Thanks for yer reviews guys. And gals. Anyway, Darkwolf, yeah, I know, Sean's accent always tends to go wonky in my stories. Mainly cause I've seen so many different ways to write Irish's accent that I don't know what I'm writin' any more. But for this story, ye=you, yer=your ken=know (of course) and I never saw the word kenned until I read Kate Forsythes Witches of Eileanan series. So that is the dialect I'm running with.
And Moonie! Watch were yer throwing the gremlins! That one hit me, drank my nummy coffee and ran away before I could punish it. Besides, M's nice in this story and in the next chapter…well…*tries not to throw up while she says it* so is Jean Grey. *slaps hand to mouth* ::muffled:: S'cuse me! *runs for the bathroom*
Lab apartments,
March 6, 08:30am
Bang! Bang!
Scully blinked as the door of her bedroom vibrated from the force of the knocks.
"Scully! Wake up!"
"I'm up! Let me get dressed."
She scrambled into her work clothes in record time, and joined Mulder outside.
"She's gone." He held out a cup of coffee for her.
"Who?"
"Deana. Her body disappeared last night. There's no sign of a forced entry, and the coroner was here all night, but she just disappeared." Scully didn't even wait to hear the rest as she ran out to the lab and found the crime scene. The morgue body box was open, and the body bag that she had been in was lying there without its body. Scully looked over to the coroner who was typing like mad on his computer.
"Why would anyone take her body?"
"Not just her body, Agent Scully. All her files, the photos, the x-rays, the jar of blood, all of it have disappeared. It's like she didn't even exist. Even the sheets and the gloves that had her blood on it are gone."
"You don't think someone from the government would take her for experimental purposes?" Scully looked over his shoulder as he ran through his computer files, trying to find something.
"You mean like in the reports I gave you yesterday? No government people except you and Mulder know that she's a mutant. Besides, they wouldn't bother to sneak in. They'd just show me a warrant and take her. From what the computers telling me, someone hacked in via a long range system and opened the doors for someone else to take her, then used the same long range system to take all the info from the computer." He finally stopped and sighed. "It's no use. They've taken everything. I even went into the X-Files computer with the code Agent Mulder gave me. It's not there either."
Mulder was looking around at the body bag as this was said, and had apparently found something interesting. He pulled a long strand of black hair from it, and held it up for inspection.
"Hey Scully. Who've we meet so far that has black hair? Long black hair?"
"What? Uh…Monet St Croix, Jubilation Lee…two of the trackers last night had black hair, but it was short."
"And the only one who has been in here that we've seen is Jubilee. And she didn't go anywhere near the body."
"You think we should go back to the school?"
"I think we should go solve this case."
Dr Macleod looked at them, then slapped his forehead in a teenage like gesture of stupidity.
"Uh! Of course, how could I forget? Frost and Cassidey were calling in favours all afternoon, yesterday, asking for you and the trackers to go out hunting. They seemed awfully concerned that you don't just spend all your time in here. And Frost would never allow someone to get one of her students, even if that student was dead."
"I think we definitely need to go to the school again. Doc, would you like to come?"
"Yes I think I will."
Xavier's
09:10am
::Xavier's?::
"FBI again. We need to speak to the headmasters, immediately."
The gates opened up.
At the front door, Jubilee was waiting for them again.
"Agents, hey Dr Macleod. Sorry to say, but the Heads aren't here, which means I'm in charge." She lead them into an office that was apparently hers, considering the shelf behind the desk was covered in photos of her and a number of different people. One of them was a man dressed in a blue gorilla suit. That made Mulder temporarily forget his questions as he realised that the blue gorilla suit was in fact the controversial geneticist Dr Henry McCoy. Supposedly one of the most well known mutants on the planet and Senator Creed's favourite target. Something else in the picture caught his attention, then he looked at the others and realised the same occurrence was in all of them.
He returned his look to Jubilee and realised she was still wearing glasses. She was sitting up on the windowsill making sure that she was in the sunlight, so that it wouldn't have seemed strange if he hadn't already seen the photos.
"Jubilee. Were you at the morgue yesterday?"
"Of course I was. You saw me didn't you?" Scully frowned and tried again.
"Let me rephrase that. Were you at the morgue yesterday while Mulder and I were out hunting that 'Weyr' creature?" A dainty, black eyebrow rose up from behind the glasses.
"Weyr?"
"Someone saved our lives last night when the creature attacked us, then called it a Weyr. Do you know what that is?"
"Do you?" Scully frowned again, wondering why Jubilee was giving them the run around when she had been so informative yesterday. Macleod decided to ask his questions.
"Jubilation. Why did you take Deana last night?"
"Excuse me? What are you talking about, Doc. What's happened to Dea?" She scrunched up her nose. "Aside from being dead, I mean."
Now Mulder was frowning as he caught a slight inflection of something on the word 'dead'.
"Her body is no longer in the morgue Jubilee. And don't play dumb. I've spent to many hours with you in the town labs doing general genetic research to know when you're lying. Why take her body?"
"Cause she's not dead."
All three of them whirled to look at Mulder, shock registering on their faces.
"Mulder, what are you talking about? We saw the body."
"Exactly. We saw the body. And we saw where that patch of grass was growing in a body like shape, right down to the fingers and toes. And the only things I haven't seen so far, are your eyes, Jubilee. You're a mutant aren't you?" He was fairly sure she blinked at him. He walked up to her and pulled the glasses from her face. She didn't protest in the slightest, just continued to look him straight in the eyes.
Her eyes were glowing a light blue, and instead of the pupils shrinking in the sudden light, the irises changed from light blue to a darker purplish colour.
He breathed in a deep, amazed sigh at the sight and she smiled, faintly amused.
"Damn. Monet was right, again. You are fast. No wonder the Weyr went after you yesterday." She looked over to Scully who was staring at her with professional interest, while the doctor was just staring at Mulder in confusion.
"What do you mean, Deana isn't dead?" Jubilee returned her glowing gaze back to Mulder.
"Yeah. Yer right about me being a mutant, but what the heck do you know about Deana not being dead?" She frowned as she said that, realising her mistake instantly.
"What does he know…Jubilee, is Deana still alive?" Jubilee didn't answer. She continued to stare at Mulder.
"Yesterday, when you explained how she died, the whole time you said she gathered and pushed energy out of her. But when you tried to explain the grass, you said life essence. Then just now, you couldn't retrain the sarcasm when you mentioned her being dead."
When Jubilee narrowed her eyes, Scully was amazed to see they turned light blue again.
"Remind me to get you DNA tested later, Agent Mulder. I don't know about any one else, but this little mutant is starting to think you have some latent psychic abilities. And no I'm not joking. I really want to have a look at your DNA." She sighed and put her blue tinted glasses back on. "Come on. I'll explain it all while we walk. She'll probably need a doctor or two when we get there anyway."
She walked out the door without waiting for them, taking them through the endless hallways and out into the large back yard. They were all surprised to see that the woods were only a few hundred yards from the back door.
"Deana could talk to trees, Mulder. So when the Weyr attacked her, she called to them for some kind of help. Trees have a conscience…not like humans, but just…an awareness of the things around them. So when they felt the Weyr about to attack Dea, they forced her with their own energy, throwing her to the ground and making her conscience melt into the earth. I watched as it happened. The Weyr never attacks me, because it's afraid of me. So instead of trying to mutilate the body further, it took off.
"I would have brought Dea back up to the school, but that's when Jonas and his boys turned up. So instead I came back here, told Frosty what happened, she made it look like we were searching for her, and then I went back and 'found' Dea and the trackers."
"So Deana's…conscience? Is floating around in that patch of grass?"
"No, actually. Deana was in that tree I was leaning against. She figured the grass was going to get trampled, so she moved to the tree and began calling out for help."
"How did you hear her?" Scully fell into step beside her, while the males trailed behind them.
"Mutations take all forms. A few of the mutants at the school, and yes, there are a lot of us, are telepaths. We knew that Deana didn't actually die, as she has exhibited this ability once before. One of the 'paths was searching for her by telepathy, and stumbled against Deana's essence. Now all we needed was her body, and one of the healer type mutants, Deana's room mate actually, to bring her back to life. The telepath would bring Dea out of the tree and force her into her body, while Jessa would heal it. Technically it would have been just as if her heart had stopped during an operation or something. The doctors would get those zapper paddle things out and make her heart start again. That's what we're doing now."
She turned and walked backward through the woods a few steps, not coming even close to tripping over as she stared them all in the eye, one by one.
"Sorry for breaking into your lab, Doc. But we needed her body, and how were we going to explain her being alive again if you had a Certificate of Death for her filed in your office?"
"But we would have still known."
"Yeah, but would anyone believe you?"
"So that explains Deana. But what about this Weyr thing? What is it? And who was it that saved us last night?"
"That was Monet. I asked her to keep an eye on you two; cause I had a feeling one of you had latent powers. I think I was right."
"Latent powers?"
"Yep. Not sure what, but in your case, Mulder, I think you might have some kind of clairvoyance, or empathy. Not much, but enough that your hunches are usually right. Like I said though, I'll need to check your DNA for that."
"What about this Weyr?" Scully turned her partner back to the subject.
"The Weyr…that's a loooong story…" She huffed a bit, trying to think how to tell it, then gestured for them to follow her around a group of rocks and through a copse of trees. On the other side, Ms Frost, Mr Cassidey and a young blonde girl were standing around the corpse of Deana Wendel.
Cassidey looked up and gestured them to one side, while Frost and the girl Jessa continued to stare at the corpse.
"What did ye bring them here for, lass?"
"Mulder guessed. I told you one of them had some kind of latent power."
"Aye, that may be so. I hope ye not angry at tha lass for breakin' and enterin', Dr Macleod? She was only followin' orders."
"Ah, no. It's all right. Though you could have just asked me and saved us all the trouble." Cassidey didn't have a chance to answer as some one gasped behind them. Jessa was bent over the corpse, her hands glowing faintly, while Frost had a hand held to her head.
"Now!" She yelled.
Deana's body jolted and her eyes opened, she gasped for breath.
"It's alright, Deana, breath. You're alright." Deana rolled over onto her side, sucking in air as best she could, while coughing the stale air from her system. Scully and Macleod moved in and helped her to a position where she could breathe easier, while the other three helped Jessa and Frost to their feet.
"Wow that was hard."
"You did good Jes. Dea owes you a shopping trip at the least." Frost smiled at her older student then nodded at Jessa.
"You can both take my credit card for a shopping spree. Consider it as a therapy session." Jessa smiled, while Deana coughed again.
"Oh, I think I might ::cough:: still be dead. Did she ::cough:: just give us permission to use the sacred Platinum ::cough, cough:: Card?"
"Wow. Luckily little brats. Every time I came close to dying, all I ever got was a reprimand for getting too close to the bad guys." The girls giggled at their senior student/teacher while the other adults looked at her in surprise.
"You did not! I remember giving you a gigantic welcome back party the last time you got killed."
"Yeah, but that time I was clinically dead. All the other times I was in comas or what ever you said 'oh, you're alive, don't ever be that stupid again!' then went back to whatever you were doing." She pulled Deana to her feet and gave her a shoulder to lean on.
"Right, since I really, really had a good commune with the flora around here, can we go back to civilisation? Please? Nothing like being dead to make you appreciate the value of good TV and junk food." Jubilee smiled and took the two younger girls around their necks, making them fall into step with her.
"Well next time you'll think a bit more then to go out in the middle of a full moon. Come on. Jessa, you okay now?"
"Yeah, but you owe me so much Dea. I hope you realise how hard it is to restart a heart that hasn't been beating for more then twenty-four hours." Jessa scowled at her friend from the other side of Jubilee and allowed herself to be tugged along.
Behind them, the four adults watched as the students trudged back to the school under Jubilee's watchful eyes. When it looked like Deana's legs were about to give out, Jubilee swung her up and carried her without comment.
Doctor Macleod, who was used to strange things happening around this group, just sighed and followed them, leaving Emma and Sean to deal with the two agents.
Frost looked them over and again, Mulder felt a buzz in the back of his mind. Jubilee's comments about telepaths made him realise what it was.
"You're the telepath?"
"I had thought that was rather obvious Agent Mulder. Jubilee's assumption that you're a psy of some kind may not be true after all." She walked off after the others.
"Ach, don't mind her. She's just upset that the Weyr got its paws on her student. And if the lass says ye have powers, lad, then it's probably true." He held a hand out to Scully. "Sean Cassidey at yer service. Yeh must be Agent Scully, lass."
"Yes, I am. I don't know if this is an offensive question or not, but are you a mutant too?" Sean blinked at her, then grinned.
"I woulda thought Jub'lee had told ye already. Everyone at the school is a mutant. It's a school to train mutants in power control, among other things." He held an arm out to her, and she hooked her own with his. "My personal power, if ye be interested, is the ability to create sonic waves of varying degrees when I yell. Tis why they all call me Banshee."
"Jubilee called you Bansh the first time I meet her…it didn't even register to me. Normally I pick up on strange nicknames."
"Ah, well ye'd only just seen your first mutant, accordin' ta Em, and she was dead at the time. Ye were probably a wee bit shocked."
"Yeah…I think I'm still a wee bit shocked."
"That would make two of us, Mulder." Scully glanced at Sean and cocked her head in confusion. "You lot don't seem all that surprised that one of your students just came back from the dead." He smiled at her.
"Well, as for that, it actually happens a lot around here. Ye may not have noticed in all the shock and confusion, but Jubilee did say she had been clinically dead at one time. It hasn't personally happened to me, but at least three out of ten of the students have seen what heaven looks like."
Mulder looked like he wanted to get in a long discussion about that, but instead he turned to the more current situation.
"So what is this Weyr thing? And why does it like mutants so much?"
"Ach, now that is a really long story, lad."
"Jubilee said that too."
"She would. It's her story. She can tell ye better then I can."
"Can you just give us the summery then?"
"Well, if ye insist. Now, I take it that yer well aware of what a werewolf is. A human who transforms into a wolf during the three nights of the full moon. A Weyrwolf, however, is a wolf that turns halfway human during the full moon. That's what has been huntin' the people around here." He helped Scully climb over a fallen branch, then stopped and waited for Mulder. "None of it would have happened, had it not been for a young mutant girl who was trying to have fun for once. Jillian, the first victim of the Weyr, had come up here to go camping with her mother. Unknown to both her and her mam, a renegade wolf had been exiled from the local pack and was looking for food around the camping ground. 'Twas a full moon, and the wolf was starvin'. Jillian had wandered away from the campfire, and that was when she stumbled across the hungry wolf. Well, 'e up and took a bite out o' the lass."
"But he was just a normal wolf back then?"
"Aye, he was. That changed when he got the taste of mutant blood. We humans, we're arrogant. To think that mutations are limited amongst humans is foolish. The mutant blood triggered the wolf's own mutation. The mutation seems to be more supernatural then scientific. Startled by its transformation, the wolf let go and ran off. The next night, just before sunset, it appeared back at the campsite, as if waitin'." They had made it up to the school, and he escorted them in, toward the living room.
Jubilee appeared with an uncanny silence, carrying a tray of coffee. Neither agent bothered to ask how she knew the way they liked their coffee, and instead just waited for Sean to finish the story.
"As the sun set, the wolf began to transform, turnin' into the Weyr. The mother and daughter, they both saw it, and instinctively, the mother jumped in front of it." He looked slightly sick, so Jubilee took up the story.
"Yeah, well, she didn't survive very long, which was probably a blessing. I'm sure you've seen the reports. Jillian took off as fast as she could, trying to find a water source large enough to swim in, knowing that she might survive if she could get to a place she could control. The lake was on the other side of the woods, and the Weyr is a fast runner. When Jillian came across the pond, she decided she didn't have any other choice, and made her stand there. Weyr ripped her to tiny little bits, but managed to keep her alive long enough to eat what it needed." She sighed and flopped into a chair.
"How do you know all this? Were you watching?"
"I'm getting to that Scully. The Weyr returned to its normal wolf state the moment it was sated on living mutant blood and flesh. However it retained some human thought capabilities. It also managed to obtain a slight control over water, thanks to Jillian's powers. Not much, but enough to make it capable of running quickly over water. For the next month, it was a wolf with a little bit of power and that was all. Then it was the full moon again, and it transformed. As the Weyr, with water-powers that were doubled thanks to the transformation, it knew that it needed fresh living mutant flesh before the end of the full moon phase. That's when Ben died, and we found out what was going on. Ben had been up here visiting, when he was taking a walk and got attacked from behind. The Weyr knocked him out cold, then began to eat him…"
She trailed off for a few seconds then shook herself out of it.
"That time it was sated quickly, and turned back to it's wolf state, this time with the water-powers and Ben's kinetic charging ability. This was turning into one dangerous wolf."
"Why did it only mutate during the full moon?" Scully sipped her coffee, waiting.
"We're not really sure, lass. Theory is, the moonlight reacts with a chemical imbalance. It's sort of like…ahem…ah…what females go through every month."
"Oh. So why did the killings stop? That was the last one in two years wasn't it?"
"The next month, when it became the Weyr again, it made the mistake of coming after me." With a calmness that was belied by her trembling hands, she took her jacket off and rolled her sleeve up. With a friendly gesture, Sean leaned over and swept her long hair away from her neck. Claw and teeth marks rose from her elbow, up to just below her left ear. They looked raw, like scars that were still healing. "It began by licking up most of my blood, but that was as far as it could get. What we hadn't realised up till that point was that the Weyr's personal powers, the one that he had originally, was the ability to enter a mutants mind, like a telepath or empath, and pull their powers into him while he ate them. The longer they stayed alive, the more power he would get." She flinched suddenly as a wolf's howl came from the forest and leaped to her feet. She was five steps to the door before she stopped. "Shit!"
With a growl of disgust her hand smashed through the wooden wall of the living room and stopped as it hit the plaster behind it.
"Jubilee! Emma's gonna kill ye lass." She blinked at him from over her shoulder, then realised where her hand was.
"Okay. Ow." Gingerly she pulled her hand out and frowned at it as it began to heal slowly. After a few minutes the lacerations started to close and she sat back down. "He was listening in, the bastard." She frowned. "What was I up to?"
"Drinking yer blood." She nodded and turned her attention back to the agents.
"Right. Well, like I said, when he ate, he got power by going into the victim's mind. But because of my natural powers, his mind touch got…tangled, I suppose is the word. You see, I have stealth shields as part of my powers. It's almost impossible for a telepath to find me or attack me if I don't want them to, and my shields threw the Weyr's attack back at him. Something real strange happened then. I'm not sure what, but when it was over, the wolf was there instead of the Weyr, and I was still alive. And I could feel some of the wolf's and thereby the Weyr's memories. That's how we knew about Jillian, cause I had the memories of that hunt in my head. I also had her powers, Ben's powers, and the Weyr's ability to heal quickly." She held out her hand to Scully, who saw that the lacerations were turning to scars and even those were fading.
"So you've got four sets of powers now? The Weyr, Jillian's, Ben's and your own?"
"Not any more, not exactly. Because I was now joined up with the wolf, I had his memories, he had mine and we could sort of feel things through the others senses, I was able to suppress what happened every month. With a little bit of will and my own personal stubbornness, I managed to help the wolf stay a wolf. I could use all four of my new powers, and the wolf, which still had some human instincts that, when joined with my mind, brought him up to a human level, could also use all four powers, including mine."
"So for two years, you and the wolf were connected?" Mulder played another hunch, and Jubilee grinned as her senses said he was using a latent power.
"Yeah. And then two months ago, I was attacked, psychically, by a very powerful telepath. The connection…weakened. I can still sense him when he's in wolf form, and I still have all the borrowed powers during the day. But during the night especially during full moons, I only have my original powers and he has all the borrowed powers. Including a form of my shielding that we call psychic static. It prevents a telepath from using their powers while in a radius of around twenty meters of him."
"And you can't suppress the Weyr any more?"
"Nope. That's why he started attacking again. And he knows that if I get within range of him, or if he tries to eat me again, I might be able to re-establish the connection. Even in wolf form the Weyr is more in control then the wolf I was connected too."
"What happens if he doesn't get living mutant blood during the full moon phase?"
"We dunno. It's never happened before. But we might just find out. He's targeted you Mulder. He's sure that you're a mutant of some kind, and he won't go after anyone but you. That's why I want you to stay near me at all times during tonight, understood?"
"Yeah, but just one more question. Why didn't you kill it when you had the thing subdued?"
"That's rather harsh, Agent Mulder. 'Twas the Weyr that did the killin's, the wee wolf was just the other half of it. Think of it like a split personality. The wolf is the friendly, playful critter that just wants to exist as any animal would. The Weyr was the killer. And thanks to Jubilee, it was locked away, as you would do any normal serial killer. This incident could be regarded easily as a prison break." Jubilee nodded.
"Plus, thanks to the link, and all the power and mutation that Weyr ate, Wolf was on the same level as a human. We could even talk to each other on occasion. In fact, I managed to teach the little bugger how to read. It would have been like killing a pair of Siamese twins when only one of the twins has done something wrong."
"Oh."
"And we're not sure if we can safely kill the Weyr anyway."
"Why not?"
"It could kill Jubilee, at least, we assume it could, and we're not eager to find out if we're wrong." Emma was standing in the doorway, having apparently heard the conversation.
"I'm not sure I understand, how could it kill Jubilee?" Scully nodded respectfully to Emma before turning back to Jubes.
The girl once more showed them her scars the Weyr had given her.
"I told you I had the Weyr's healing abilities. Ever since the psychic attack, the scars reappeared. During the night, they get worse, then during the day, they begin to heal again. We don't know why they reappeared in the first place, but I keep getting the feeling that if either Wolf or Weyr is killed, I'll be headed the same way. That's why the guys had orders to use only tranqs last night." Emma was glaring at her. "What?"
"Why is there a hole in my wall?" Jubilee winced again.
"Wolf was hovering around, looking for its prey. I could hear it, but the moment I got up to confront him, he took off." Emma's foot started to tap. "I'll fix it later, okay? Can we please just figure out what we're doin' about Weyr?"
"The X-men are on their way here."
"Who?"
"Friends. Mutants. Long, long story. I think, the best thing to do would be for me to try and reconnect. I don't want to find out what'll happen if he doesn't get live flesh and blood, not if I don't really have to."
"I agree. Which means we need to trap it some how."
"Yeah, I've been thinking about that. Agent Mulder, if you're willing to help, as in, act as bait, I might be able to get in it's mind." The agents frowned at the young woman. "I wouldn't ask you to sacrifice yourself, that would make the whole plan kinda pointless. I'm just asking you to lure the Weyr to some place it can be held long enough for me to connect. You'd be completely safe with the other mutants protecting you."
Mulder looked at his hands, thinking.
"All right. But afterward, I want you to answer any and every question I can think of about mutant powers and such. Deal?"
"Deal. And if I don't survive, one of the others will answer instead. Right Frosty?"
"I don't like it, but if I have to, if you die obviously, then of course I will."
"Right, what's your plan?"
"By the time the X-ers get here, hopefully I'll have one." So saying, she stood up and walked out the door.
