= Part Five =
"Do you believe it?"
I couldn't breathe. No matter how hard I gasped, how hard I tried to pull the air into my lungs, it just wouldn't come. I opened my eyes to redness, thick and only just transparent, like paint or blood. Blood!
I gasped, and this time, I pulled something hot and sticky into my lungs. I was drowning, drowning in the blood! I tried to move my arms but couldn't, couldn't move my legs. It flooded into my mouth, smothering me when I tried to scream. I started to feel dizzy, frantic, trying to move. Stuck, drowning, sinking!
"I'm sorry it has to be this way," a voice said from somewhere behind me. Cold, positively cold. I couldn't tell whether it was a man's or a woman's voice; it seemed strangely distorted. Echoes -- "It has to be this way." The sounds of a scuffle, and a scream. A crash, and then --
Then the teeth-jarring report of a gun fired close-by, much too close-by, and then searing pain, in my stomach, in my head. The blood seemed to flicker and then explode into flames, hot, searing, all over me, covering me. Still can't breathe. The fire! God it hurt... Somewhere, someone was laughing, and I could almost see a pair of keen, piercing green eyes staring at me. I tried to look closer, but the fire! --and I screamed then, fighting against whatever it was in the fire holding me down, pulling on my shoulders, tearing at my face with searing, hot red flames. Let me go! I tried to shout. Let me go! I kicked out as hard as I could.
"Watson, don't -- Christ!" Shannon's voice. The flames seemed to shiver once, and then died away into green spots on the backs of my eyelids. I took one deep breath, and then another, my eyes flickering open.
"God," Shannon muttered, rubbing the side of her face. She stared at me balefully, standing at the foot of my bed. "Do you always kick people when they wake you up?"
I sighed and sat up, rubbing my eyes. I switched on the lamp on my bedside table, blurry eyes going to the green numbers glowing quietly from my alarm clock. Two AM.
"Sorry," I said a little fuzzily. "I was having a nightmare."
"Some nightmare," Shannon said, experimentally opening her mouth wide. She winced and put a hand to her jaw. "You were screaming, Watson."
"You would have been, too." I blinked my eyes a few time, trying to get the after-image of those flames to go away. "I was drowning, and then burning, and somebody with a gun was laughing at me..." I shuddered and shook my head. "Sorry I woke you."
"Don't be," she said with a vague smile, heading for the door. She paused in the doorway. "You okay?"
"Yeah," I said a little weakly. She nodded, seeming satisfied. I shook my head as the door closed behind her. Anybody else would have asked if I was going to be able to sleep again, maybe would have offered to bring me a glass of water or something. But not Shannon. Sometimes I wondered whether she wanted me around at all, the way she acted. Of course, the whole 'family legacy' thing did seem to mean she needed me -- though for what, exactly, I had no idea.
"But, too," I said, addressing nobody in particular. "Too, she did fill me in just in time to avoid talking about the blood and all." I shook my head and crossed my arms, leaning back against my headboard. "Awfully nice of her. Really, very giving. I wonder if..."
The door swung open a crack, and Shannon's head poked inside.
"If you're not too busy chatting with yourself," she said, a wry glint in her eyes, "I thought you might like some tea."
"Um... yeah, sure," I said. I flicked off my bedside lamp, hoping she hadn't seen me blush.
* * *
We sat drinking tea. It was really pretty good; Shannon told me that Mrs. H had this particular kind imported from England. I'd laughed at her when she said it, but it was already starting to make me feel more awake.
We'd been at it for an hour now. Shannon had gone digging through her file, handing me stack after stack of papers, some typed, some written in painfully neat, old-fashioned quill pen and home-made ink. They were accounts, some of actual events and happenings, some just family histories, all stretching back for years and years. Apparently John Hammond wasn't the first Watson to keep records; it seemed I'd stumbled into yet another family tradition.
The accounts detailed the lives of the Watsons and Holmeses from medieval times right up until the present. There was even a family tree, painstakingly drawn out on a large sheet of folded-up paper -- the one Shannon had started to show me earlier. Sure, there were a few gaps and some minor discrepancies, but mostly it was amazingly clear and organized. I read most of it, Shannon explaining a few parts and translating for me one account written in German.
The Holmeses and Watsons had stayed in touch over the decades. In particular, there was always one member of one of the families every generation who met and teamed up with a member of the other family. Those were the people who inherited the family legacy, Shannon explained.
"The 'gift' jumps around," Shannon said, pausing to sip at her third cup of tea. "Sometimes it follows in a straight line, father-to-son and so on; other times, it skips from one side of the family to the complete opposite. There's really no telling who it'll be, and it follows differently on both sides. Just because, say, the latest Holmes is a direct descendant of the Holmes before her doesn't mean the latest Watson can't be a second cousin of the Watson before her. Though, of course, sometimes it works the same way on both sides, like this time."
I looked up quickly from the worn stack of paper I'd been shuffling through.
"You mean, you know who the last Watson was?" I asked, mentally sorting through my relatives. "I mean, the one before me?" Shannon shrugged impassively.
"Well, my uncle was the last Holmes..." she trailed off.
"And that means my uncle was the last Watson?" I asked curiously. "But which one... Ah, you know, I bet it's Mike."
"And Mike's the New York uncle?" Shannon asked, frowning slightly into her teacup.
"Yeah." I nodded. "I haven't heard from him since... I don't know. It's been a long time." I sighed, setting the stack of papers back on the table. I looked up at Shannon. "Why, what's up?"
She shook her head absently. "Nothing. Keep reading."
Used to Shannon and her habit of keeping things to herself, I just sighed and didn't press her. She'd tell me when she was ready. I started reading again. The two families had moved from the Netherlands into Britain a few generations after the "first" Holmes and Watson had met; the move had something to do with the Moriarty family -- who were also included in the family accounts, though in much less detail.
Each Holmes-Watson duo who inherited the legacy seemed to figure out a little more about what was actually "going on," so to speak. Though individual powers tended to vary, each family seemed to have a trademark ability or two. The Holmeses were telepaths, mostly, with a flare for telekinesis -- moving objects using only the mind. The Watsons were healers, usually less aggressive and more centered on medicine ("Go figure," I thought) than their Holmesian counterparts. And the Moriarties were almost to a soul pyrokenetics -- fire-starters.
Neither of the Baker Street pair had ever produced children, and the legacy had passed, in both cases, to distant relatives. Later, both the Holmes and the Watson who'd inherited the gift next had moved to America, and their children had turned into our -- Shannon's and my -- grandparents. And that was as far as the records went.
I put down the papers and pulled my glasses off, sticking them in a pocket, within easy reach if I needed them later. Shannon had been unobtrusively sipping her tea, leafing through some of the folders herself. She looked up when I stood to stretch.
"What do you think?" she asked. I sighed; the question could mean anything. I crossed the room to one of the windows. I opened the blinds and leaned my elbows on the sill, watching the city sleep. Headlights slid across the lamp-lit room and passed away.
"Well," I said after a moment. "Well..." I didn't have much else to say.
"Do you believe it?" Shannon asked, voice subdued. Tense.
"Believe it? Yeah," I said, turning around to face her, "I do." I took a deep breath, the kind of breath you take before you jump into very cold water. "So let's see these powers," I said.