--Watson--

Luckily for McKinn, Lestrade and three other officials arrived before I could pummel the priest into talking.

"What's going on here?" Lestrade asked me, pulling me to the side of the room.

"Sir, it's Holmes," I said allowing my emotions to seep through my words. I explained what had transpired, Holmes' note and his speculations about the church. "I was late arriving and now he's missing."

"Doctor," Lestrade chided me, "I don't have to tell you that for Holmes to disappear is quite typical behavior."

"I know that, but Inspector—" I paused to glance at McKinn, who was casually involved in a conversation with one of Lestrade's men. "That priest is hiding something. And I have an unsettling feeling. Please, just once, will you indulge my worry?"

Lestrade looked at me for a moment before answering. "I s'pose me and the boys could take a look around. In the meantime, Doctor, you might want to take a walk outside. You're looking pretty ill."

I simply nodded and my feet led me out of the door. Perhaps I was simply overreacting to the circumstances. All the taboo ideas surrounding cults had my heart rate up. Lestrade may very well have been right. Holmes liked to disappear for days at a time while on a case.

I tried to tell myself these things, but my heart refused to listen. I shambled back into the church, expecting as usual to be disappointed by Scotland Yard's incompetence. Lestrade was asking McKinn a few routine questions.

"Oh yes," McKinn was saying. "Elisabeth was a very active member here."

I impatiently stood off to one side, knowing that the conversation would not be prolific.

"Sir!" a red-haired officer called as he left McKinn's office. He was carrying an old book with a star-like symbol upon it. I recognized that symbol from Holmes' book. It was a cultist star called a pentagram. "We found this book. It looks like some kind of instructions for carrying out devilish rituals."

Lestrade took the book and thumbed through it. "That's enough for me," he said. "I'll need you to come with me for some more questioning," he told the priest, handing the book over to me for further inspection.

I was surprised at the weight of the small book. It was overlaid with some kind of metal. I turned to a creased page and read the following:

"We shall take her, our Sister, and marry her to our Master. Thus, having completed this act, she will live forever in his comfort and we will be blessed in his favor. To prepare her for her death and rebirth into marriage, she shall be lashed and made to no longer be pure. The finger upon which she would wear her wedding band must be cut from her and then placed inside our sacred altar. When three days have passed, she must then be hanged and left to our Master's pleasing. In order to complete this contract, a non-believer must also be sacrificed."

Upon reading this, my hearing failed me and I groped the wall for something to hold onto, finally sitting down on one of the sanctuary's benches. I read further, anxious to find what might have happened to my dear friend, or if as in Elisabeth Godber's death, the cult was required to wait a period of time. "The non-believer shall not be allowed to interfere in our sacred rituals. He will be burned and destroyed by hell's fires." I read this sentence many times, and with a deep knot forming in my stomach, I decided that it was literal.

An intense, blinding rage built up in my body, seeming to start at my feet and rise to my face. I singled out the target of my fervent anger: McKinn, in handcuffs, being led out of the building by Lestrade and another officer. I simply could not stop myself in that moment. I wanted to thrash the man who had cruelly taken my dearest friend from me.

My body operated on its own, taking McKinn to the ground and smashing my fist into his face, much to the surprise of the officers. "You devil! You snake! You burned him while he still breathed! You will regret it!"

Fearing for his safety, McKinn's façade was lost and he begged me to let go of him.

"I swear I am going to hunt you like an animal!" I yelled, as Lestrade gently removed me from McKinn's prone form. "Tell me, priest, is it true? Did you set fire to Holmes and kill him?" Venom dripped from my voice as I stared him down. I grabbed him by the collar roughly when he remained still.

"No!" he cried, looking at Lestrade as if begging him to stop me. The officer was silent. "W-we tried, but he would not burn. My master said we had to deal with him by other means…"

"Wouldn't burn?" I mused, then remembered Holmes' newest invention. "What did you do to him? How did you kill him?" I resigned myself to my friend's death, refusing to let my emotions overtake me any longer.

"We didn't kill him," McKinn said to my shock and relief. "We just tucked him away until his ultimate expiration." A look I had yet to see on his face emerged: smugness.

I wanted to break his jaw, but I knew that I needed him to be able to speak. "Where is he?"

The short priest closed his eyes, as if he were in deep reflection. In the tone of voice of a man reading from a page, he said, "Where the sun does not reach, where Satan's wife did teach; where no voice can escape, you will find him too late."

--

Marill: Chilling! Review :D