Watson could tell that something was terribly wrong the moment that he entered the rundown Camden House. There was something in the air that betrayed the evil that seeped through the cracks in the dilapidated walls and up through the decrepit floorboards. It appeared to sing in the air, dancing and laughing in his face, as if to tell him that he was too late.
Not bloody likely.
He could tell that Lestrade could feel it as well. The muscles in the inspector's arms began to tighten and his face grew hard.
Neither man dared to speak, so thick was the atmosphere. They moved silently through the house, not wanting to alert the wrong party of their presence. It was certainly not their intention to make the situation any worse for Holmes. But the house appeared to be empty. Too empty.
Lestrade glanced over at him, stopping in his tracks at the end of the hall. Watson could only shrug.
Turning back, Lestrade put one hand up to silence the words that Watson wasn't even planning to utter. Both men stood in complete silence, listening very carefully. Yes. There was a certain… beat coming from one of the side rooms. They exchanged a glance before carefully twisting the doorknob of the room in question.
The room was dark but for a single gas lamp that stood on a table. The oil was beginning to run low, as signified by the fact that the tone of the room was growing steadily dimmer. Aside from that bit of furniture, the room appeared to be empty.
"Do you suppose we heard wrong?" asked Lestrade in a somewhat hoarse whisper.
But a sudden groan of pain alerted them to the fact that this was certainly not the case. Instantly, both men had their eyes trained on the room, trying to find the source of the pain. It was not difficult.
Once their eyes had adjusted to the faintness of the light, they could make out the form of a body lying on the floor. Watson sucked in his breath sharply. In a single movement, both men were at his side, pulling him onto his back in order to get a better look at him. And Sherlock Holmes looked bad.
"Lestrade," Watson spoke through gritted teeth. "Find him."
Lestrade did not require any further clarification. A seasoned officer, he was on his feet in an instant and gone from the room. He had the nose of a police dog when it came to tracking down the criminals and Watson had every faith in his ability to find the attacker.
One look at Holmes conveyed the seriousness of the situation; it was clear that they must get him out of here as soon as they possibly could. Violent muscle spasms were jarring the arms that had once seemed so strong proficient. His breath appeared to be coming in short, thick gasps as his pulse seemed very capable of jumping through his skin to spill forth in the form of red anguish.
"Holmes." Watson was surprised at the pain in his choked voice. He swallowed hard, trying to banish the distress. His voice turned carefully soothing as he took a deep breath, trying to pull oxygen into seizing lungs. "Holmes, it's all right."
His efforts were rewarded with another groan of agony; Holmes' teeth were tightly clenched, his eyes screwed tightly shut against the pain.
Lestrade was at his side now, pursing his lips at the sight of the detective.
"Well?"
"I wasn't able to catch him," said Lestrade grimly. "But I have my men on his trail. It won't be long. How is he?"
"It's not good," said Watson. "We need to get him out of here and quickly. Can you help me carry him?"
Neither man felt the need to wait until Lestrade answered the purely rhetorical question. Gently, strong hands grasped Holmes' broken body, lifting him into waiting arms. They began to walk slowly so as not to jar the man and increase the pain.
Watson could only hope that they had arrived in time.
Colonel Sebastian Moran watched as a shade in the gloom. He did not fear detection, for the hunter does not fear the attention of the tiger that he seeks. The ability to remain hidden in plain sight was something that the seasoned hunter had perfected. A leer crept over his weathered features as he watched the men carrying Holmes from the room.
The broken Holmes. The beaten Holmes. Brought to his knees by the very drug that held him in an iron grip. Brought to a new low by the man he had once defeated. What a delicious paradox.
Police detectives did not concern him, nor did the threat of officers combing Baker Street for him. There was no reason to believe that they would find him.
He had won this round. That much was for certain; even Holmes would agree to that. But now he was forced to consider his next move. For he had accomplished precisely what he had set out to do. Holmes would be incapacitated for a long time, recovering from the violent cocaine overdose mixed with just enough snake venom to keep him weak as a newborn babe.
Moran rubbed his hands together silently as the men vanished from the house into 221B Baker Street. If life were a game of chess, he was so close to victory that he could almost taste it.
Check.
Lestrade sat outside the bedroom, his hands wringing with anticipation. Watson had disappeared into the room with the unconscious Holmes nearly an hour before. Every once in a while, he'd give a shout and Mrs. Hudson would appear. He would request something and she would be on it like a shot. Then…nothing. They'd be forced to wait yet again.
He glanced up as Mrs. Hudson hurried past him with a bucket of fresh water. She handed it to Watson through the doorway and Lestrade got a brief glance of the doctor's pale, sweaty face. He swallowed hard.
Mrs. Hudson leaned back against the wall and took a deep breath as the door closed behind her. She looked over at Lestrade and they could only shake their heads in unison.
His men had not been able to locate Colonel Moran but that was hardly surprising. No matter what he had told Watson, he knew that it would be impossible to find the tiger hunter without Moran's articulate permission.
The fact that Moran seemed to be getting away with a blatant murder attempt was difficult enough to swallow. But Lestrade couldn't shake the painful truth that Holmes had not mentioned the confrontation to anyone. If they hadn't been able to find Holmes in time, he would have died on the floor of Camden House. The man's ego was not only bloody irritating but it had nearly cost him his life. What a cost.
"Has there been any change, Mrs. Hudson?" he asked, surprised at how croaky his voice now sounded. He coughed into his shoulder, shaking himself mentally.
She ran a hand through the hair that was escaping from her bun, her eyes exhausted and troubled. "I don't know," she said, shaking her head. "All I know is that the doctor has been trying to keep his fever under control. And it's not been easy."
"Was it definitely a cocaine overdose?" Lestrade, though not a medical man, had been in the police force long enough to recognize the symptoms of an acute drug poisoning, particularly something as common as cocaine.
"It seems so," said Mrs. Hudson. Her lower lip appeared to tremble, just a bit and she swallowed hard. Her eyes betrayed just how worried she was. "I was so afraid that his filthy habit would prove to be the death of him. I just hope that I'm not going to be proved right."
Lestrade reached an arm out to awkwardly pat her on the arm; he'd never been very good at this kind of thing. Comforting women was something that had always been beyond him.
She looked up at him and gave him a watery smile. "Thank you, Inspector."
He nodded slowly, offering a feeble smile in return. "You're welcome, Mrs. Hudson."
"Mrs. Hudson!" The door opened to reveal Watson's drained face. "I need you to go into my desk in the front room and retrieve a small, brown box."
"On my way, doctor."
Lestrade leaned back against the wall and took a deep breath as she disappeared around the corner. There was nothing more to do but to wait and to pray. That was not a particularly uplifting prospect.
He appeared to be floating over the land. Squinting, he became aware of the fact that the view below him was familiar. But it also seemed obscure and confusing, as though he was seeing it in a dream. Somehow, he knew that this was Reichenbach Falls.
Dreaming in the air above the waterfall, he suddenly found himself standing on the edge of the cliff, looking down at a thundering waterfall. The details in his vision were wiped clean, so that the water appeared to be flowing down a grey blur. Nothing appeared to be real, not even the solid ground beneath his feet. He blinked, shaking his head, trying to make some sense out of the sight. It was not working.
"Sherlock Holmes."
He looked up at the sound of his name, peering through the smoke that covered the ground to find the speaker. But there was nothing there.
"Sherlock Holmes."
This time, his eyes showed him a shadow. It appeared to be a man, but he was completely featureless. There was no face, no skin, nothing to betray the fact that it might be a real person. But, to complete the illusion, Holmes knew the identity of the shadow.
"Moran." His answer was short and to the point but he knew that the tiger hunter would understand.
"Sherlock Holmes."
A second shadow appeared next to the first, this one a bit shorter and hunched. But he remained as featureless as his companion.
"Moriarty." But this time, he was not quite as certain that he had identified the shadow correctly. He shook his head, both physically and mentally, trying to get a better look at the shadow.
A face suddenly appeared and Holmes felt his breath turn to ice in his lungs. "Watson."
The face of John Watson looked blankly towards him, not seeing him.
"Watson, are you all right? What's happening?" The fear in his own voice surprised him.
Watson did not answer. He merely raised a hand and pointed at Holmes. His eyes looked through the man he was pointing at and his cheeks turned up in something resembling a smile. But it was not a smile. Nor was it a leer. It was something completely without emotion that was twisting his face, this way and that. It was something inside of him that appeared to be controlling him.
"Watson."
"Sherlock Holmes." The finger appeared to glow with an unearthly light. "Sherlock Holmes."
He suddenly felt the pain erupting in his chest as the glow from the finger appeared to transform into a beam of light that struck him with enough force to lift him off of his feet. And he was floating in agony, feeling the pain in his chest grow ever larger.
And Watson began to laugh.
"Holmes."
The words were Watson's and they went with his voice. But they were not spoken by the Watson in front of him.
"Holmes."
The voice was more urgent now. He closed his eyes against it, feeling that somehow it had an evil intention.
"For God's sake, Holmes, if you can hear me, you must open your eyes."
Slowly, against his better judgment, Sherlock Holmes opened his eyes. He squinted in what appeared to be a bright light; he could still see the beam of light that Watson had shot into his chest. But no.
His eyes began to adjust to the light of the room. As they did so, they began to focus on a face. After a moment, the face registered in his memory banks and he relaxed his aching muscles.
"Watson," he whispered. It was all he could manage, but it was enough.