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…
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Outside of Price, Utah
October 28
5:37 pm
"Freeze! FBI!"
Scully's cry burst out against the roar and crash of the wind and rain. Her hair was wet and frigid against her neck. Her hands were hot and slick against the cold metal of her gun. Her elbows were locked, her biceps shaking.
Inside the darkness of the bridge piling, the figures in the bizarre tableau were frozen and silent. John Holtz stood dripping and naked, awash with a mixture of rainwater and blood, his scabbed hands clutching a gleaming scalpel. Jude was almost humming with tension, his eyes dark and angry, desperate and powerless. At the far back, Scully could just make out Thomas Abrams, his features arrested in a twisted grimace of agony.
Blinking against the rain in her eyelashes, Scully wrenched herself forward, advancing slowly, every muscle taut and heart gushing fear. The freezing, dirty floodwater lapped and struck at her just above her ankles. She could barely move through it.
Wrenching her voice once more above the elements and terror, she cried: "Don't move! John Holtz, don't move!" The hard black of the gun's barrel quivered at the edge of her vision as she advanced by inches, legs pushing through liquid.
Holtz's eyes flicked back and forth, from her to Jude and back, to Thomas and to her and then down at the blade in his own hands. His eyes were chipped, rocky green, dead and opaque.
Suddenly Thomas screamed. It ripped from his throat and tore at the air, nameless, soundless, primal shrill shrieking noise. The boy flailed and screamed and rattled his rusty chains, his eyes bulging and blood flecking to the sides of his gaping mouth.
The ice of the water reached Scully's mid-calf.
"Thomas! Thomas, listen! Listen to me!" Scully could feel the air grate in her own throat. "I'm here to help you!"
Holtz's gaze slid to Thomas, something flickering behind it. He licked his lips.
Scully stepped under the overhang of the piling, and the noise of the flood dimmed against her ears. The water licked at her skin through her pants.
Jude still stood frozen, his obsidian eyes locked on John Holtz, hands splayed by his sides, his breath coming in heavy gasps. The water was almost to his knees.
"John," Scully tried again, pitching her voice against the screams, "John, do you know who I am?"
The faintest of nods, the gaze still flicking like a reptile.
"I'm the only one who can get us out of this, you understand?"
A wet gag from the darkness as Thomas ran out of air.
"I'm going to come closer, John. I'm going to come closer to you." She slid forward by increments. "We're all of us in a lot of trouble, aren't we, John? You, me, Judas… Thomas."
The gaze locked on her now. A voice, high and young, monotone. "I don't have my answers yet."
Scully forced a foot forward. The water bit at the backs of her knees. "You can get them later, John, once we're all out of danger. I promise. You were right, John, Jude knows everything. He just can't tell you right now." The muzzle of the gun dipped for a moment, and Scully concentrated against the rise of the water and the cold and the insane tempo of her blood.
The gaze hardened again.
The water nipped her thighs, and her body began to tremble.
The voice again: "How do you know about my questions? What do you know of my quest?" The hand holding the blade began to shake. "Judas told, didn't he, as all Judases do! I knew, I knew!"
A quick throwaway glimpse at Jude showed his eyes wide and desperate. He had eyes that see the end fast approaching. Scully pitched her voice again and forced out sounds.
"No, John! Judas never told! I know all about you, John; I'm a detective. It's my job to know. But I can get us out of here."
There was a stretching moment of silence, and Scully moved again. Thomas wretched, and Scully saw blood on his lips. The water that swirled around her thighs was thick and muddy, dirty red from the dust and the hue of the soil. It burned with cold.
Suddenly, a shake of the head from John Holtz. "No. No, we're not getting out! I want my answers now!"
With a cry Jude found his voice. "I told you, I told you! I don't know anything! Please, just stop it!" It was begging, pleading, unbearably young. Scully could remember the last time she had heard his voice like that, in the horrific dark, inches away from another killer. She could remember his voice, begging for his daddy, the tones filled with fear and blood and anger.
The water passed her mid-thigh.
There's no more time, her body screamed. Panic crawled along her skin with the rising flood, cold and creeping through her veins in icy invasion. Panic had never felt like this before. Panic had always been thudding and wild, noisy and desperate, hot and spinning; now she felt nothing but rising cold. Freezing every particle, sliding over every inch, panic clothed her in desperation.
Panic was thick red water and enclosing walls; panic was the slow shine of razor; panic was this relentless flood that engulfed the senses by increments and left no time for even adrenaline. She was so tired.
The black-red walls dripped moisture, and the faces of all around her pale and floating in the darkness. Rain and wind swirled outside, blasting and twining strands of weather on gusts of gale into the piling and hard against her back. Before her vision the eyes of John Holtz hung, restless and opaque, in constant motion, milky and dead. Something stirred on their shallow surface.
She stared down the barrel of her gun and knew fear.
Suddenly tension grabbed her in a gushing vise.
In a ferocious whirling moment, something struck her in a blast of force. Air spewed from her lungs, bruises exploding as hard mass smashed her body. The heat of her gun was gone from her hands, and in the next second all there was was water.
Water filled her mouth and eyes. Water penetrated her throat and violated her lungs. Water was a thousand frozen razors slicing her flesh. Water seized her like manacles, like prison, like death.
Impressions came and went. Something massive and heavy on her body. Silt and rock grating the skin off her back. A second of air before force smashed her into the water again. Spinning and current and roaring, rushing liquid like the end of the world.
In a burst of white pain and a cloud of crimson, metal digging into her flesh, the snap and recoil of severed muscle, the unthinkable violation as her body screamed against such traumatic invasion.
Writhing and twisting in the water, eyes open for a moment and mouth filled with water laden with copper tang and salt. Lungs bursting and stars exploding on the blackness. Desperation, deprivation, clenching stomach and a feeling almost of frustration. Tongue thick and gritty in her mouth.
Next, suddenly and blissfully, air. The weight, the force, the mass off her body, and her feet shoving against the swirling dirt below. Head breaking the surface and water gushing from her nose and mouth, foreign against her lips.
All around her was screaming and flailing, blurry and faceless, her vision washed away by the floodwater. Grit scratched her eyeballs as she blinked once, hard. The noise was chaotic and reverberant, wild and frantic.
Light flared in blinding red, orange, yellow, white, a flash of ignition and a shout, a roar, a blast of combustion. A smash and spray of liquid as a body fell beneath the surface.
Jude stood above the water, his face bloody and his features twisted and grotesque, contorted in an emotion so strong she could not even begin to conceive of a word for it. He screamed again, words unintelligible and incoherent, the noise all that mattered, a primal shriek that tore from his soul and convulsed his body.
His eyes burned black, and Judas slammed the trigger again and again, each blast of mingled cacophony of rage mechanical and animal, a violent inferno of catharsis and vengeance.
As the magazine emptied shell by shell, explosions and eruptions of liquid constant as the bullets smashed the surface of the water, one sound, one word, made its way from the twisted features of the boy to her, a wrenching rage-filled cry.
As Judas Laurence Hoffman stood, the empty machinery clicking and whirring and empty now as his fingers pounded the trigger in vain, he screamed out for Daddy.
- - - -
Scully didn't know how much time had passed, but she gradually became conscious that she was calling Jude's name. He was standing, silent, staring at the figure floating face-up on the rapidly rising floodwater. His expression was vacant.
Pain burned at her attention, and she looked down at her right arm. As far as she could tell, at some point during the underwater struggle the scalpel had been plunged into her right bicep, severing the muscle and several veins. The wound gaped, and Scully fought for equilibrium, squeezing pressure on it with her left hand, her mind racing, working to develop some kind of plan.
The water had reached her waist.
"Judas," she called, gasping against the remnants of fluid in her throat. "Jude, I need you to listen to me very carefully. We need to get Thomas out of here; he's chained up, Judas."
The boy stared at her vacantly.
"Listen to me! I need your help, Jude; I can't fire the gun. He cut my arm." Urgency was engulfing her again, and she cast her gaze frantically over to the smaller boy, who had lost consciousness and was only held up by the manacles that bound his wrists. "We have to get Thomas free somehow. The water is almost to his neck, Jude!"
Slowly, torturously, Jude turned to see, and as he did his gaze seemed to sharpen. Suddenly his face was clear again, and the set of his mouth was determined.
"What do I have to do?"
Scully let out a huge breath. "There is another cartridge of ammunition in my jacket pocket. Get it first."
Jude waded towards her, forcing his way through the thick red water. Scully fought back frustration, and clenched her teeth against it and the red-hot pain in her arm. A hand fumbled in her pocket, and Jude withdrew the item. She quickly reloaded the gun with her left hand, the wound spurting blood without pressure.
"All right, that's perfect." She sucked in a deep breath, and pushed her soaked hair out of her eyes. "Now, I want you to shoot out the chains."
Doubt flashed in his eyes, replaced with certitude. He waded closer, and then there were two hoarse retorts of gunfire. With a smash, Thomas fell into the water, and then Jude gathered him up in his arms.
The water chest high, Scully grabbed Holtz's arm with her left hand and pulled him toward the open river. Jude was close behind, and the cold grabbed at their lungs with icy bands. As they left the shelter of the piling, the wind blasted and the rain smashed their faces. There was a moment of suspension, and then ground beneath their feet.
Higher, higher up the bank, dragging, panic rising- old panic, hot and throbbing- and then no more water, only wet dirt and rivulets of rainwater. Scully felt her legs give, and her check slammed into the earth, grit against her cheek, an answering thud as Jude hit the ground. The floodwater rose again, and covered her feet.
Fate, black and velvet and opaque, settled over her. Darkness closed around her eyes, and the taste on her tongue was of blood and dust. A breath rattled in her ear, and as the fog thickened into oblivion, she realized it came from John Holtz- surprise didn't even have time to register as the sky fell, her eyes closed, and the water rose to cover her legs.
Her darkness fell too soon to see the bright white of the helicopter searchlight play over the hard red ground and across the swollen water, to finally catch her in its saving glare.
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A/N: Thanks to everybody who was been reading this story, and sticking with it through my appalling organizational (read: updating) skills.
There's only the epilogue left, so hang in there! Please review!
Ceilidh