trained one. He knew that last ditch efforts often preceded surrender and so was ready to knock the pointy pick out of his interloper's hand, wrenching the wrist with enough force to elicit a grunt of pain as he shifted position to trap the fragile hand of the helpless Assassin against the floor. However, in adjusting his position, he'd given the experienced and savvy Rook a sliver of an opening - to strike his chin with the heel of his palm driving the chief's head backwards while heaving the less oppressive weight off him. Only to be trapped by the other's leg hold. A fist to the copper's nose elicited a painful growl as one hand waved the butcher knife which the gang boss knocked aside, following up with another blow to the face, this time in the eye. And that hurt! The chief inspector roared like a wounded bull and that permitted the panting criminal to put his knee on the fragile neck of the chief inspector turned butcher.

'Nice try, inspector,' he said catching his breath and wrenching the long blade out of his hand. 'Nice try…' He studied the long razor sharp knife which had ended at least three lives. 'How about a taste of your own medicine?' he inquired, ready to plunge the pointy end into the butcher's shoulder - as payback, as tit for tat, for the two shots that'd permitted this rotten bastard to capture him.

'Frye!' came the voice from the open door. His head snapped up to find Abberline filling it, his face full of shock and horror. 'Don't.' he held out a hand. 'Jacob... don't...' He kept his voice even well aware of how predatorial his associate could be. 'I heard everything… he will face justice for what he has done.'

'Justice, Freddie?' The Assassin, still feeling the effects of his injuries (the new one along his ribs adding to the collection), stared up at him as if he were insane. 'After what he has done?'

'Yes, Jacob, even so,' was the unruffled comment of yet another man in the doorway. Holmes easily towered over the shorter inspector as he regarded his mentally exhausted friend. 'You have enough on your conscience as it is.'

For a split second all four men were frozen in a strange tableau: the two agents of the Queen's penal code staring at the two combatants, one a copper and the other a famed criminal whom they were begging not to kill, who they were hoping would not deliver the killing blow much as they were aware he wanted to, perhaps had a valid reason for doing. And by god did he want to end the bastard's life: if not for Hodge, then for Abberline's peace of mind - and his own. Evans, alive, would keep coming back like a bad disease: he'd never stop now.

Exhaling in a loud huff, he held out the long knife to Abberline who took it carefully in his gloved hands and slowly reluctantly got up off the chief inspector who followed each and every gesture carefully. He still did not think that the renegade had actually not murdered him, had pulled his punch, even though it'd been clear as daylight that he'd wanted to slit the butcher's neck from ear to ear.

'You should've done it, boy,' he hissed as he was hauled upright and cuffed by the same man he'd wanted to bring down. 'You should've killed me.'

'You're not my target, Evans,' was the rough-voiced reply of the gang boss who'd found his lockpicks and was ready to break the safe. 'You're only a puppet.' A bitter smirk. 'It's your puppeteer I'm after.'

'Corruption at Scotland Yard!'

'Chief Inspector Evans revealed as the Butcher!'

'What next in the astonishing trial of Jacob Frye, the leader of the notorious Rooks?'

'Who is Chief Inspector Evans?'

'Who really murdered Lord Victor Alfred Buxton?'

Holmes folded the screaming newssheets of the day and set them aside on the table. Sighing, he let his eyes drift towards the window of his sitting room, the last cigarette smoking in the ashtray on the table next to the dailies. One hand hanging idly from the arm of the chair the slim clean-shaven and long-faced detective reflected, his mind churning and moving from thought to thought, calculating possibilities, accepting some and rejecting others. Chief Inspector Evans was indeed a villain. One of the villains of this drawn out tragedy of intrigue and shadow play. He'd signed up with Moriarty once the good professor had made him an offer he could not refuse: the destruction of a man he hated in return for setting up a man the professor wanted brought down. A rival for a rival, a man for a man. A life for a life. An equitable decision in the mathematician's mind. Everyone would get what they wanted. Only…

Neither hunter had truly understood the anarchic nature of their prey. Prey that refused to do as expected, prey that took chances that others would not, prey that acted on chaotic instinct and brought ruin to the best laid plans, the most intricate conspiracies. Prey that had made friends in the oddest places of society, friends that he didn't always appreciate or realize he had. Because he moved to the beat of his own drum, created his own reality, his own world - a world that was inconceivable for the others who wished to define him, to delineate him, to limit him in accordance to their own worldview in which everything and everyone must have a place, a designated spot from which it wasn't supposed to move. Mr. Starrick and Co had underestimated that turbulent nature and had paid for it dearly. The other gangs too had only seen what he'd wanted them to see: a rival gang boss who had intended to rule the criminal underworld. His various associates too had no idea of his real nature: he hid it so well in plain sight just by being himself. He had no need to hide: he was what he was, who he was. That made him so unique as to be indefinable. He had no bounds. He had no limits. He was his own man, comfortable in his skin.

Up to the point where he'd died. And had come back. And even that was more proof of his unusually chaotic nature: he'd defied death to its face, he'd spat at it time and again, dancing around it, evading it - even when it had finally caught up to him, death couldn't hold him. Its vise-like clutches had not been able to prize him from this life into the next: the turbulent chaos inside him just wouldn't bend to that, the finality of death, of cutting all links to life. He was too full of it to let it go so easily. He'd fight it kicking and screaming to the end. Well… Holmes smiled. Probably not screaming. Punching the daylights out of it most likely as was his way. He simply didn't know what giving in was, what surrender meant. Because he'd never surrender. He'd never let go. Because for him, nothing was true and everything was permitted.

'Mr. Grimsby,' the slim man in the dark suit addressed the witness in the box, one hand lightly resting on its edge. 'What time would you say Lord Buxton met his unfortunate end?'

'Based on the rigor mortis, he'd been dead for at least four hours by the time he was found,' the coroner replied steadily, professionally.

'He was found at 3 of the clock in the morning,' stated the long-legged interrogator for the benefit of the jury and the others present who followed his motions and his presentation with interest. Mr. Sherlock Holmes did know how to put on a show of cool imperturbability which assured him the complete attention and confidence of the audience. He wasn't aware of it: it was simply his nature, his talent, his gift. 'Which would place his death at the latest 10 in the evening.' His eyebrow lifted in the direction of the sturdy coroner indicated a question.

'Yes, 10 or 9 in the evening.'

'Thank you, Mr. Grimsby,' the consulting detective said with a thin smile. 'That will be all.' As the surgeon of the dead rose and made his way to the witness bench, the tall riveting man folded his hands together and paced about the courtroom before the judge's bench, deep in thought. 'It has been established thus far that the young lord died a few hours prior to being found with Mr. Frye bending over him.' He stopped, gazed out of the window and then turned around, somewhat dramatically. 'Why would his murderer stay for such a long period of time after killing him?' he asked in all innocence the question that many had not thought about. 'Why would a criminal not leave after committing such a heinous act as murder?' His grey eyes roved over all present in the room, his lips curved slyly. 'Because he wasn't there, ladies and gentlemen.' He spread his hands. 'He. Was not. There.' Each word of the repetition was said with gravity, with the weight of lead dropping into the absolute silence of the room. 'It is utterly absurd to believe, to even think, that any criminal worth his salt would wait around to be captured by the police only to make a run for it after he'd been discovered.' Nods and murmurs of agreement all around.

'Mr. Holmes,' the prosecutor, sensing that his case was slipping away and determined to do his job even so, rose and addressed him. 'There is the possibility of theft.' A weak one admittedly but that's all he could come up with on short notice.

'I believe that the police made a full inventory of the young lord's possessions in consultation with his butler and that you, dear sir, have the documents in your possession,' Holmes remarked, gesturing with one hand at the desk behind which the other man was standing. 'Was there anything that was missing from the house when it was searched?'

'No,' the prosecutor said slowly, reluctantly, not even looking at the relevant documents. He knew that the house had not been burglarized. 'Everything was still there…'

'Robbery then was not the motive,' Holmes cut him off, beginning to pace again. 'Murder it was, Your Honour,' he said to the judge, gazing up at him. 'Murder… but not by Mr. Frye.'

'What was he doing there then?' inquired the prosecutor. 'And what of the vial of poison in the lord's neck?'

'Ah, there, dear sir, you hit upon a most curious circumstance,' Holmes remarked, half turning towards him. 'The vial of poison was placed in the lord's neck after his death.' Silence once more in the room, all eyes and ears bent upon the deductionist whose performance wasn't over yet. 'Mr. Grimsby's post mortem report clearly indicates the presence of several poisons in the lord's body.' One finger went up. 'Antimony.' Another finger. 'Cyanide.' A third digit. 'Strychnine.' One more. 'Arsenic.' His eyes slid along the jury bench, pale faces of the ordinary folk staring back at him. 'In various quantities. With arsenic predominating.'

'Why use so many poisons?' the prosecutor asked, interested in spite of himself. 'And why the variations?'

'The poisoner was not sure which venom to use at first,' explained the unruffled investigator, index finger pointed up at the ceiling. 'So he experimented until…'

'He hit on the best poison,' the prosecutor concluded, a certain finality in his tone.

'Precisely.'

'So the poison vial in his neck?'

'It was placed there so as to appear that it was Mr. Frye who'd done the deed,' was the assured reply of the unofficial agent of the law.

'And how did Mr. Frye come to be there? What was his business there?' Now that some of the anomalies had been explained, there remained this one: the Rook chief's presence in the manor house in Coventry.

'He was lured there,' came the quiet response of the other whose face had stiffened up slightly as if in a grip of some dark thought.

'By whom?' the prosecutor asked, pen at the ready. 'For what purpose?'

'Professor James Moriarty,' the detective responded, his head lifting and turning until he was staring at one dark corner of the room with the most keen regard. He was there. He was sure of it. The shadow on his mind. The antithesis of himself. Present. Here. watching silently as his victim was extricated from the tangled web in which he'd placed him. 'The eminent mathematician whose mind cannot comprehend a rival, the criminal mastermind that many have believed dead these last few years.' He nodded as if to himself. 'The man responsible for the children's poisoning, the murder of the elder Lord Buxton, the man who had already tried to implicate Mr. Frye in the death of Alice Woodsbury. The man whose agents enlisted the help of chief inspector Evans and permitted his dark talents to rear their ugly head.' His voice had never risen beyond a conversational tone, had never sounded more intensely emotional while remaining seemingly indifferent, each word striking the astonished listeners with the force of a hammer. 'The very man sitting in this courtroom now, observing these proceedings, from the darkness that is his home.' Gasps as all heads turned around to look at where he was staring. Silence as that darkness moved, rose and came forward slowly.

'Bravo, Mr. Holmes,' said his nemesis, pale and frail, clapping his hands dryly and without undue hurry. 'Bravo.' His lips pulled into a wry curve, his long black coat lending him a vampire-like appearance. 'A masterful performance.'

'Who are you, sir?' asked the judge, covering his surprise well. He wasn't a spring chicken. He'd sat many cases, some truly bizarre, some mundane. 'What business brings you here?'

'I am Professor James Moriarty,' the old man said, shuffling forward a little bit into the light that showed off his grey and white hair. 'I must commend you. Mr. Holmes. Your efforts on behalf of your young friend Mr. Frye have been most accomplished. He is fortunate to have the aid of a friend such as yourself.' He chuckled. 'However, once a criminal, always a criminal.' His eyes moved over the silent spectators of this drama playing out between the two men, the shock of seeing a dead man alive only making each impression more focused in their minds. 'Mr. Frye is one of my agents. I had invited him that night to discuss certain matters of mutual interest.' His gaze bore into Holmes'. 'The gangs in this fair city are a great nuisance, wouldn't you say, Mr. Holmes?'

'You lie, old man!' was the unexpected interruption from the accused's bench where Mr. Frye had been sitting in rather uncharacteristic silence while his friend had been doing his best to absolve him of the crime he hadn't committed in the first place. The glare he directed at the venomous snake whose presence he'd sensed only a short time before was anything but indifferent. If looks could kill….

'Please, Mr. Frye,' the gaunt professor said with a thin smile at him. 'Your work in this city has been of great benefit to all. The most vile gangs have been all but eliminated. Nothing stands in our way now…'

'Professor Moriarty,' the prosecutor finally found his voice. 'Are you suggesting that you work with a notorious criminal? To what end?'

'I would like to see this city restored to its former glory, cleansed of all undesirable elements.' He let his gaze take in all here present. 'Would not we all wish that? All of us, good citizens?' He smiled paternally at the courtroom. 'Sometimes in order to do good,' he added with a dramatic sigh. 'One must commit to working with the devil.'

'And when the devil is no longer useful…' Holmes interrupted the silent pause that weighed the courtroom.

'He must be sent back to hell, Mr. Holmes,' was the insinuating response of the mathematician. 'His good deeds cannot be permitted to count against the many crimes he has committed.'

'Funny, professor,' was the hoarse comment from the accused whose posture had taken on a certain menacing quality. 'You speak of the devil in such friendly terms that I wonder why aren't you in hell?'

'Oh dear Mr. Frye,' the professor laughed warmly. 'I have been to hell and back. Both of us have, have we not?' He watched in glee as all blood drained from the Assassin's face. 'Shall we return there?' He glanced around the silent chamber. 'And take a few friends with us?'

'What're you talking about?' The chief of the Rooks tensed up. The old bastard was planning something, something deadly. Jacob was as sure of that as he'd ever been. Moriarty didn't just come here for some strange purpose. He had had a plan in mind when he'd revealed himself. A final gambit, an endgame to put the mate to the Assassin's check.

'These fine people here will die, Mr. Frye,' the uncaring professor said. 'Die most unpleasantly of mustard gas inhalation.' Gaping and frozen figures all around him only served to make his smile bigger.

'Sir, you dare to threaten!' the judge stood up, shaking in indignation.

'I do not threaten, Your Honour,' the professor replied, sniffing in contempt. 'I am proposing a deal to Mr. Frye.'

'Not in my courtroom you don't!' the judge, who'd had enough drama for one day, signalled the bailiffs at the doors. 'Seize this man!'

'No! Don't!' Jacob had leapt up and over the accused's bench, realizing what the evil old man was about to do. 'Stay where you are!'

'Mr. Frye!' the judge directed his glare at him. 'Explain yourself!'

'This is between you and me, Moriarty,' the Assassin said, interposing himself between the judge, the prosecutor and the detective. 'It's always been about you and me.' He took a small step forward. 'You wanted your power over London restored. I was in your way.' He was at the barrier dividing the legal and the public sides of the courtroom, his eyes never straying from the evil old man. 'One gang against the other. That's what this is all about.' He gestured at the hapless spectators of this dramatic spectacle that they'd not expected. 'Let these people go.' He could feel Holmes' eyes boring into the back of his head. 'And I will come with you, no fuss.'

'Mr. Frye..' the judge again, trying to restore some semblance of order.

'Your Honour, if you want to live, you will shut up,' growled the accused in a firm commanding tone of a born leader. 'So, professor? What say you?'

'An intriguing proposition, Mr. Frye, and true to form.' His eyes held a too knowing look: he was aware of what the man facing him truly was. 'And will you also admit to the murder of Lord Buxton?'

Jacob inhaled slowly and was about to admit a lie when…

'Which one?' was the cooly collected question of the detective from behind him. 'Since it is clear by now that the young lord did not die at his hands.'

'And you cannot condemn a man twice for a crime he did commit,' chimed in the prosecutor citing legal form and surprising everyone, even himself. 'There was an execution, professor,' he added, his tone taking on a certain legal cadence of a trained barrister. 'Mr. Frye did hang for that crime.' A sly twist of the prosecutor's mouth. 'Which I now think of it does seem to be connected to you. Truth be told, it seems you are very eager for this young man to die.' He walked over to stand beside the man he'd just been trying to prove was a murderer. 'You have a personal vendetta against him.' He shared a look with the stunned youth whose thoughts were racing: what the bloody hell had gotten into this one? He was DEFENDING a criminal?

'A vendetta which began with me,' Holmes added, coming to stand on Jacob's other side, two men of the law flanking a famed criminal, a gang boss to whose count there were indeed killings and robberies and whatnot and yet…. He'd been willing to put his life on the line for those he didn't know, didn't care a whit for. 'A tragic farce that should have ended at Reichenbach Falls.'

'Ah indeed,' the prosecutor remarked, his memory jogged. 'Professor, you were the leader of a shadowy organization.' An apologetic glance at the young man beside him. 'A gang if you will.'

'Yes I was..' hissed the frail man, his face impassive still despite the bitter knowledge that he was about to lose his endgame. 'He took my place!' He jabbed a finger at the now sneering Jacob Frye, whose hands were free of the constraints of the cuffs behind his back.

'He was a rival,' the prosecutor continued relentlessly. 'And so you devised a diabolical scheme to remove him - and your former foe Mr. Holmes at the same time.' It was all so clear now. 'Your Honour,' he turned to address the judge. 'I b-'

He was roughly shoved aside as a single shot rang out and Holmes fell with the prosecutor whose back would have borne the sign of a bullet hole if the sharp-eyed detective hadn't been expecting a last desperate maneuver from the increasingly chagrined mathematician who sensed victory slipping away.

'Gentlemen, if you would be so kind!' called out the malicious professor, glancing up to the ceiling, the ventilation vents installed there, hiding the pistol he'd used inside his black long coat and sneering at the scowling Assassin who was attempting to get through the crowd which had formed once the loud thunder of the gun had discharged. The judge was yelling at the bailiffs to create order even as the prosecutor turned to thank his saviour and froze with his mouth open.

'Mr. Holmes!' He caught the reeling investigator who gripped his arms in a vise-like grasp which would leave bruises for sure. 'Mr. Holmes, are you alright?' he asked as the man's weight shifted onto him and he had to help him to lie down. 'Mr. Holmes?!' The long face of the older man was usually of a pale hue but now… 'Doctor! Need a doctor here!' the prosecutor cried out as the pandemonium increased, the bailiffs unable to quiet the crowd while they searched for the author of this debacle.

'Here,' came the professionally cool tones of Mr. Grimsby, the city coroner, who made his way through the crowd and approached at the same time as Dr. Watson. Together they bent over the prone detective who offered a weak smile.

'Well, doctor, it seems I've finally tasted lead,' he tried to joke, his rational mind comprehending that the bullet meant for the fortunate prosecutor had found him instead. It was hard to breathe, so… a lung most likely… it… he gritted his teeth as the two doctors undid his jacket and found the wet patch of his vest soaked in fresh blood which glistened in the daylight spilling in through the glass windows. 'How deep is it?' he asked, his mind lucid, able to hold the pain at bay.

'No exit wound,' was the calm assessment of the former military medic whose hand had just explored the underside of his friend's body. 'It's still there.'

'Then we had better get him to the morgue,' advised the coroner, his tone equally professional. 'There is a surgery that almost no one uses.'

'Agreed,' Dr. Watson nodded and glanced around, sniffing. 'D'you smell that?'

The burly coroner put his nose in the air in turn like a hound on scent. 'Garlic…' His eyes met those of his colleague in medicine just as the wounded detective whispered, 'Mustard gas…' and yet another strong bellow rose above the increasing murmurs of the spectators who also had finally smelled the gas on the air but couldn't put their finger on it.

'EVERYBODY OUT!' Jacob Frye, standing on top of the judge's bench, the latter gawping up at him in something akin to unsurprised outrage (a rogue was a rogue, after all), filled his lungs and pointed to the windows since the doors had been locked - probably by Moriarty and his lieutenants prior to his 'revelation'. 'OUT IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!'

'It's mustard gas! Like Moriarty said!' Dr. Watson added standing up. 'It's lethal.' He straightened up to his best military posture and rapped out like a general on parade when he observed the popular hesitation: these people needed direction and he was more than willing to provide it. 'Do as he says!'

'Thank you, doctor,' the leader of the top London syndicate expressed his appreciation, jumping down from the judge's seat and flashing that charm that had won him many admirers in his gang. 'What's wrong with Holmes?' he asked, only now realizing that the slim detective wasn't on his feet as usual, his debonair calm on full display.

'He ate a bullet,' was the paraphrase offered by Mr. Grimsby with an absolutely straight face. 'Although it somehow ended up in his lung,' he added with mild irony.

'Since you've eaten so many bullets for me, Jacob,' rasped the injured detective with a slight smile on his pale face. 'I thought I'd give it a try.'

'You certainly look as if you're enjoying the taste,' quipped the young man with a light twist of the mouth, swallowing his worry. A bullet to the lung was no joke. Internal bleeding would be the least of his friend's problems. 'However, I think this isn't the right place or time to discuss your lead digestion.'

'Of course,' gasped the white-faced detective, coughing lightly and convulsing in pain that that caused.

'You want to take him out through the window?' Watson inquired only half-sarcastically, helping Holmes to stay still.

'Capital idea, doctor,' the newly-acquitted reprobate responded cheekily. 'Help me get him up.'

With an exasperated sigh, the scar-faced young man, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, grabbed the sneering former chief inspector and slammed him bodily into the brick wall of the holding cell inside Scotland Yard.

'I want names, Mr. Evans, and I want them now,' he grated, his gaze ice-cold despite the rising fury. He was really really really becoming tired of all these schemes of the obviously insane professor. It was time to cut to the chase, quite literally. Which was why he was here asking questions and trying to beat the answers out of the obstinately truculent defrocked chief inspector who had lost none of his spunk despite the disgrace and the impending fallout from his betrayal of all he'd sworn to be.

'Go to'ell, boy!' was the contemptuous hiss of the middle-aged defiant copper that was not. 'I ain't tellin you squat!' He spat at the young rogue's face and the next moment he was deposited quite concretely onto the floor which creaked under the combined weight of the reticent disgrace and the red-hot rage of the two men.

'If you want things to go easier for you,' came a calm drawl from outside the cell. 'I would do as Mr. Frye so kindly suggested.' Abberline, police togs freshly pressed and cleaned, had been leaning against the wall on the outside of the holding cell, observing in silent anticipation of his young associate's failure. Jacob's methods tended to be brutal and for the most part effective. With a wily man like Evans, however, that didn't always work. Evans didn't seem to be following Moriarty under duress: it appeared that he'd joined him willingly, had become a corrupt policeman in lieu of being corrupted by a criminal. What an upside down world this was in which a man of law who was supposed to be above reproach sullied his hands with crime and a criminal turned out to be a noble man! Madness! Utter complete madness!

'Names, Mr. Evans,' the irate interrogator demanded, shaking him and then hitting him across the face - not hard enough to break anything but with adequate firmness which carried promise of worse to come. 'I want the name of the man who gave you the stag tokens to frame me.' His eyes flashed a brief gold. 'The same man whom you met that night when I caught you.'

'You mean when I allowed you to take me by surprise?' was the brazen response of the man on the floor, blood showing between his teeth.

'You allowed me?' Jacob hissed, incredulous. Had he miscalculated again? Had Moriarty and his two thugs been playing him even then? Damn it all to hell!

'He knows you, boy,' laughed the dishonoured copper who had nothing left to lose. His life meant little. He had no family to speak of: only a sister locked away in Bedlam since she was a child. She'd been wild and uncontrollable, given to unexpected fits and outbursts of screaming brutality. He'd not seen her since that day when she'd been dragged kicking and shrieking across the threshold of the asylum, never to be seen again. He'd not even gone there to tell her their parents were dead. It was better she did not know. That she was forgotten. Lived and died in peace. Of a kind. 'He knows which strings to pull to make you dance to his tune.' Another vile smirk that Jacob truly wanted to smack off him. 'While you're here wasting time on me, he's getting away.' He chuckled, admiring the growing chagrin on the young bastard's face. 'You'll never catch him. He's always been two steps ahead of you.' He cackled even as he was backhanded across the face, this time with enough strength to knock several teeth loose and then he was push-kicked aside in disgust as the disappointed and angry Rook let him go and vacated the cell, slamming the door in impotent fury. Abberlinene had seen him furious before: smashing things, knocking holes in walls with his fists, breathing like a steam train at full speed. This time for some reason the whimsical head of the notoriously successful syndicate did not do that. Instead, panting like an industrial bellows, he glared out of the window at the night time London, snowed under and so sleepy-looking in the gaslight of the ephemeral streetlamps. A rare hansom or four-wheeler would roll by the front door of Scotland Yard, the large wheels creating ruts of dirt and sludge in the virgin snow, staining it and blackening its surface. Occasionally a horse would lift its tail and make a fragrant deposit which wouldn't really be cleaned off - unless it was on the wheels and hooves of other cabs.

'So ordinary, isn't it?' Abberline ventured after a long silence, also very bizarre considering his associate's volcanic nature.

A reluctant grunt was his only answer as the Rook leaned his head on his arm, elbow resting on the dirty frame of the window.

'Moriarty would have it all quivering with fear,' the sympathetic inspector added softly. He knew what it felt like to have a suspect get away, escape never to be found again. The chagrin, the second-guessing, the blame… he could read all that in the tightly pressed jaw of the younger man. 'He'd have us running scared, blind as mice.' He rested his back against the wall, arms folded, staring at the leering Evans, who licked his lips lasciviously while watching them intently. Disgusting… 'Focusing on the wrong thing… not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.'

'Every time I have thought there was a light at the end of the tunnel, it'd be blown out, extinguished like it'd never been,' Jacob spoke in a half whisper, hoarse with anger, his fingers bending and then unbending with the strength of his emotions.

'False leads,' the inspector commiserated, nodding as if to himself. 'Those I am familiar with. False trails. Clues that lead nowhere. Witnesses who won't talk for fear of reprisal. Obstinate suspects…' A wry glance at the younger man who had never made a most cooperative accused.

'And just how did you deal with such uncooperative rascals?' was the most genuinely interested question. For once it seemed Jacob Frye was truly asking for help - not in so many words, mind you, he'd never admit that kind of weakness. However… there it was… a slim chance to have Mr. Jacob 'I don't need any help' Frye in his debt.

'I took a ride.'

'I didn't mean like this!' Frederick Abberline shouted over the thunder of the steam engine hurtling along the tracks at more than full speed - at least it seemed so to the hat-less copper whose head gear had flown off some miles back - or was it more? He had enormous difficulty in counting the mile posts given the hellish velocity of the stolen train. Because this was not Frye's own train, oh no! He wasn't going to risk that! An old train which was just sitting in the trainyard at Westminster station - that wasn't a problem. The guard had been gently encouraged to take the rest of the night off. The last he'd seen of the still-breathing pseudo agent of the law of private property he'd been curled up on his side beside one of the benches on the platform. He'd most likely lose his job now, Frederick Abberline thought regretfully. And of course Frye cared not for that: he blew in like the wind, took what he wanted and to hell with the rest.

'Don't worry, Freddie,' yelled the mercurial Rook as if on cue. 'I left money in his hat.' A cheeky grin. 'He'll get by until he finds something else.'

Frederick Abberline stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment. Was it the roaring wind or had he just heard…?

'You did what?' he finally gasped out, still unable to comprehend what his mind was telling him. 'You gave him money?' Frye had actually thought about someone else's life for a change? Had hell frozen over? Had pigs learned to fly?

'Probably not enough to cover the cost of a new uniform.' The incorrigible rogue shrugged. 'A pound is about all I had.' He leaned in closer. 'Keep a watch on this fellow,' he indicated the captive engineer who'd been cuffed to one of the innumerable protrusions on the wall of the train. He had one hand free to operate the train, his coal boy lending the other while trying to maintain the power of coal and steam that propelled the metal juggernaut, one bright eye glaring out into the dark night, the pistons pounding away as thick black smoke shot out in an almost constant billow that tailed out over the three train cars that the locomotive was pulling. They were empty, except for debris left behind by the loading and unloading of the cargo. This had been a freight train once upon a while. 'I'll go check on our 'passenger'.'

He'd left the captive copper in the tender and sure hands of Jesse and Rick, two of his best lads when it came to interrogating recalcitrant guests who had a tendency to become very talkative once the burly but kind-faced Jesse and the horribly disfigured Rick had had 'a conversation' with them, the kind of chummy little chat that left no visible signs of injury. They knew to hit exactly right so as to debilitate but not harm the relevant organs required for talking. The mouth generally remained cut- and bruising-free.

'Gents,' their chief greeted them inside the reinforced carriage of the former freight train. 'How goes the work?'

'He's a hard butt to crack, guv,' confessed the smaller of the two interrogators, rubbing his unshaven chin. He was trying to hide the horrific scarring left by a dynamite explosion gone wrong. Indeed it was a miracle he'd survived and still had his mandible to eat and talk with. His face had been rather close to a crate of dynamite that had been sitting in wet storage and he'd not checked that before lighting a match. At first nothing had sparked so he'd tried again and again until….

'The bridge at Fulton is coming up fast,' Jacob warned them. 'If he doesn't talk before then….'

'We's drop im in the deeps, aye, sir,' smiled Jesse, his small eyes glinting and his hairy knuckles cracking softly. 'Gently like a babe.'

'Quietly,' seconded Rick, snorting. Then his eyes sharpened. 'What of the t'other copper? Will 'e object?'

Well, that was the thing wasn't it? Abberline had no idea that Jacob didn't plan on Mr. Evans surviving the night. Better a dead snake than the one that could still bite. And Mr. Evans still had his fangs. Removing them via the usual justice process would take too long. The Rooks intended to speed up the long and winding road of the law by taking a shortcut: off the railroad bridge just outside Fulton, a small town far enough from London as to be a sleepy backwater. No one would find the body here because no one would be looking for it. No one in London knew that Mr. Evans had vacated the city. Except the three Rooks and the sworn enemy of the former chief inspector.

'He won't have any objections,' the stony-eyed chief of the London Rooks assured them softly. 'He won't even know Mr. Evans got off at Fulton.'

'Yes, sir!' murmured both street toughs, chuckling in a most unpleasant fashion. 'But…' Jesse murmured, jerking his head at the hog-tied dishonoured but defiant copper. 'In the meantime?'

Their boss had been staring at the sneering captive with a rather gleaming glare. Slowly his mouth had curved into a beatific smirk.

'In the meantime,' he muttered, approaching the leering Evans, whose eyes followed his every move. 'I have a question for Mr. Evans here.' Cutting the ropes around the startled prisoner's wrists and ankles, Jacob met the other man's eye. 'Would you like to try and kill me?'

Evans had been waiting just for that moment, that kind of invitation. He lunged almost as soon as his hands and feet were free and went for the young cockerel's throat. He wanted to choke the living lights out of the sneering self-important insolent bastard who had dared to stand not only in his way but that of his employer, whose criminal enterprise this interfering fool's detective friend (detective! Ha! Nothing more than a glorified consultant!) had almost destroyed, rising like a phoenix from the ashes. He would pay for his meddling, his incessant and devastating intrusions into other people's business, especially Moriarty's dealings. He should have stayed to the side and permitted the professor, fate if you will, to have his way with Holmes. But no… he'd had to obstruct and trample on the professor's turf. Had he truly believed that he'd get away with that? That there would be no retribution, no vengeance taken for plans and lives ruined?

'Boss!' was the exclamation of the defaced bearded thug who'd taken one short step forward, ready to beat the disgraced copper into a pancake.

'No!' A decisive and quick hand went up to stop them both, the criminal's eyes never leaving Evans' face. 'Don't interfere.' His upper lip curled in a most insulting manner. 'Well, old man? What are you waiting for?'

Evans, wishing he still had his knife so he could carve and chop this insufferable nuisance to bits, took a quick shuffling step and jabbed at the sharp-chinned Rook who almost contemptuously blocked it and stepped aside, his long bout of illness notwithstanding his long years of training and an almost iron constitution. The policeman who was not, however, had had long years of practice in the tricks of the criminal world. He paced the saucy rascal, matching step for step, blow for blow. He wasn't going down without a fight, oh no sir! Not to this upstart who fancied himself so superior, so much more important than the professor. He was nothing, less than nothing. He would pay for what he'd done, time and again.

'Not bad,' Jacob congratulated him slapping him across the face and shoving him into the wall of the swaying train car. 'For an old man.' He released him and stepped away, half-turning, that same rude twist to his mouth that spoke volumes about his attitude towards the Butcher. 'I'm still breathing, though,' he taunted, spreading his hands, aware of the two lounging scoundrels who called him 'sir'. They were keeping a careful watch on the fight, making sure that the 'old man' didn't do something stupid - like pull out a stashed knife or pistol. This was bare knuckles and bare knuckles it would stay.

'Not for long,' ground out Evans, leaping at him in an attempt to wrestle him to the ground. Somehow once again the youth slipped away like an eel, slick and oily. 'I see you like to run. Meater,' he spat at the insultingly vivacious Rook.

'You'll never make meat out of me, Butcher,' was the instant reply of the gang boss who feinted a hit to the ear only to uppercut the older man's jaw to stun him and cause him to stumble back, creating an opening for a booted heel to the sternum that knocked the angry and vicious Evans into the empty shelves that had been used to store extra ammo for the hidden troops. 'How does that feel, eh?' he inquired, tight-lipped, one eyebrow lifted into his hairline. 'I thought you wanted to kill me.'

With an irate grunt, the other man ran at him like a bull, his sternum still hurting, his anger climbing so high that he was beginning to see red. He simply wanted to destroy, to club into eternal insensibility the young pest who wouldn't stand still and allow himself to be exterminated like the vermin he was. Why wouldn't he just let him do what he wanted? Why did he keep mocking and laughing at him with those devil's eyes? Why? WHY?

'Not bad at all, Mr. Evans,' drawled the criminal irritant, clapping his hands ironically. 'Shall we continue this dance?' he asked politely, swatting away an incoming jab like an annoying mosquito and punching the other in the jaw. 'At a faster pace this time.' With that he went on a full frontal assault, his fists and feet coming into play, doing double duty - stun and devastate. He wanted the defiant and truculent copper to feel what a real beating was like, what he had felt these past two months ever since his 'arrest' in Coventry. He'd been shot at, put on trial, questioned again and again, framed - twice now - and he had had just about enough. Each thought, a punch or a kick. Each word, a jab or a knee. Letting his anger slip the leash, finally. After all this time. Something simple. Something he understood. Something he could be all in, letting his rage out with each blow, headbutt and knee to the crotch. Elbow to the other side of the jaw. Pivot on one foot, boot to the midsection to knock the air out of the Butcher's lungs one more time. See him collapse into a heap near the wall, blood streaming from a broken nose, some of his fingers pointing in the wrong direction, wheezing through his open mouth, one eye swollen shut.

'Ah, Mr. Evans, I must apologize,' the bright-eyed bastard said with mock sincerity and sorrow in his tone. 'I didn't mean to make mincemeat out of you.' He snorted, wiping his hands and flexing the fingers to loosen them up. Should've worn the protective wraps but…. It'd felt so damn GOOD to pummel the daylights out of the Butcher. 'I do not take kindly to having former Rooks gutted for pleasure.' He knelt on one knee, elbow resting on it as he breathed deeply, coming down a bit from the high of adrenaline. 'Or current friends shot at.'

Evans, blood spilling from his split lip, managed a smile. 'Still ain't tellin you shit!' he said, half gasping after each word. His chest hurt, his lungs hurt, his kidneys were aching, his liver groaned at the abuse it'd received, and as for his bollocks… better not even think about those.

'That's fine, Evans,' the smiling gang boss assured him. 'I have other ways of finding them.' He glanced at his two attentive Rooks. 'He's all yours, lads.'

'Have you completely taken leave of your senses, Frye?!' Abberline exploded slamming the door of his office at the Met with a loud bang which was heard all over the building, causing the coppers nearby to flinch. Mr. Abberline was furious and that was so rare as to be exotic enough for them not to stick their necks out unnecessarily.

'What I've done, Freddie,' was the suave response of the richly-outfitted gang boss, whose gleaming leather boots were up on the edge of the inspector's desk as he lounged in the chair. 'Is a favour for you.'

'A favour?' the furious policeman practically screamed, his hands clawed. He truly sincerely wanted to choke all the pomposity and hot air out of this unbelievably feckless and irresponsible Assassin whose presence in his life was a cross that he wasn't willing to bear anymore. 'You call dropping a man from a height of seventy feet a favour?!' He took one outraged step towards the smug young man whose eyes were boring into him, all smugness gone from them like a beach washed away by an incoming wave. What the inspector saw looking out at him from those eyes was the lethal and merciless killer that Jacob was able to slip into at a moment's notice.

'Alive, Mr. Evans would have been a liability for you.' He sat up straight, feet back on the floor, one finger pointed at Abberline. His features took on the no-nonsense cast of a street thug and a general who felt that he didn't have to explain his actions to anyone, least of all to a man he'd just 'helped'. 'With him gone, there is no danger to you or me. All evidence against you has been taken care of. You're free to live as you see fit, Inspector Abberline.' His tone had become harder with each word until it was the cold of hot fury at the ingratitude of the clean and polished policeman who still would not admit that he needed the gang boss's help in making his life bearable.

'You!' Abberline gasped at such effrontery. That Frye would dare to even suggest that without him the inspector was useless. 'I'll have you…!'

'Arrested?' snorted the ice cold Assassin rising from the chair with the same slowness as a glacier. 'Been there, tried that. Many times.'

The inspector, realizing that he'd perhaps gone too far and pushed too hard on the clearly unstable young man's nerves (after all he'd been through, who wouldn't be upset?), put up his hands in a somewhat belated placating gesture.

'Jacob…' His tone sounded a warning and a truce all in one as he watched the ominously explosive young man walk to the door with that swagger he carried off so well and put his hand on the knob. 'Where are you going?' he asked with not a little fear in his voice. This sudden shift from suave gangster to ice-cold killer had put him off stride: what was Frye planning now?

'To end this,' was the less than helpful but no less menacing reply of the Assassin on a mission which didn't need any meddling from outsiders. Not anymore.

'Burn it, Mr. Finch,' the elderly gentleman with a most stylish cane, one hand behind his back, said to the debonair man beside him who had just shut the last point of egress for the poor unfortunates inside, the front door of the Rookery at Whitechapel. 'To the ground.' His voice gave off the appearance of indifference; he was anything but. He observed from the safe distance of the narrow one lane street as the Rooks, young and old, went up in flames, hungry fiery flames in the dead of late January night when the snow didn't help but hissed instead in concert with the despairing shrieks of those trapped inside and unable to get out of the inferno that was their prison, their death. He hardly heard them anyway, his mind's eye filled with the image of the one this was meant to draw out, the one who had dared to challenge him, to confront him, to defy him - even an inch from being judged guilty. Since subtlety hadn't been of use, perhaps it was time to use a more direct approach, the kind of explosive methods that his rival - yes, rival, he would use that word now - his rival favoured so much.

'Do you hear them, Mr. Frye?' he muttered, eyes gleaming with cold calculating madness and delighted glee. 'Do you hear your Rooks calling?'

Holmes had thought he had seen Jacob in all of his moods. From casual irreverent joviality to the hot fury of a man baulked in his plans. From laughing over a well told joke to the lethal hunter of deserving men that he had been born to be. He had believed that he had been witness to the full spectrum of the enormous emotional range of the mercurial and changeable weathervane that was the leader of the Rooks.

He had been mistaken. Miss Frye had been mistaken. Watson and Mr. Green had been mistaken. All of them had been mistaken. There was the capacity for so much more, so much more darkness within the resurrected Assassin, whose mind had suffered untold agonies that he'd not mentioned, the severing of the lifeline that had held him to his former ebullient self, the ragged stitching that held him together now unravelling, coming undone with the full horrified recognition of the diabolical extent of the professor's insanity.

Holmes watched his young friend's face fall, literally, off his skull when he saw what remained of the Whitechapel Rookery, he heard the stifled groan of grief that wrenched and then tore apart the fragile soul of the chief who'd lost those who'd trusted him to look out for them, the men and women he had failed even though there was nothing he could have done in any way. That would be cold comfort to him, wouldn't bring back those he had known and gathered under his wing, the not unsympathetic deductionist reasoned. There was nothing that could heal this, this deep hole that had opened up. Nothing except revenge, blood for blood, lives for a life.

'No…!' Denial of the obvious, of what his eyes told him could not be, on his lips, Jacob stared in helpless rage at what had been a two story nondescript wooden building, the first of several his gang had taken over. Naught but ash and dirt and slush. Nothing remained. Nothing of the living bodies sealed in. Nothing of his Rooks that lived here in Whitechapel, that had made it their home base, their families, their friends…

All gone, burned beyond recognition, to less than a crisp. There was nothing to bury, nothing to weep over, nothing to mourn, nothing to grasp and hold on to. Nothing… nothing…

'The bastard!' The insult, whispered through gritted teeth, the Assassin unaware of tears streaking down his pale cheeks. 'The old rotten bastard!'

Rage, red-hot, flashed through his mind and soul with the same intensity as the flames that had no doubt raged here last night. The kind of rage that drove a man mad. The kind of rage that blinded him to all around him. The kind of rage that demanded immediate action, an instant response.

'I'll kill him,' he growled, kneeling on one knee and gathering up a handful of soil in his hand and bringing it up to his face to inhale the odour of death and dark promise, unaware of Holmes, his sister, anyone, caught up in his private grief. 'That I swear.' He let the black sand spill through his fingers, breathing deeply, the expression of chilled deep fury settling over his face like a mask. 'He can't hide from me now.'

The Rooks were on the prowl, sniffing, tracking, trailing their prey. The old man and his two cronies. The elderly madman who had had the audacity to murder their own. The two agents who carried out his devilish wishes blind or accepting of his insanity. Because it was most clear to the Rooks and their heartbroken angry chief that their foe had gone utterly insane, and had to be put down like the rabid dog that he was. And so, the Rooks slunk along alleys, skimmed the rooftops, keen and stony eyes hidden under the brims of their hats, knives and cane swords tucked away under their overcoats to avoid police questioning them. They staked out the university, the railway, the river: any and all points of departure, any and all places where the old villain could go to ground. They were going to find him, they were going to end him. One way or another. Their boss had said so and they believed him, trusted him. He'd led them against Starrick and the Blighters, not without losses - but then in war, some always died, were lost to this life. Such was the price to be paid for freedom, for clearer skies, for sanity.

And the Rooks were ready and willing to pay the butcher's bill.

'Sir, we should leave,' Mr. Finch said as they managed to evade the trio of disguised Frye followers, losing them in the crowded market in the Strand. 'The city has become too dangerous for you.'

'Indeed it has,' the old man agreed gently, brushing past the middle-class residents filling the market square on this cold winter day when the sun shone down brightly. 'And that is as it should be.'

'They are getting ever closer, sir,' objected his most loyal lieutenant, the only one who dared to voice his disagreements so openly. The others had found it better to stay silent in the face of the professor's quiet anger that usually meant a dose of poison or a family member disappearing forever from their lives. 'Surely…'

'No…,' Moriarty lifted one hand, half turning to offer a wintry smile. 'It is time to end this game of chess between Mr. Frye and me. Only one of us can rule this city.'

'You intend to challenge him?' the surprised agent asked without much in the way of emotion. He'd learned a long time ago to keep them to himself: India was not a place conducive to extravagant displays of a sentimental nature - after all, the natives were too passionate and so it behooved the representatives of the civilized world to show restraint.

'No, Mr. Finch,' replied the imperturbably mad mathematician. 'Let him challenge me.'

'You can't let him do this, Mr. Holmes!' the obviously agitated inspector of the Metropolitan Police of London exclaimed in apparent distress, taking long strides about his own office under the watchful grey regard of the famous aide of the criminal justice system. 'This skulking about at night, the brawling with the other gangs during the day, the snide little messages on the doors of the university, the holdups of the trains and barges!' His voice had risen almost to a shriek of pain by the end. His hands were raised to the ceiling in mute appeal. 'He can't be allowed to go around scaring the city to death!'

'And what is it that you think I can do?' was the slightly distracted ironic question by the long-legged man in the client chair, one elbow resting on the somewhat unusually cluttered table. Inspector Abberline must have been in great distress if he so forgot himself as to put his inkpot in the place of his jurisprudence.

'Rein him in,' Frederick Abberline suggested a little caustically, noting the clear abstraction of his guest. 'He listens to you.'

Two eyebrows rose up the tall forehead of the gifted detective. 'Does he really?' he asked rhetorically, his fingers fidgeting. He was worried. Very much so. Jacob's mental condition had been fragile for months ever since his 'revival' by that curious artifact beneath Buckingham Palace. He had been swinging back and forth between his former self, the jovial Jacob Frye of Crawley, and the new man, the maturing Jacob Frye of London, the one who had given his life for his friends without fear or ulterior motive. His bouts of moodiness would be swiftly replaced by the most brutal spells of violence, the explosive bursts of the turmoil that roiled within him and wanted out, wanted to control him, possess him. And the seductive darkness seemed to be winning. Especially after what Professor Moriarty had done. He would never forget the dead look on his young friend's face, that mask of anguish and helplessness at his inability and failure to see it coming. The leader of the Rooks had shut himself off and shut everyone else out. He'd gone on a warpath, alone, like an Indian brave out for vengeance for his people. Because that is what the Rooks were: his, Jacob's, people, his family, the family he had chosen, had created, the ones that understood him and accepted him as he was.

'If he continues on his current bent,' Abberline recalled him to the present moment. 'He will suffer. Greatly.'

Holmes regarded this sometime friend of his changeable weathervane of a gang boss for some long moments, not moving a muscle.

'You care for him, inspector,' he remarked at last slowly and with firmness. 'Despite the contradictions of your relationship, you still worry about him.'

Abberline, caught out so easily, blushed and looked away. He had not spent much time on analyzing what he thought and felt about Jacob Frye, this hurricane of a man, completely inexplicable to anyone and even to himself it appeared. He had simply tried to be the kind of policeman who didn't judge the book by its cover. Not all men of ugly mien were criminals and not all of fair face were guiltless.

'I worry for what he might do, Mr. Holmes,' he felt obliged to correct his unofficial colleague. 'He is a force of nature that is capable of so much destruction - it is quite frightening.' His hands twisted as his imagination was fired up with all kinds of unpleasant possibilities. 'Just look what he did with Evans.'

The unruffled private investigator sighed. That business had been particularly nasty, revenge and lashing out in equal parts: Jacob was hurting those he thought deserving of pain in order to assuage his own angst, his own confusion and distraction. He was seeking himself anew, the second chance at life a miracle not of his own making.

'He will not listen to me, I fear, Inspector,' he said with sadness, for the first time openly acknowledging the sudden distance between the animated and complex head of the Rook syndicate and himself. 'However, he may listen to Miss Frye.'

'Why? Why did you bring me back?' he half yelled at her, his face twisted in deep unhappiness. 'Why did you use that damn thing?!' His fist smashed into the wall of the train car that served as the sitting room. 'And don't tell me it's because of unfinished business!'

Evie, familiar with her twin's fiery temper which was her own too, for once could not find a witty comeback, an adequate and scathing defence that would deflate her brother's anger and make him feel guilty for even raising his voice to her. His anger was raw, real, and full of anguish, the kind of despair that she had not beloved him capable of feeling. He had always seemed able to shake off and not think about the deeper things of life - unlike her who had devoted her mind and intellect to knowledge and contemplation of the more hidden mysteries of existence and the Assassin Order. Jacob had not bothered with any of that; instead he had devoted his time to picking fights, hanging out with the boys and causing mayhem. He had not felt the need to express his feelings with anything other than his fist or a sarcastic remark. Evie realized now that she had not ever thought of her brother as a real human being, having pigeonholed him as a hopeless rebel without a clue.

'Answer me, Evie,' he demanded, growling from deep within his chest, his palm punctuating the words with a blow against that same wall. 'Why would you revive someone that you don't need in your life anymore?'

'What?' The blue-eyed young woman started out of her reverie. 'Of course I need you! You're my brother!' How could he not see?

'That's not an answer, sister dear!' He took one step towards her, one hand raised. 'Why didn't you just let me stay dead?'

'Because we're family, Jacob,' she found words at last, ignoring that upraised hand: had he truly been thinking of striking her? 'Losing Father was bad enough. Losing you….' She shook her head, quivering with her own emotions which she had not examined thoroughly. It'd been reflex, so subconscious that it didn't bear discussing at all despite her misgivings. How could she simply let him die? He was her twin, the other half of the Frye Assassin Duo! 'Despite all your faults, your clumsiness, your penchant for extravagance… You are still my brother…' She inhaled deeply. 'And a good man.'

He blinked, regarding her with a novel kind of intensity which she had not seen in him before. This was as close to an apology as he had heard from her in several years. She had always behaved like the ideal Assassin, meticulously thinking through her plans, and ribbing him for working on the fly. Her narrow-mindedness had driven a wedge between them. She had refused to understand his reasons and he had decided not to waste his breath on explaining himself - no, justifying, actually, that's what it was - to her. What was the point if she wouldn't unbend her mind enough to listen?

'I was afraid of what might happen if you… returned,' she went on, her voice shaking slightly. 'I feared you wouldn't be the same.'

'You were not mistaken,' he noted, glaring out of the train window as they passed over the blackness of the Thames. 'I'm not…' His voice dropped. 'I'm shattered.' He leaned his forehead against the cold glass, palms splayed out, eyes closed, his body moving with the motion of the train. 'Like glass.'

Her hand on his shoulder startled him. He would never ask for aid in so many words. But Evie knew…

'Let me help you, brother. We can work this out together.' She paused as if waiting for an answer that never came. 'Like we used to.'

'Good evening, professor,' spoke the raspy yet mild voice of the young man who had been hunting him for a month, steadily and methodically - unlike his more common approach, this time he'd been as delicate as the falling snow, making sure that his prey had no idea that he was closer on his tracks than the old professor had believed him to be.

'Mr. Frye,' the gaunt gentleman in long black tweed turned around without undue hurry from the bookshelf on which he'd been returning some books of mathematical study. 'I do not remember you making an appointment.'

'I pencilled myself in,' was the quick reply of the youthful rebel who had come in and closed the door softly behind himself. The lamp light did not fall there, so the dangerous gang boss was not visible to the calm and collected professor who felt secure in his office.

'Most inconsiderate of you, Mr. Frye,' the elderly academic chided him, hands folded behind his back as he walked over to stand near his vast work desk. 'But then,' he added with a sneering twist of his mouth meant to provoke. 'You never did strike me as a tactful man.'

'I am not here to fight, professor,' the unexpected visitor cut across him. 'I am here to kill you.'

'Oh indeed?' The frail criminal mastermind lifted one ironic eyebrow. 'And you no doubt expect me to simply kneel and accept my fate?' he asked, his thin smile still in place, his hands remaining behind him.

'Enough talking, professor,' the impatient Rook interrupted him once more, the hiss of a dropping blade filling the tranquil office. 'It's time to die.'

He was halfway across the warmly lit room, soft carpet muffling his steps, when the door at the back of the professor's work room opened and two men emerged, revolvers at the ready and fired in his direction, one bullet missing him entirely and lodging in the door frame, the other brushing by his uplifted arm. Breaking stride in midstep, letting his training take over, he tucked and rolled to the left, ending up near a large armchair by the fireplace, his own revolver out and shooting with cold precision at the two dark figures, one taller than the other, both known to him from previous meetings. The Torturer and the Silent One, the bloody professor's bodyguards and hounds. His birds of prey. His satellites, the ones he sent out to do his dirty work - while he directed everything from behind the curtains, the general who never sat foot on the battlefield.

And even now…

Out of the corner of his eye, the busy Assassin still had time to notice the gaunt professor slipping out through that door and disappearing into the blackness. Coward. Meater. No nerve to stay and watch to the end eh? Which it was high time to attempt: the rotten bastard could not be allowed to get away scot free, not after murdering Rooks. He had to pay - in blood. Just these two annoying agents in the way…. Well… why not throw some ash into their eyes, a hot piece of firewood from the fireplace obligingly left on by the dear Professor? Just by way of distraction as it were - which gave him time to shoot out the right kneecap of the silent partner who was not silent for long. A sharp scream of pain that became a groan while he rolled on the carpeted floor, his friend Mr. Finch having tossed aside his now empty pistol choosing to go mano a mano with the canny young bastard who just would not DIE! How could he be so… vivacious, like a viper?

A swing, a block, another swing with the other fist, a dodge with a body blow to the left kidney, a kick at the back of the ankle to unbalance him but he was already turning so it went nowhere. An attempt to grab him and wrestle him to the ground which didn't work as he evaded it - he had been the best wrestler in the regiment and still remained in good shape. And he knew his man now: Jacob Frye did not take prisoners. When he fought, he was all in, completely committed and utterly without mercy. His work at the fight clubs: brutal, effective, final. He beat a man until that man did not get up. Ever. A disabled enemy was one you didn't have to face again. A dead one was even better. They never rose.

Did they?

Was he not facing an impossibility? A man risen from the dead? He had KILLED this youth! He was sure he had not missed his shot. He had been aiming for the heart and that was exactly where the bullet had gone, the nine grams of lead puncturing the most vital organ in the body of this insignificant blemish who had had the gall to not stay dead, to stand up and now interfere with his employer's plans again.

So, could he die once more? This time forever? Could he be sent back to hell and rot there for all eternity? Perhaps it was time to find out as he redoubled his attacks, his boxer training a match for the younger man's energy and tactics. Frye was the direct and savage executioner who simply beat one into pulp, using that youthful drive and spunk. But what about endurance, a longer bout? Would that wear him out - if there was no end in sight and he couldn't just destroy his opponent? That surely would buy the professor enough time to make his escape. That's all he needed from Mr. Finch right now: time to get away and live another day. Time to formulate new plans.

And so… the former colonel of Queen Victoria's Royal Army went on the offensive, driving the younger man back and back until he ended up against the bookcase, the edges of the shelf digging into his back, the Torturer's arm closing off his airways.

'Mr. Frye,' he murmured, just a tad out of breath. He'd not had this good of a fight in years. 'I must commend you.' His smile was a bit bloody: one of the young cockerel's punches had split a lip open. 'You make an excellent opponent.' A furious growl was his only response: it was not easy to make words come out past the obstruction of the strong arm of the disgraced military man which he was attempting to dislodge - with the whole weight of the other behind it, it was proving to be almost impossible. 'I would love to continue this enlightening discussion,' Mr. Finch drawled ironically, his hurt partner's screams having finally died down. 'But Mr. Griffiths does need medical attention.' Reaching down he withdrew the Assassin's own kukri from its sheath on his leg. 'And you need to go back to hell,' he said, ready to thrust it into the helpless scoundrel's gut. 'Where you belong.'

'Oh I wouldn't do that, sir,' spoke a cool and collected voice from the door to the office. 'If I were you.' The sound of the cocking revolver was the loudest one in the room.

Mr. Finch chuckled, throwing a quick glance over to the doorway, the point of the kukri pressed against the small of the Assassin's back, now that he held him as a shield before him, his arm tight against his throat. 'I do not believe you will shoot your young friend here,' he purred, his mouth close to the still stunned Rook's ear. 'Will you, Mr. Holmes?'

The detective, long coat buttoned up against the weather, his hat forgotten in his haste once the street kids he had set to watching the ticking bomb that was Jacob had informed him of where he'd gone, looked from Mr. Finch to the somewhat hazy eyes of the Assassin who was offering no resistance whatsoever. Which was most unlike him: usually it was impossible for him to sit still, be at peace. Here, now….

One foot came down hard onto the boot of the agent of the professor, grinding his toes. That kind of pain even he could not tolerate, old brawler as he was. He yelled, his hold on the bent blade slackening, his arm removed from around the young man's neck. The same young man who now took the wrist of the blade hand and twisted it with a savage ease of practice, headbutting the hurting Torturer, taking the reeling man's head in his hands and bringing up his knee to meet the nose of the other with such ferocity as to shatter the skull. With a sudden shout of red-hot rage he flung the insensate body across the carpet to land near the fireplace in an unmoving heap of limbs and clothes.

Holmes, observing the unexpected violence (should he have anticipated this?), watched silently as Jacob regained his breath, hands on knees. The hand with the revolver had dropped down at some point, once he'd realized that Mr. Finch was done for - and now that he thought about it, the man's face did look familiar. Where had he seen him before?

'Great timing, detective,' the hoarse croak of the young man voice butted into his abstracted thinking. 'Thank you.'

'Of course,' the other shrugged it off, coming back to the present moment. He'd think about the other's identity later. 'The professor lives.' He didn't make it into a question: he thought he had seen the professor's shadow passing along a bridging passage to the clock tower of the university. He was not sure…. Of many things right now.

'The old codger ran off there,' was the reply to the unasked question, Jacob massaging his throat and jerking his head at the secret passage door. Picking up the abandoned kukri he sheathed it once again. 'It's time to finish this charade.' He made for the door.

'Wait.' A hand on his arm, unruffled grey eyes holding his. 'You intend to kill him.' The deductionist once more wasn't asking a question.

'I most certainly do,' the impatient Rook said through gritted teeth. 'That is the only way for this to end.' One hand became a fist. 'After what he did.'

'I do not disagree,' Holmes spoke slowly, with deliberation. He didn't wish to provoke the imminent explosion of chaos that he could feel bubbling to the surface. 'Moriarty has tested us all, Jacob,' he reminded the truculent youth. 'Beginning with me.'

'You want to kill him?' Jacob asked, not a little surprised. Holmes had never struck him as a man of violence. His response to threats of any kind was usually a quiet whisper of his deductions into the foe's ear which seemed to deflate most of them quickly. That the detective could and would fight if needed was not in doubt. That he would want to now after taking a back seat in the whole affair was astonishing.

'I had my chance,' he sighed. 'At Reichenbach.'

'Then what, Holmes?' The older man felt the frustrated Assassin's growing impatience.

'Remember the Creed,' he said, releasing his friend, uncertain for the first time in a long while. 'Remember your family. Remember Maxwell Roth.'

Jacob opened his mouth, reading so much in the worried detective's features that it would take a hell of a long time to figure out, and then shut it, nodded crisply and disappeared through the secret door, his sixth sense scenting the recent passage of his target, his enemy, the old coot who fancied himself a gang leader.

'Count your last minutes, professor,' he muttered under his breath, the dark passageway narrow and low: he almost had to duck his head and his shoulders brushed the walls from time to time. 'Calculate your last breath.'

The haggard old man observed from the darkness of the depths of the clockworks when the Assassin entered the tower's top room, the one with the two faces of the gigantic clock that rang out the hours for the university and its surrounding district. His presence here meant that both his lieutenants were either dead or incapacitated. Probably dead: the young Assassin was not one for giving quarter. Especially not after what had happened in Whitechapel. He and his ragtag band of criminals and outcasts had been stirred up like an anthill or rather a wasps' nest. They had sought to sting him, hunting him like hungry wolves. And at last their leader had tracked him down to his lair: impressive feat considering that the professor was a very private man who covered his tracks well. This Jacob Frye had so much talent and potential that he was wasting away on trivialities like gangs, Holmes, and revenge. He could have been so much greater! Why could he not see that? Why did he choose to oppose Moriarty?

'I know you're here, old man,' the Assassin growled, head turning side to side, his glare burning holes in the steel bulkheads and gigantic cogs that ground out the seconds, minutes and hours of the last day of the professor's life. He knew it, did the old gentleman. He was not meant to live beyond tonight: on some level he had known it for some time. Reichenbach should have been his resting place. But hell had spat him back out - just as it had this youth, his antithesis, his nemesis, his rival. The two of them made a fine pair, did they not? Unwanted. Unloved. Rootless.

'Come out and face me, professor,' the hale and tenacious gang boss rumbled in challenge. 'Or do you intend to die a coward?' He stood in the lighted square of the moonlight that broke through the glass of the clock face. Alone. Unafraid. He did not lack for courage, did Mr. Jacob Frye, a trait that had served him well. He went and did that which others did not dare to even think. Else he'd not have placed himself in the Professor's path, aided Holmes, and died with a lead slug through his heart. Fear was not a word or idea that drove him, that made him weak. He had known fear and he had laughed in its twisted ugly face. Of course he had. He was afraid of nothing, not even death.

'Congratulations, Mr. Frye,' Moriarty greeted him, stepping out onto the metal bridge that led between two sets of cogs to be calibrated so that the giant clock ran smoothly. 'Your determination does you credit.' His skeletal hands rested on the cold metal railing as he looked down into the fire that was the fury of chaos blazing up at him from the resurrected miracle on two feet.

'I've come to kill you, professor, not trade compliments,' the irate and hurting Assassin cut him off, lifting up one hand, his revolver pointed right between the eyes of the evil old man. 'Your debt is due, Moriarty, and I'm here to collect on it.'

The cadaverous academic could feel the heat waves of fury rolling off the chief of the Rooks, the leader come to exact payback for his murdered comrades, those who worked for and with him, his gang of merry misfits who fought for 'the people' - whoever those people were. Pickpockets. Whores. Factory workers broken by their labour. Beggar families crammed into insalubrious conditions of the London slums. Worthless street kids who would never amount to much just like their parents. These were 'the people' that Jacob Frye had come on behalf of, these were the underclasses, the undesirables who fulfilled the most menial tasks of society and had died unaware. Until this hurricane in human form had come and swept through, leaving ruin and fragile shoots of knowledge in his wake, had found those who thought alike, had made them his allies. Had raised his hand against the Templar Order and now him, Professor Moriarty.

'The Rooks at Whitechapel,' the delicate old man said softly, his keen regard locking with that of the fire and brimstone Assassin. 'They came there for you.' He smiled at the irritated confusion of the young man who thought he had it all figured out. 'They were invited there. By you.' He reached into his pocket, unhurriedly so as not to provoke anything precipitate, and took out a slip of paper. 'This note.' He held it up for his rival to see. 'In your name.' He let it slip from his fingers, his eyes following its fluttering descent to the floor to land at the booted feet of the grief-stricken gang boss who did not make one move to pick it up. 'You killed them, Assassin, not me.' His features twisted into a grimace of mad glee. 'The debt you speak of?' he added to drive the knife home. 'It's yours.'

'You whoreson!' breathed the stunned and raging Assassin, his hand tightening convulsively around the gun. 'You treacherous bastard! I'll kill you for this!'

The madman laughed softly. 'Promises, Mr. Frye.' He waved his hand in dismissal of the menace so overtly expressed by the brash youth. 'They are made to be broken.' He leaned over the balustrade. 'You did not keep your end of our bargain, Mr. Frye. You did not hang as you should have. You did not die!' His voice had risen to a near scream by the time he finished the last words, his shaking fist striking the hard metal.

'And I won't,' Jacob assured him, lowering the revolver and shooting out the grappling hook instead, leaping up into the air as it gained hold on the cold iron of the bridge and then easily swinging himself over to come face to face with the malicious old man who showed little fear and not a little madness. 'But you will,' he rumbled, one hand reaching out for the thin throat, the weapon of the Assassin Order sliding out to point at the emaciated features of the other, the evil on two legs.

'I would not be so hasty, Mr. Frye,' the old professor noted, his features taking on a threatening cast. 'You see, I also know how to fight.' His hand whipped out to strike aside the outstretched arm with surprising force for a man devoid of body fat while the heel of the other pushed the young man back, giving him time to escape along the bridge and up the stairs that led to the confusing profusion of the gears, cogs, and wheels that made up the complex mechanism of the clock tower like organs, muscle and bones in a human body.

With a yell of rage, the Assassin followed his prey, his only thought that of ending this perfidious man who thought he could toy with men and women like a cat with a mouse, who fancied himself a master of intrigue and crime. Well, today he'd have his long overdue comeuppance: the Assassin's blade to his wrinkled throat to silence his viper's tongue forever. Taking the stairs two at a time, the hunter found himself traversing the steel skeleton that was the clock, trailing his prey from bridge to bulkhead to cog and gear. He could feel him, smell his spirit on the musty air - the old man wasn't getting away so easily, not again.

'I see you, Assassin,' came the soft hiss of the snake in human form. 'I see through you, Jacob Frye.' A gentle laugh, nothing kind about it. 'I know you.'

Standing on one of the landings that led ever upwards, the hunter listened, trying to place, to locate the voice, the serpent that he had come to kill. How could one man be so hard to find with all his talents?

'They called for you,' the sibilant voice continued, slow and galling. 'They cried out for you. Even as the flames consumed them, burned the skin and flesh off their bones. Choked off their last breath.'

The Assassin inhaled, fighting for control. An angry man was easily manipulated, blinded by rage. So his father had said and he had listened, used it to his advantage before, on other targets, the ones that hadn't been so… malevolent, so purely diabolical as this Professor Moriarty, who it seemed enjoyed the torment his words could bring, the writhing of his victims' minds.

'But you were not there,' the basilisk twisted the knife. 'Were you? You were distracted, unaware… you let your emotions get the better of you.'

Ignoring the taunts and the quiet chuckles, difficult though it was, Jacob took another step towards the stairs that led on upwards. His foot came down on empty space and for a moment he was off balance, his hand searching for a railing, for something to hold on to.

'Ah, do take care, Mr. Frye,' the professor mocked him with false concern. 'This tower is old and has not been maintained as well as it should be. There are… imperfections, shall we say?'

Jacob grunted, hanging off the railing and carefully feeling his way along it. The old coot had done something to the staircase: there were no steps up anymore, just the two metal bannisters, one on each side. Looking to his left in the almost total darkness he at first could not tell if any stairs were left at all until his sixth sense kicked in. There, up what should have been ten steps or so, was something resembling a firmer foothold than he had now. All he had to do was make his way along the barrier utilising his climbing skills which were as natural as breathing.

'The meeting with Mr. Finch has not had an adverse effect on you, I see,' drawled the professor's snide voice from somewhere above. Clearly he was able to see his hunter working his way along the non-existent staircase. Until he reached a weak spot where the metal bent and broke leaving him hanging by the fingers of one hand. 'Is he dead?' Moriarty asked conversationally as if the fate of his most loyal agent were of no more concern to him than the weather in Australia. Jacob ignored that, too busy with switching over to the other side of the ghostly stairs and trying the unbroken railing there. Grasping with sure hands the metal bars he easily made his way to that one step and pulled himself up.

'Bravo, Mr. Frye,' was the ironic compliment from up top. 'Such agility.'

The chief of the Rooks, his irritation turning into an eye roll, paid never no mind to that sneering remark either. If Moriarty hoped to rile him up even more, he had another thing coming. The Assassin needed his wits about him now since it seemed there were more obstacles and traps on the way up to reach the professor. Using the grappling hook was not practical anymore: the beams and bridges and pathways were too closely set - the last thing he wanted was a bruised head. And just how had the old man gotten up there so fast anyway? A lift? A quick scan of the surrounding dimness didn't reveal any such contraption. Echoes then? Was the whoreson codger truly up there or somewhere else entirely?

'Come now, Assassin,' was the spiteful remark of the victim that refused to quit playing. 'Surely you cannot give up now.'

'O I won't,' he was promised in a dark mutter under the gang boss's breath. 'Don't you worry your grey hairs about that.' Gazing upwards he judged the distance between the beams and moving gears. A shortcut in a way, so long as he didn't get caught in the spinning wheels that would break his bones and shred him in seconds. Was that a steam pump too? Huh, that was an even better way up - unless it'd been rigged to explode. Would the frail devil sabotage that though? When had he had the time? Unless… had he set up this entire charade? More final game before he died, one that potentially took his killer with him? Was that the idea?

'Oh I know your game now, professor dear,' he crooned into the black depths of the tower. 'You want your cake and to eat it too.' Finding a clear spot he let fly the grappling hook that pulled him up to the top of the steam pump which vibrated as it fed power to the clockworks. 'I"ll make you choke on it,' he added, holding onto the neck of the pump, choosing his next step.

'I'm all aflutter, Mr. Frye,' was the sinister whisper from the blackness.

'Where is he?' Evie asked, entering the room and finding the detective carefully studying a heap by the fireplace, one that had the appearance of a dead man. 'Mr. Holmes, where is my brother?'

The long-legged investigator half-turned, not getting up from his half-kneeling position, his drawn out face sunk deep in thought.

'He went there,' he said at last, pointing to the secret doorway. 'Up to the clocktower. The Professor awaits him there.'

The young woman, dressed in black leather and carrying more weapons than a lady should, stepped into the room, observing another man, this one alive with his kneecap destroyed by what was clearly a bullet. Jacob's doing, no doubt. Her brother did have a tendency to end his enemies' moving capabilities in the most direct fashion.

'You did not go.' She was not asking a question: she was confirming her suspicions.

Jacob had done as he had said he would: gone to confront the old devil by himself. Understandable, after what had been done at Whitechapel. She had seen the look on her brother's face: absolute wrenching grief, the kind he had not expressed at their father's death. Then, his features had been full of relief, that finally their father was gone from his life and he, Jacob, could live his own as he saw fit. She had not been shocked, not truly, at such disregard of the dead: they had never seen eye to eye, bickering being the least of it.

'No…' Mr. Holmes said tiredly. 'I stayed to make sure that these two fine gentlemen did not wake up unduly.' A thin exhausted smile. He looked older, now that Evie thought about it. The last two years had not been kind to him, not with his old foe seemingly returned from the dead.

'Then let me help you,' she offered, kneeling by the stockier man and checking his pulse. 'This one will need a doctor.'

'Indeed,' the consulting detective agreed, indicating the other. 'So will this one, Colonel Sebastian Moran.'

'You know him?' the young woman asked in surprise.

'Of him,' the older man corrected her gently. 'He is the right hand of Professor Moriarty, a dishonoured military man who makes a living by working with the Napoleon of crime.'

'Then should he not be in Mr. Abberline's holding cell?' she suggested, examining the shattered knee. This one will never walk again. Jacob's bullet had done its job too well: the bone was a mess of shards that no surgeon would be able to reassemble.

'He is too well protected, Miss Frye,' the leading private agent of the law explained. 'Even if the Professor dies today, his team of barristers will do everything they can to get the good colonel off the hook.'

'But…' Evie was about to object, to say that justice surely…. In her mind's eye she saw the wry expression of her brother's face. Justice was a mockery, he would say. Justice was a dream, a notion that allowed the rich and wealthy to sleep well at night, protected by the shield of the English jurisprudence. As for the poor…. Well… for them justice was the rope, the knife, the flame - any way to kick them aside that could be used so that the privileged could line their purses. Did she not understand this? Was she so naive? 'Let's get them inside Scotland Yard, Mr. Holmes,' she advised. 'Mr. Abberline will know what to do.'

'You do not intend to aid your brother,' Holmes said softly, looking into her blue eyes.

'Jacob has been on his own for a long time, Mr. Holmes,' Evie said softly, glancing at the door. 'He knows what to do.'

Drawing himself up through the square hole in the ceiling that became the belfry floor, the dirt and oil covered Assassin saw bells, several rows to be precise, six bells apiece attached to strong beams, which in turn were joined to the machinery that connected them to the arms of the clock below. Taking care not to bang his head on any one of them, he made it the rest of the way, ducking low as he brushed his hands together to clean some of the grit and muck off. Where was the old bastard? He'd gone strangely silent the last five minutes, not a peep from him.

'Well, Moriarty,' the cocky Assassin called out into the emptiness lit by the full moon. 'Didn't expect me to make it all the way up here?'

Something stirred in the shadows between the further bells, the Rook's head snapping in that direction, his Hidden Blade ready, willing and able. Taking lives had not been an issue for him, not that he enjoyed it, mind you. He simply didn't lose any sleep over it.

He took a step, wood creaking slightly under his weight. Dry wood, well seasoned. It would hold unless it were undermined in some way.

'Come now, Professor,' he invited. 'No need to be coy at this point.' He walked between two bells sideways, his head on a swivel. Not that he expected a knife in the back. However, it did pay to be a little bit cautious where the professor was concerned. He'd played too many tricks on him already.

His sixth sense told him that the old bastard was here somewhere. No doors left to open or run through. No secret passages. Just this one room, the panelled walls of which could be opened up to the air during the day to allow the song of the hour bells to carry out over the campus. At night they were put up to shut out the colder drafts damaging to the bells in winter.

'Let us settle this,' the young reckless gang boss offered reasonably. 'Like gentlemen.' He turned around in place, his gaze peering as if indifferent when in fact he was as keen as an arrow. 'You said you knew how to fight.' He permitted a dose of disbelief to enter his tone. 'I find that hard to believe. You've either been running all this time or sending your cronies out to do the dirty work.' His lips pulled into a mocking smile. 'Let's see what you're really made of, professor,' he added, slowly turning around to find the skeletal old man standing behind him, ghostly in the special vision that the Assassin had had since birth. 'Gang boss to gang boss.'

The twisted professor did not reply, his gaze focused and for the first time in days sane and cognisant of what was going on. Instead the two foes, two different generations, two not so dissimilar rivals stared at each other, waiting, expecting the other to make the first move, to attack, to give the other some sign of his intentions. Patience and youth confronted each other in this bell tower, this enormous clockwork that had counted down the years, months, weeks, days, hours and minutes - to this meeting, this moment in life, in time. These two, the Assassin and the Professor, the rebel and the genius. Flesh and blood. Pragmatism and intellect. Reckless courage and devious planning. The rivalries of human nature brought face to face, made tangible, vulnerable, mortal. The complex waltz that many men had lived out, never truly comprehending the steps they were dancing, nor the tune they were moving to. Except a few gifted individuals. Like Mr. Holmes. Like Professor Moriarty. Like Jacob Frye, for whom patience had never been a virtue, who made the first move, the first step of the last act of the endgame.

Inspector Abberline turned the key in the lock of the holding cell with a certain finality, his gaze flicking over the two unconscious men within, one laid out on either side of the rectangular space.

'Thank you for bringing them in,' he said, facing the two people who had brought these two in. 'A shame that Moriarty is still out there.'

'My brother is taking care of that,' Miss Frye assured him, not that it made him feel better. Jacob and Moriarty loose in one city was a colossal catastrophe. That two men could wreak so much havoc….

'You mean he is on a warpath,' he spoke sourly, hands behind his back as he walked past them and along the corridor that led up to the offices of the Met. 'He is a menace.' He stopped, exhaled sharply, before adding, 'So is the professor.' His head moved side to side in an impotent gesture of despair. 'They deserve each other.'

'Inspector Abberline,' Evie objected. 'My brother may be many things, destructive certainly…'

'I know, Miss Frye, I know,' he cut her off gently. 'That doesn't make it any easier to stomach his actions.' He took one tired step up the stairs, one hand on the railing. 'I would rest easier knowing that Moriarty was dead and your brother gone from London.' After all, Starrick was gone and with him his whole coterie of associates. So why was Frye still here? What else did he intend to break? How many more rules could he flout and emerge the hero?

'The city needs him, Inspector,' Holmes spoke unexpectedly. He had been most truculent this whole time. Deep in thought. Absent-minded. 'The Met cannot operate like a criminal organization.' His grey stare found the policeman's. 'If you want to catch a criminal, you must think like one - or use one.'

This o so subtle reminder of his previous dealings with Frye only served to sour the copper's mood more. He stomped up the stairs in a huff, shoulders hunched up as if to ward off a blow. Was he always going to feel guilty and angry over his relationship with Jacob Frye? The young man had his faults, true, but he HAD helped him without asking anything in return now that he thought about it. Well, there had been the police cart and uniforms, all given back as promised. The bounty hunters - Frye had saved life there. Had put his own skin on the line in revealing Evans' corrupt conduct…

So why? Why was it so damn hard to forgive him? He'd done so once, why not again?

'Oh the bloody hell with it!' he swore, muttering darkly under his breath and smacking his palm on the rail. 'Where did you say you found those two?'

'The university,' Evie replied, watching him with a penetrating stare.

'We better get there before your brother and the Professor reduce it to rubble.'

In a pub there is always something to use, something underhand in case of a brawl: a knife, a tankard, a chair. Hell, even a napkin would do. Worst case, bare knuckles. Headbutt. Always some thing. A clocktower? A belfry? Mmmmm, not so much. Oh there were bells to be sure: could be used as a bone-breaking board. A face that met with the cold stone-like metal of one would definitely not need any more lessons in metallurgy. Using a bell as leverage to kick out at one's opponent, good idea. Bells didn't move much on their own: too heavy and pendulous for that. Not to mention the beams connecting them: hanging off one, easy to kick out at the other bloke's chest or face. Walls were good too: push an opponent's back against it, take away his range of movement, break his nose on it, throw him into it to rattle his braincage.

Grasp the old man's arm, shove him head first into the wall, watch as he twisted to make sure it was his shoulder and not his head that met the hard surface. Standing back to let him get his bearings and come at the younger man again. After all this was a gentlemen's fight, was it not? Certain rules had to be observed - up to a point, of course. Aware that he was not quite up to his usual full constitution, the Assassin took each break that he could manage to get to regain his breath, knowing that the professor was no fool and would love to draw out this endgame for as long as he could in order to wear down his young foe. The old man was tough, tough as nails, he had to give him that. There were times when all the tiring Assassin could do was hold his own and deflect attacks, protecting the vulnerable parts of his body. The longer this went on, the more fatigued he became, the more advantage the old man had whose strikes were not meant to be final or fatal. Oh no, Professor Moriarty was playing with him, wearing him down to the point where he could at last rid the world and himself of a rival who had evaded him for so long - and cause as much pain as he could to an older competitor, the champion of the law, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

'I told you once,' he said during one of the lulls in the fight. 'You have such potential. That you waste it.'

Hands on knees, the hooded renegade lifted up his head, blood dripping down his chin. The gaunt codger's fist had found its target in one hell of a mean punch. He spat the crimson metallic liquid out of his mouth, wiping one hand across his face.

'You mentioned something like that, old man,' he croaked, slowly straightening up. 'I didn't listen then.' He flexed his hands to bring some blood flow back into them. 'And I don't intend to listen now.'

'Shame,' shrugged the emaciated wrestling champion of Oxford. 'We had the same goals, you and I.' He advanced, circling his competitor, assessing the best way to attack, to approach him for a killing blow. This had to end. Soon. It'd gone on long enough.

'Did we now?' the chief of the Rooks half-groaned, half-laughed, pacing the professor and not giving him any opening. 'It wasn't my goal to poison kids or burn people alive.'

'You forced my hand on both counts,' the professor came back quickly. 'If you had only agreed to work with me…'

'You mean for you, don't you?' Jacob snorted, his eyes finding a mop and bucket left in the corner, forgotten most likely by the caretaker. 'I never did like being told what to do.'

'I would never…'

'Let's drop the pretence, old man,' the gang boss growled, having placed himself within reach of the mop and bucket. 'You fear me. Else you'd never offer me employment.' His chuckle was dark. 'One way to neutralize a competitor, I have learned, is to make him yours.' Reaching back he took hold of the long wooden handle of the mop. 'One way or another.' Tossing the mop in the direction of the surprised professor he picked up the metal bucket by its handle and swung it at the distracted professor's head. Two forearms came up to block it but the younger man had what he had wanted anyway: an opening to get inside the guard of the other, box his ears, take him by the neck and crash his nose down onto the Assassin's knee, following up with an elbow to the centre of the back.

Gasping and moaning the old academic fell to the floor where he was unceremoniously kicked over to expose his vulnerable belly and face his killer one more time. Jacob, panting hard, one hand around the thin neck of the old devil, raised the left arm, the instrument of Assassin justice, the ultimate arbiter of human will.

'Sorry, Professor,' he half-apologized, half-sneered. 'In another time we may have worked together.' The Hidden Blade slid into place, cold metal unforgiving of human frailty. 'Your time has ended…'

'I…' gasped the dying old man, recognizing that his premonition, his secret wish had finally come true. He would die. Die and be at peace. At last. No more worries. No more striving. No more struggling to reach something that eluded him… no more…. 'I thank you, Mr. Frye,' he whispered, his eyes meeting and holding those of the young rival, the one who had triumphed, the one who had gained the upper hand. 'Thank you…' His throat moved, convulsively, the dying body not giving up, unwilling to understand that the soul and mind inhabiting it wanted to break free, be free of the physical constraints. That the eyes were no longer full of consciousness, of life. That the bodily functions were winding down, the heart pumping blood yet, a scarlet flow that stained the wooden planks beneath the black cloth of the lifeless form, a doubled lifeless form - the killer staring into his victim's eyes, taking in the last look of awareness, of knowledge, of the end.

Because it was over. Finally. After such a long struggle, after all that had happened, it was done. Finished. He could…. Could rest, sit back on his haunches, withdrawing the wet blade from the wound in the corpse's neck with a sucking hiss of air and skin that would not quite let it go. Could think about what to do now. Could will his body to rise. Could permit the aches and pains to manifest in his mind, the adrenaline of the physical and mental release dying down like embers of an old fire that had no more wood to consume. He felt himself to be consumed: he had nothing left to give. He could only shuffle away, make for that square in the floor. For a long moment he simply stood there, staring down, knowing that he would have to get down eventually but….. Something held him back. Something…

He inhaled careful of his tender ribs, eyes closing for a moment. Turning around he approached the small body of what had been a man larger than life and studied it, one hand reaching inside his overcoat and taking out a small white cloth, a square slip of a handkerchief, the sign of a true kill, the bearer of the proof that the target was dead. Bending down he dipped it into the red scarf around the dead man's neck.

'Rot in hell, professor,' he whispered his last farewell to his foe as he left him there in the belfry of the university, the late night hour approaching. The bells would soon ring and he had better be away. He had to find Holmes, Evie… He had to tell them…

That the deed was done.

The nightmare was over.

The checkmate had been played.

The endgame had been won.

Evie and Holmes heard him before they saw him, the black figure emerging gradually from within the darkness of the tall doors of the clock tower, covered in blood and bruises, shoulders hunched, exhaustion writ all over.

'Jacob?' Her hand touched his arm, the tension she sensed leaving him only then.

'It's done,' he muttered hoarsely, lifting his head to look from his sister to his friend. 'He's dead.'

The coldly rational detective raised one hand and hesitantly laid it on the younger man's shoulder, squeezing it. As close as he would come to an emotional manifestation of his relief. The ghost of the past, the mastermind of his ordeal of the past few years, was laid to rest at last. He could breathe freely. He could stop being afraid as he had been. He could return to himself.

'And you?' Mr. Holmes inquired in his most usual manner of seeming indifference.

'You look like hell, brother,' Evie noted with a slight curl of her lips.

'Oh I've been there.' His voice was deep, a half smile twisting one side of his mouth. 'This ain't even close.' His eyes shifted from Evie to the cool and collected detective. 'You're free, Holmes,' he said, grasping the other's extended hand. 'Your life is your own once more.'

The grey stare of the famous auxiliary agent of the law glinted for a moment with something… something that even he wasn't quite sure, an emotion that he had never felt before, that he had thought worthy of lesser mortals. It was not quite gratitude, nor relief. It was so much deeper than that, there was no name for it - at least none that any man living could give it.

'Then we should celebrate it, dear boy,' he suggested, gesturing one hand in invitation, one eyebrow lifted up.

'And I know just the place,' the knackered Master Assassin grinned, his arms coming around the two people nearest and dearest to him. 'It's been a while since I had a decent pint at Emmett's pub.'