Title: Canticle
Author: CeilidhO
Summary: Four years after the capture of serial killer George Hoffman, Mulder and Scully's new life together is shattered when an unexpected visitor sweeps them into a new case, more terrifying and deadly than either could have imagined. (Sequel to "Disciple")
Disclaimer: Chris Carter and 1013 own the rights to Mulder, Scully, and all characters and concepts from the series. I, however, am the proud owner of all characters and situations I invented myself. All mine…
* * *
Quantico, Virginia
October 19, 2007
4:32 pm
With a quiet whirr, a searing beam of light sliced through the dark air and splashed onto a drop-down of white canvas. Golden dust motes danced in the beam. There was a click, and a picture appeared on the screen, a color photo of a fifty-something year old man with graying black hair. His eyes were jet black, and even in the faded medium of the projector, they leaped out in malicious brilliance.
"George Nathaniel Hoffman," an even voice intoned, floating from somewhere in the darkness behind the whirring machine. "Called in the first years of his murders 'the Choirmaster'. He killed eleven boys between 1997 and 2003, and carved these…" The image on the white canvas changed abruptly to a stark autopsy photo of a small boy. An incredible set of carved wings blazed out from his back. "…on the backs of his victims. His murders had a pronounced religious bent: each of his victims had the name of a biblical Disciple."
The class was absolutely silent, staring in disgust at the body on the screen. A small voice crept out from the back of the lecture theatre, hesitant and pensive.
"But, sir, weren't there twelve Disciples in the Bible?"
Fox Mulder stepped out from behind the projector and into the beam of light. He scanned the audience for the speaker, and finally caught his eye on the young man standing in almost the last row. "That's right, Munroe. There were twelve. However, George Hoffman was stopped before he could complete his… 'set', if you will. He did, however, manage to abduct his final victim. Thankfully, investigators reached Hoffman before he could kill this final victim. The boy was only injured."
Munroe spoke again, his voice gaining in strength. "Which Disciple was it, sir? The last one, I mean."
Mulder sighed, knowing the effect his words would have on the students. "Judas. The final victim was his nine year old son, Judas Hoffman."
The class erupted, wild with protestations and disgust. It took Mulder almost three minutes to quiet them, but he was finally able to carry on with his lecture. "As I said, investigators were able to reach Jude before he was killed. George Hoffman was killed, in self defense, by the lead agent in the investigation, Dana Scully." Mulder couldn't keep the warmth of affection out of his voice. He reached over to turn on the room lights. "Now, as this is a Behavioral Science course, let's get to the Behavioral Science. Based on what you've heard, what kind of offender was George Hoffman: organized, disorganized, or mixed? Yes, you there…"
A twenty minutes later, a buzzer sounded, and the class began to collect their books and papers. Mulder called to them:
"We'll continue Wednesday. Until then, read pages ninety to one hundred in the textbook. They deal with the case and the principles and tactics used to investigate it."
At the top of the hall, the student Munroe paused in packing up his materials. "Agent Mulder," he asked. "Whatever happened to Judas Hoffman?"
The class was instantly silent again. Mulder felt sadness well up in him. "I don't know, Munroe. I have no idea."
Suddenly a voice rang out from near the door at the top of the room. "I know."
Mulder squinted up at the speaker, a young man dressed strangely for a cadet. Then he looked more closely. "And who are you? How would you know?" he asked, dread thickening his tongue.
The boy looked straight at him and said simply: "Because I'm Jude Hoffman."
* * *
Agent Dana Scully watched her five o'clock class sidle into the room. The gaggle of new cadets were only in their second week at Quantico, not yet inured to the unpleasant information that greeted them daily. One man looked almost green with the very smell of the operating room, and his friend was patting him sympathetically. Scully smirked and adjusted her white lab coat.
"Forensic Pathology," she said, "moves for us today out of the classroom and into the morgue. So far I have taught you what signs to recognize, which substances to test. Today, we proceed to how."
I think I'm going to enjoy this, she thought, eying the green student. I think Mulder's sick humor is contagious. With guilty relish, she hefted the scalpel and aimed for the dotted line across the cadaver's forehead. "It is advantageous to begin an autopsy with the removal of the cranium…" she began. The scalpel sank into the blue tinged flesh, blood welling thickly around the knifepoint. A memory strafed across her vision unbidden, of scalpels and razors and welling blood, of blowing grass and whispering darkness, but she pushed it away.
'Green' gagged and brought her back, and Scully returned her attention to the cadaver. She completed the incision and lifted away the top of the skull, placing it on the body's chest. She began to balance the scale in preparation for the brain.
"All the vital organs must be removed, weighed and examined for irregularities…" Green looked positively distraught at the idea. Scully was just reaching into the skull when the door flew open, crashing against the wall and panicking the students. A cadet was standing there, panting, his chest rising frantically with the effort of breathing.
Scully's mouth tightened into a thin line, irritation pulling at her. She glared at the intruder. "I beg your pardon? Do you not realize that I am in the middle of a class? Do you have some reason for barging in here, or was entering like civilized person beyond your abilities?" One of Scully's students chuckled.
"Sorry, Agent Scully," the runner panted. "I'm really sorry, but Agent Mulder sent me. He said you had to get down to Coolidge Hall right away, that it's really urgent, and I ran all the way…"
Scully sighed angrily, peeling off her gloves. "Sure, fine. Get back to wherever you're supposed to be, cadet. And thank you for delivering the message." She turned to her own cadets. "I'll be back in a few minutes. Don't touch anything."
Looking at their disgusted faces, Scully decided that it wasn't likely they would.
* * *
Scully slammed through the upper doors of Coolidge Lecture Hall, a million angry thoughts swarming through her. She had spent the walk over debating which cutting remark to sling at him when she arrived, but they all died on her lips when she got to the bottom of the hall and got a good look at his guest.
"Jude…" she breathed. Mulder shot her a curious look.
The sullen, black haired boy answered her with a curt nod. "Yeah, it's me. How are you, Dana?"
"Jude," she said again. "What on earth are you doing here? Does your family know where you are?"
"No," he said. "I ran off. But I did come here for a reason."
Scully cast an incredulous look at Mulder, who seemed thoroughly confused. "Wait a minute," he said. "Have the two of you been corresponding or something?"
Scully nodded faintly. "For a few years after the case, we wrote each other briefly, every few months, but I haven't heard from you in a very long time, Jude."
The boy shrugged. "I had stuff going on. But I came to see you because I need help. Ten days ago, my foster brother was kidnapped, and he hasn't been found yet. I thought…" His voice stumbled a bit. "I mean, you guys managed to find me, right? I thought maybe you could find him."
"Oh," Scully murmured. "I don't know. I'm sure the local agents are doing their best with the case…"
"No they're not!" Jude cried. "They haven't done anything, and I overheard them saying that it's a lost cause, that the case is about to be dropped. That's when I came to find you."
Mulder frowned, then turned back to the boy. "Jude, can you excuse us for a second?" He led Scully a little way away, and lowered his voice. "Scully, he's a runaway, and there's really no way we can help him. I think the kindest thing would be to alert his foster family and put him on a plane back to Salt Lake City."
Scully felt anger flare in her chest. "He asked us for help, Mulder. The least we can do is let him stay for a little while, and make some calls to find out what we can do. I'm going to ask him back to the apartment."
"Scully, you can just decide that unilaterally. I have some say…"
"You know, Mulder, I killed that boy's father. I held that boy, still chained and bleeding, in the dark for almost twenty minutes while you tried to get through that trap door. An experience like that creates a bond that is not easily broken, and I will not betray his trust in me."
Mulder stared at her for a few seconds more, and then nodded, almost imperceptibly. "All right," he said finally. "But if he changes the radio station in the car, so help me…"
Scully laughed softly and swatted his arm, then turned and walked back to the boy. "Jude, I'd like it very much if you would come home with me, back to Agent Mulder and my apartment. I'll make some calls there, and we'll see what we can do after that, okay?"
The tousled black head nodded, and Mulder walked over and scooped up the ragged knapsack that sprawled at his feet.
"C'mon," he said. "I'll let you pick the station in the car."
The new apartment in Georgetown still smelled like floor cleaner, and it gusted out at them as Mulder unlocked the door. Scully saw Jude wrinkle his nose, and she smiled.
"It's a brand-new apartment," she said. "You'll get used to it in a minute."
Mulder grinned. "If not, it will give you brain damage."
Scully rolled her eyes, and Jude smiled for the first time since he'd arrived. "You're weird, Agent Mulder, but I can get that in a guy. Most people think I'm weird." He disappeared into the apartment, and Mulder beamed at Scully.
"He thinks I'm weird, Scully! What a compliment."
She just pushed him inside.
* * *
Around two in the morning, Scully sat bolt upright with a gasp, covered in a sheet of sweat. Mulder was breathing steadily beside her, his eyes twitching beneath their lids. Scully looked around the room frantically, trying to remember the nightmare that had sent bolts of panic sweeping through her. She remembered almost as suddenly. It had been dark, and even in her sleep she had spasmed from the fall. She was back in the dream, in the memory, in an instant.
Something glittered in the dark beside one of the pillars, dark as a black pearl, like a polluted and stained diamond.
Eyes…
A small noise of fear escaping her lips, Scully threw herself against the wall, pressing her back against it like a child, longing for it to reach out and draw her in, warm and safe and protected, curled under the covers in a cocoon of shaken innocence.
Fabric rustled.
Scully heard, slipping and piercing down into her dungeon of fear, a small mewling sound of pain and confusion. Several slivers of light were cut off and changed as something more concrete began to move at the far end of the warehouse. The sound changed to a low muffled sob, and then to a high, keening chant.
"I want Daddy. The man has my Daddy. Daddy!" Then, long and drawn out, ripping and tearing at the fabric of the air: "Help…"
Scully slipped from the bed and padded from the room, walking down the short hallway to the living room, where Judas Hoffman lay sleeping soundly on his stomach on Mulder's old leather sofa. Scully stood above him for a long time, watching his body rise and fall from the rhythm of his breathing. Silently and gently, she reached down and smoothed down his hair, his shining black hair. Feeling a sudden need to see, she slipped the back of the boy's t-shirt up slightly, and right then a car passed in the street below.
The white light of the headlights swung over the two of them, and light blinding, illuminating for a moment the silver rise and fall of the milky skin on his back. Underneath Scully's hands were his wings, carved there three years earlier by a madman, the very beginnings of what he had perceived as his crowning glory. George Nathaniel Hoffman had wielded his scalpel, his razor, like a paintbrush, rendering his poor choirboys fallen, bloody angels. Scully carried her own engraving from Hoffman on her back, cris-crossing lines sliced into her skin by the killer, lashed whip thin in the darkness.
Sickness rising in her throat, Scully lowered the t-shirt and reached up to her own back, still standing over the boy in the utter silence of the apartment. She slid her hand over her skin, her arm twisted at an awkward angle, until her fingers collided with the smooth puckers of scar tissue that extended from her shoulders to her mid back, crossing each other and rising higher in some places than others, where the razor had cut deeper and struck bone. Suddenly, a small voice came from the immobile form on the couch.
"Dana, will they always be there? I hate them so much that it scares me. I've tried to cut them off, burn them off, anything, everything, but they never go away. I'm not one of his angels, and I just want them gone… I just want him gone."
"Were you awake the whole time?" Scully asked, ashamed and concerned at the same time. When Jude didn't answer, Scully sat down on the edge of the sofa. "I don't think they will ever go away, I'm sorry to say. The doctors tell me mine won't."
"You have them too?" the boy asked tentatively. "I didn't know that. Can I see them?"
Automatically, Scully lifted the back of her shirt, exposing her back to the air. Another set of passing headlights filled the apartment with white light, and Jude sucked in air when he caught sight of Scully's scars. She lowered the fabric, and turned to face the boy.
"He gave them to me when I was trying to get to you, when I was in the dark. He came up behind me and I couldn't see anything. He was still holding the razor he'd used on-" Scully stopped, realizing how inappropriate what she had been to say really was.
"On me." Jude finished flatly. "The razor he'd used on me. I guess that makes us kinda blood brothers, doesn't it?" For a moment he seemed just like any other twelve year old boy, eager with the promise of belonging, the eternal promise that sharing blood seems to bring, the kind of boy who would sit with his best friend in a tree house and prick their fingers by candlelight.
"Maybe it does." Scully said softly. As they considered the concept, the phone rang with sudden violent noise. They both jumped hard, and Scully forgot for a moment that she was supposed to answer this startling device. It was picked up on the second ring, though, and Scully heard Mulder's sleepy voice from the bedroom. After a minute or two, she heard his feet coming down the hallway. He appeared in the wide doorway, framed against the faint light from their bedside lamp that trickled from their room.
"They want us in Salt Lake City first thing in the morning, Scully. They want all of us there."
"Mulder," Scully said, her voice shaking despite her best efforts. "What's wrong?"
Mulder ignored her and looked straight at Jude. "They found your foster brother. He's dead." Jude gasped, and his eyes began to glitter. "It's worse, I'm afraid," Mulder continued, his voice horribly flat. "He was found naked, sprawled on his stomach, with a pair of wings carved onto his back."
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A/N: Let me know what you think, please! Review, review, review, and thanks so much for all the feedback I've received already.
To respond to a few reviews: BrokenHearts, don't worry about it, no offense taken. I didn't like 'The River' either… BroncosCheer, 'Disciple' is a fanfic I wrote last winter, not an episode. Sorry if that was unclear. And Niobium, thanks very much for pointing out that mistake. Unfortunately, I can't go back and fix it, because the timing is integral to the plot, but thanks anyway. And since there are only two more of you, thanks for the lovely reviews, Gillian Leigh and Spooky'sAngel!
~ Ceilidh