March 30th

Paul went to The Ancient's apartment. He would have gone the night before but it was a 6 hour's drive after a long drawn-out interrogation by Alex Ryan. Which Paul had resented greatly. By the time he'd gotten back to Bayview, it had been 3 am. He rapped on the door and walked in as seemed to be the habit there.

"Ah, Captain Blaisdell, " Lo Si said "What can we do for you today."

"I would like to speak with you and Caine about Mrs. Lin, if I may."

"Kwai Chang Caine is in deep meditation, but he will rouse soon. Please, have a seat. Can I make you tea?"

"That would be nice, thank you." He said as he took a seat on the sofa. He could hear Caine's intonations in the background. He remembered Peter trying to meditate when he'd first come to their home. Peter hadn't known he was watching. Or that he'd seen the frustration when he failed. Later Peter told him how he'd give up everything that made him different at the orphanage. Paul had offered to get him into a kwoon (not that he'd known the word at the time) or anything else it took to help him regain what he thought he'd lost. Peter had refused. He'd simply said the past died in the temple fires and he should leave it there with his father. It had been heartbreaking really because he knew that the boy hadn't meant it. There was nothing he could do to change his mind.

Lo Si jarred him out of his thoughts when he returned with the pot of tea and three cups.

"Thank you," Paul said. He could hear the intonations cease and knew that Caine would be joining them shortly.

Within a few minutes, Caine joined them "Paul. How can we help you?" He asked.

"Kermit and I went to see Mrs. Lin yesterday. Long story short, she was murdered."

"How?" Cain asked.

"She was strangled. There was an impression in the ligatures that looked like scales."

"She was assassinated." Lo Si said. "By the Harbingers."

"We have no way of knowing that. " Paul said, "But it is the most likely option."

"They leave their mark so that others do not commit the same sin as the victim." Lo Si said. "She admitted to us that Peter was taken by the cult."

"Who was with you when you interviewed her?"

"Three Shaolin priests," Caine said. "No one that would assassinate her"

"Are they the type to share what they heard?"

Caine shrugged "I do not know."

"I do not believe they are the sort to speak of this. They know Peter's life is at stake and that there is no way to recognize a Harbinger." Lo Si said.

"What can you tell me about this cult?"

"No one knows much about them," Caine said. "Harbingers is what we call them, we do not know what they call themselves. They are called this because with them comes chaos and destruction. We know that they hate the Shaolin and they have since the Indian priests came to China and taught their variant of Buddhism."

"Are they primarily Indian?" Paul asked.

"I do not know." Caine said "Mrs. Lin was the first member I encountered that was not white. There are many sects and cults that began as one thing and shifted to another with colonial expansion. Including Buddhism and Christianity. "

"You sound like a history teacher."

He shrugged. "I taught many things in the temple."

"Why would these people come to Bayview? Why would they take Peter?"

"I do not know." He knew that Blaisdell was not going to take him seriously if he spoke again of destiny and prophesy. Especially as he did not know the details himself.

"Well, when you do know something, let me know." He said and rose to his feet. "Thank you for the tea, Lo Si."

Peter stood at the window, watching the cars going by 30 stories down. He watched the people and wondered where they were going and if they knew how much of their lives they were taking for granted.

He didn't look up when Miranda came closer. She touched his hair and his skin crawled. He stiffened but didn't pull away. "Please stop." He said. He had promised to do as he was told. That didn't mean he was going to be her personal chew toy.

He hoped.

"This time tomorrow, when you look down you'll see people putting up decorations before the festival begins. The next day the vendors will start arriving. And the day after that the festival begins."

"The festival that ends when I'm eaten by a giant snake." He said, "Figuratively speaking."

"Figuratively speaking." She repeated but there was a tone to her voice that he didn't like.

"What happens to me afterward?" He asked, still staring down at the street below. It was funny how heights seemed less frightening after his time in the cell below. Everything seemed less frightening after that.

"We leave this place and I begin your training." She said, "Then you take your proper place."

"Proper place? What do you mean?" He looked up then and met her eyes.

"Once your Shaolin destiny is obliterated by the ritual, you will be revered."

"According to my father destiny can't be avoided."

"Your father is Shaolin. His teachings are skewed. Everything is fluid. Life, death, and destiny." She said. "When you were brought here, your life was removed from its original path. The destiny you once had is unreachable. The Shaolin will not risk it."

"What are you talking about?" He asked. "The Shaolin don't control my so-called destiny any more than you do."

"For you to be able to aid the first recognized member of your bloodline, you must travel back in time. A power even I do not possess. But there are Shaolin artifacts that can do this. They will not risk a serpent coming close to their precious artifacts, and neither will they trust one to heal rather than hurt. So yes, Peter, your destiny belongs to me, and to the Shaolin."

"That's why you've been hunting down artifacts." He said, "You're looking for the one that supposedly has the power of time travel."

It is a limited form of time travel but yes, we have searched for it for centuries. As we could not find it, I chose to take you instead."

"You chose? What does your boss think about that change in plans?" Given how she kept trying to pet him like a cocker spaniel… or a lover… he didn't think she chose to take him just because it was more expedient, and that thought made him extremely uncomfortable.

She laughed and caressed his face, ignoring his attempt to pull away. "Oh Peter, you have so much to learn."

Lo Si lit the candle in between him and Caine, in preparation for the guided meditation. He had read Caine's grandfather's journal account of the Harbingers to get an idea of where to lead.

Caine lay down on the mat and closed his eyes, beginning to clear his thoughts, focusing first on his breathing, then on his heart rate until there were barely signs of life. Finally, his thoughts cleared.

"Think about your grandfather." Lo Si said. "Remember the last time you saw him." He continued to take him back through time in his meditation. He could visualize things as they happened through his grandfather's eyes but he could not take control.

White sulfur Canyon, California, 1895

The city of White Sulfur Canyon was a company town for a sulfur mine. The company employed 300 miners, and 70 security officers, and 20 people were employed in the office, Their families were there as well adding another 200 to the toll. There were the people who worked in the store, ran the saloon, and the soiled doves with rooms above. The farmers and ranchers and anyone else who came within 10 miles of White Sulfur Canyon lay dead in the streets. He estimated 800 people Only Kwai Chang Caine was unaffected by the rage that had driven the others to kill. He'd felt that rage before and spent 20 years finding his way toward redemption and fighting that urge.

He looked at the dead in horror, as he followed the sound of chanting coming from the hotel. He slipped in quietly and followed them as they went down into the basement, and through a separate door.

The room was hewn from the bedrock and draped in black cloth. They gathered in front of a statue, a 20-foot black snake that loomed over them all. A beautiful woman sat on a raised chair, She had dark hair and eyes that were so blue that he could see them from across the room.

A young man, Travis Gray, whom Caine recognized him from the mercantile his parents had owned, was shoved into the center of the room, and the crowd parted. He looked around at his captors, clearly terrified.

Kwai Chang Caine pressed himself tightly against the wall and moved slowly to avoid detection. Four men stepped into the center and surrounded Travis. Caine took two steps forward prepared to defend the young man, who had never been in so much as a fistfight, as far as Caine knew. The cultists began to chant in a language he didn't recognize and the four combatants converged on their prey.

Then Gray surprised him, he began to fight. He was terrified but he was holding his own in a combat style that Caine did not recognize. It was not unlike the cobra with its quick strikes and lithe movements, but very different at the same time. He was fighting to survive, and Caine was certain that each man that fell, would never get up again.

The chanting stopped the moment the 4th man fell to the ground. Instantly two men moved forward and took Travis by the arms. This time the young man didn't fight back. He let them take him toward the dais and force him to his knees.

"Nagaina," A man dressed all in black spoke from the left of the dais "Does this man please you?"

"He does." She said and they released his arms and stepped back from him.

"M-my parents, are they alright? You promised they would be alright if I did what you wanted."

The woman rose and strode toward him. She offered him her hand, which he took and rose to his feet. "They will be." She said

Kwai Chang Caine made his move then, leaping into the center of the crowd. He pulled Travis away from the woman they called Nagaina. "Everyone in the town is dead." He said

"His parents are not in the town." She said, "Do you wish to stay with this man, Travis."

"I- No." He said although it was clear in his eyes that he did. "I can't, Caine. I have to stay with her. I'm sorry."

"You can leave this place. I will take you."

"She'll kill my folks." He said and stepped up on the dais with the woman. "If you leave now… they won't hurt you."

The woman caressed his face "oh darling, He's Shaolin. OF course, they'll hurt him." She stepped aside and began canting. The eyes of the statue began to glow an eldritch shade of green bathing Travis in its light.

"Nag." She said. "Welcome back my love."

Caine watched in horror as the young man's expression and body language changed. He stepped back from him and looked around at the cultists as they began to converge. He fought, this time not to win but to escape.

Kwai Chang Caine sat bolt upright, horrified by what he had seen. "I know what they have planned for Peter."

Peter didn't go to the roof when Miranda left for her endless meetings about her precious festival. He hadn't figured out what that was all about yet. it was too important to her for there not to be something behind it. She wasn't telling and there was nothing in the penthouse to give him information.

He sat twitching for half an hour before he could convince himself to do what he had in mind. He got up and took the stairs down. He went through the artifact room not bothering to stop to inspect the items that were part of his heritage. He began to walk faster, so as not to lose his nerve. He went down the stairs to the landing with the bathroom he'd been locked in, and down the next … the final flight of stairs and into what he thought of as the snake room.

He stood in front of the statue for a moment, transfixed by its improbable size. "What do you want from me?" He whispered. "You don't care about this prophesy crap anymore than I do… what is this really about?"

Life. The word echoed in his mind.

"Mine or yours?" He figured he knew the answer already but you could never assume with the bad guys.

Ours.

Peter felt sick to his stomach at the implication. "Ours? Or my body run by your mind."

Ours.

"Do you belong to her?" She treated everyone like property. Why not the giant snake entity too?

She is Nagaina, I am Nag.

"So that's a yes. Since my only reference for those two names has them as a mated pair of cobras."

No.

"She's evil. A- a destroyer."

Yes.

"Are you?"

Are you?

Peter blinked. "No."

Good. She wants you.

"I've noticed."

The priest will come.

"My father?"

Yes.

"Don't hurt him," Peter said, anxiety in his tone. "Please." The only thing keeping him going through this entire nightmare was that doing so kept his family safe. He'd lose his mind otherwise. Hell, he wasn't entirely certain he hadn't already. After all, he was having a conversation with a statue… or a phantom snake depending on your point of view.

She will. We will not.

"How do I stop her?"

We don't.

"Well, thanks for the pep talk. I feel so much better now." Peter said sarcastically.

Good.

Peter shook his head and headed back up the stairs, into the light. He continued upward to the roof. He lay down on the grass and stared up at the blue sky. "You gotta stay away, Pop." He knew his father couldn't hear him, but he wished he could. There was so much left unsaid between them. Things that would never be said because he was going to become the meat suit for a giant snake.

Miranda looked over the paperwork in front of her. "Yes, this location is ideal. We'll have the ceremony there. We can't have anything to connect Peter to this location. It would interfere with our plans."

"Of Course Ms. Gray. How soon do we begin relocation?" Kevin Thompson asked.

"Immediately. Start with the artifacts. In case we aren't swift enough we cannot afford for them to fall back into Shaolin's hands. Then we move Nag. We move Peter the day before the ceremony and sanitize the penthouse so that there is no evidence he was ever there."

"I do not understand your choice for consort. His background makes him wholly unsuitable. I know why he had to be neutralized, but with one father being a Shaolin priest and the other being a police officer is he truly the best host?"

"Nag has made his choice. And like all those before him he is crippled by his love of family."

"Crippled?" Sean Donelly scoffed. "He's been trying to escape every night since you let him out of the chamber."

"I am well aware. But that has stopped now, and all it took was me having lunch with his foster father.

"He should be broken by now." Dianne Reese pointed out.

"He spent longer in the chamber than any other candidate ever has. He sleeps with the lights on, yet when he was put in the chamber for beating the hell out of a man you assured me was unbeatable, Peter spent his time working on Elapidae rather than cowering in the corner. He will do as he is told right up to the end to protect those that he loves whether he is broken to your satisfaction or not."

"Still." Diana began.

"Do not question me further on this subject." She said sharply.

"Of course Nagaina." She said and bowed her head.

"The woman is crooked as a corkscrew. " Paul said as he and Kermit went over the background check they had done on Miranda Gray. "But I just can't find the proof. It's not illegal to spend too much money on anything, as long as it's your money and those 4 million dollars came out of her bank account. It's not even embezzlement from her firm."

"The people she's paying this money to check out. The one thing they have in common is that they are businesses that were on the brink of closing down due to debts or what have you. The money she gave them made them solvent." Kermit said. "And the security she has on tap for this festival of hers is excessive… or maybe not given the insanity going on out there."

"I know I should be worrying more about the escalating violence… the chaos … as Caine put it. But every instinct I have is screaming at me that this woman is the key to all of this somehow."

"I trust your gut more than most people's evidence," Kermit said.

"Too bad we can't connect her to Mrs. Lin," Paul said.

"According to Ryan."

"What are you suggesting?" Paul asked, leaning back in his seat.

"I'm suggesting that You wouldn't escort a pair of out of towner cops to the district crackpot when any detective or officer would do."

"No, I wouldn't. But I don't tend to make relationships with local crackpots."

"Just me and Peter's father." He said laughing quietly.

"Caine isn't a crackpot. He's a priest."

"Point is, it's out of character for a precinct captain in a busy city. He wasn't surprised that she was dead either. Now I know I have trust issues and some could say that I'm paranoid but I think he knew she was dead and wanted to be there when the body was found. "

Paul sighed and ran his hand down his face. "You're right. But if that's the case, what does a police captain in another city want with my son."