Thanks to everyone who reviewed/followed/favorited.
And also, as a response to last night's episode…CALLED IT! Only in this case, there is a daughter, not a son.
Spiders. Johanna could feel them scuttling around in her hair, on her neck, on her back. Their hairy little legs would catch on her skin, begging her attention. As Jo stared blankly at empty desk that she was stuck in front of, the spiders were almost a welcome distraction. Almost. At least they weren't real.
They were a sign. A sign that something evil had arrived in Sleepy Hollow. She'd learned long ago that spiders, black dogs, and the usual superstitions were real, but they didn't mean what the layman thought; they were all warnings.
Johanna resisted the urge to smack the phantom warnings away and shuffled in her seat, trying to get comfortable in the cold metal chair. She ran her tongue along her teeth and looked to the office that the two cops had invaded. At least Johanna assumed they were cops; the one looked more like a Revolutionary War enthusiast. They knew about the supernatural aspects of Alfred's death and what's stranger: they seemed to be genuine believers. It was a rare find in the humanity of today's world.
She watched as one of the phantom spiders crawled gently down her shoulder, its leg catching on the lace of her black top every now and then. The spider was black with white markings in the shape of a bow and arrow. Its beady little eyes seemed to stare up at her until one by one, the other spiders followed in suit. One spider lingered at the back of her neck, shifting its legs around before sinking its fangs into her neck.
"Shite!" Johanna gasped, smacking at the back of her neck as she jumped out of her chair. Her hand connected with the spider and it squished beneath her fingers. She pulled her hand away to look at its remains, but there was nothing there; her hand was clean.
"Are you alright, Miss?" The attractive detective sulking at his desk had looked up at her yelp and wore a concerned look on his face. His nameplate read 'Morales.'
"Quite." She threw in a small smile and rushed off to follow the spiders out of the police station and to her car. One of them had managed to squeeze its way into the passenger's seat of her black Audi and was resting atop the leather-bound bible she'd carried with her for over two centuries. "Of course it's the church." She said to herself as she put her car into gear. She glanced back down at the bible to see if she would get any other clues, but the spiders had disappeared. "It's always the bloody church."
Moments later, Johanna pulled up to what was formerly Reverend Knapp's church. The relatively modern church had been closed off as a crime scene, but there was an eerie quality about it. This place had known true evil. Her hand automatically went to the silver crucifix that Reverend Knapp had given her as a child.
Johanna approached the church, bible in hand, as she tore away the yellow crime scene tape on the outside of the building. There was a large, white portion of the door jamb that had been taped off as well. It mentioned something about 'trespassing' and 'jail time,' but Johanna ignored the rest. Jail time would be the least of her worries if the police officers were right about who had killed Reverend Knapp. Johanna ripped through the last of the barriers and found that the doors were locked.
"Right." Johanna walked back to her car and opened her trunk. The trunk was packed full of weapons (all unloaded) and tools that she would need on any of her excursions. Jo moved aside the velvet case full of knives, in search of a sledgehammer instead. She shut the trunk softly and went to confront the door again.
Jo kissed her bible and offered up a quick, silent prayer for desecrating one of God's houses. She set the bible on the steps below her and went to work. It only took three solid hits to the lock for her to be able to kick the doors open. Jo was setting down the sledgehammer on the steps and retrieving her bible when she heard a voice say seriously, "You're going to go to hell for that."
She raised an eyebrow at the comment and turned around, "I was under the impression that I was already there."
The owner of the voice couldn't be more than thirteen. He had dark hair and a thick scar across his forehead. "Not yet." He smiled sweetly and his eyes faded to black orbs.
Not a boy. Definitely not a boy.
Eyes wide, Johanna stumbled through the door, barely managing to grab the sledgehammer as she rushed inside and slammed the doors behind her. Back against the doors, Jo's eyes darted around the sanctuary, desperate for anything to keep the door shut. The demon posing as a child, an innocent. She could hear his soft footfalls as he approached the doors. He sniffed at it as Jo seized a large candelabrum from her left and managed to slam it through the handles of the doors. Hallowed ground: the only place that her magic was useless.
She was terrified. More than she'd been when she found out that Reverend Knapp had been murdered by the Headless Horseman. This was a true demon. A lesser demon, yes, but it was most definitely a demon. It couldn't cross over hallowed ground, but it could still torment and trick its victim.
Johanna searched the unfamiliar surroundings for any piece that she recognized. Reverend Knapp would have hidden it somewhere that only she would know. It, being a knife that could subdue demons. The Blade of St. Eligius couldn't kill demons, but it could make them a bit more compliant. She could only assume that was what the demon outside was looking for and what the phantom spiders had warned her against.
"Johanna Danversssss…" The demon-child purred from outside. "Johaaaaaaannnnnaaaaa."
She shivered involuntarily as she looked through the pews, slowly making her way up to the altar. It had been at least a decade since she'd come face to face with a demon. Moscow, 1999. That had been the last time she'd seen—
"Henry." She could feel the demon smiling through the door, "How is your husband? We've been dying to see him."
Johanna ripped the bowl of holy water that was inset into one of the pillars and doused herself in it; Better safe than sorry, considering that the demon didn't have to enter the church to cause her harm. Her eyes darted around the church, searching for any sign of the blade. Johanna approached the wall on which the story of Christ's crucifixion hung. The panels were made of painted plaster, simple but beautiful. Between them, hung a crucifix that was slightly longer than her bible. It was different than the others throughout the church. This one was made of metal. Jo yanked it right off of the wall taking a bit of the brick with it.
The demon outside continued to yell profanities. The walls were vibrating in response to the demon's presence. Dust floated down, coating Johanna like a ghost as the pews began to shake and overturn. The demon's powers decimated the altar at the front of the church, sending religious articles flying every which way. Johanna ducked just in time as a silver candlestick flew at her head and smashed into one of the plaster panels, shattering it.
There was so much noise that Johanna couldn't hear herself think. She squinted at the cold, silver crucifix, running her hand along the top. There was a tiny notch in the top, shaped like her crucifix. She smiled to herself, ignoring the chaos around her to appreciate the amount of craftsmanship that Reverend Knapp had put into altering the ancient blade for hiding. "Well done, Rev."
Johanna yanked the pendant from her neck and pushed the bottom of it into the notch of the larger crucifix as the doors of the church began to shake. The candelabrum that she'd used to bar the door went flying off with such force that it ended up sticking out of a brick wall. The doors flew open to reveal the demon-child smiling at the threshold. Just beyond him, Jo could see that the officers from the Sheriff's department had arrived. Lovely.
Jo twisted the pendant.
"Where did she go?" Abbie asked as she threw open the door to the Captain's office. Johanna Danvers was nowhere to be seen. Weird, seeing as she wanted their help so badly.
"It seems that Ms. Danvers had a more pressing matter to attend to." Ichabod said, hands behind his back as he followed Abbie out of the office.
"Ah ah!" The Captain stopped the two just before Abbie grabbed her coat, "You two also have a more pressing matter to attend to." Ichabod frowned at Captain Irving's imitation of him. At their blank looks, the Captain prodded, "The reason I called you in here this late? Gerry Mason. Ringing any bells?"
"Don't you think that anyone involved with our mission to stop-the-Horseman-and-or-prevent-the-apocalypse is more important?" Abbie asked, putting her coat back down onto her chair and crossing her arms
Morales chimed in. "What was that about a horseman?" Abbie hadn't even heard him approach.
"Nothing." Ichabod said with a smile. Morales glared. As Ichabod and Abbie went off to talk with Gerry Mason in holding, Morales was arguing with the Captain about why he should still have the case.
"Don't look so guilty Ms. Mills. It's not as if you snatched the case off of his desk." Ichabod said as they approached the holding cell. A young, red headed man sat with his head in his hands on the lone bench in the cell. He wore a Red Sox baseball jersey that was spattered with blood. Forensics wouldn't arrive until morning, so he'd have to sit in the filth until then.
"Mr. Mason?" Abbie said, staring him down, "What was so important that it couldn't wait until morning?"
"What?" Gerry sniffed pitifully and looked up. His eyes were rimmed with red from sobbing and a thin line of mucus hung from his nose. Gerry swiped at it with his hand as he stood. "Yeah." He offered them his hand. Abbie didn't even look at it, but Ichabod shook his head and folded his hands behind his back. "I didn't do it."
"You know how many times I've heard that one?" Abbie asked, turning to leave as a ploy, "Come on, Crane."
"Wait! Wait!" Gerry Mason clung to the bars like a monkey, "Please, wait! I swear to you that I didn't do it! I would never hurt my wife!"
"The evidence seems to disagree, Mr. Mason." Ichabod said, plucking the file from Abbie's hands and thumbing through it almost casually.
"Forensics found your skin underneath your wife's fingernails!" Abbie said loudly, getting in between the two men, "There is a traffic camera that places you at your home, dragging your wife's lifeless body out of the house and putting her in the goddamn trash!" Abbie took a breath as Ichabod put a calming hand on her shoulder, "I don't know why you called us here. There's nothing I can do to help you. And even if I could, I wouldn't." Abbie turned to her partner, "Let's go."
Upstairs, Morales glared from his desk. As a sign of goodwill, Abbie said loudly, "Well, that was a waste of time! You can keep the case, Morales! Crane and I have got enough problems to deal with." Ichabod barely managed to snatch his coffee off of the desk before Abbie dragged him out of the office.
"So where do you think she went?" Abbie asked Ichabod as she and Ichabod went to her car.
Ichabod took a sip of the coffee before joining Abbie in the car. "Ms. Danvers? I haven't the slightest idea."
"If you were completely distraught that you'd just lost a loved one, where would you go?" Abbie asked. As the words carelessly tumbled out of her mouth, she realized what she'd said. Ichabod was in that situation. He was stuck there every day that he was without Katrina. "Ichabod, I didn't mean to—"
"No, no. It's alright, Lieutenant." There it was again; the formalities were back. "I can understand her mindset because we are in a similar situation." Abbie watched as Ichabod closed his eyes, relaxing as he went through his thoughts.
Suddenly, there was a sharp RAP on the window. Both Ichabod and Abbie nearly jumped out of their seats at the sound. It was Morales. He motioned for Abbie to roll down the window. Once she did, he said, "There's some kind of disturbance being reported at Reverend Knapp's old church. Captain wants you two to check it out. I told him you're not uniforms, but—"
Abbie cut him off by holding up her hand, "We're on it."
"A child?" Ichabod asked, confused as they pulled up to the old Dutch church. "I thought that Detective Morales mentioned a 'disturbance?'" The small boy at the top of the steps of the church turned around as if he'd heard what Ichabod had said. He smiled. It would have been adorable if his eyes weren't completely black and strips of his flesh weren't rotting away.
"Not a child. Definitely not a child!" Abbie took her gun from the holster and Crane took his from the glove compartment before they both exited the car. "Hands in the air!" Abbie ordered aiming her gun at the creature.
It smiled a smile full of black rotting teeth. The teeth began to fall to the ground as Ichabod and Abbie watched; sharp, jagged teeth grew in their place. The remaining flesh tore away to reveal red and black skin. The form grew and grew until it was towering over Ichabod's height. "My God." Ichabod whispered, taking aim from behind the car.
The demon growled low and smiled again. "No God." Ichabod and Abbie fired repeatedly. Their bullets landed all over the demon, spraying blood and bits of skin everywhere, but it didn't seem to notice. It came closer in slow, measured steps.
Abbie called to Ichabod, "Something else is coming from inside!"
Abbie could only see the shadow at first. Johanna Danvers stepped into the moonlight holding a vicious looking dagger, poised to fight. "Oi! I'm over here! I'm the one you want!"
"It is not I that wants you, Johanna Danversssss." The demon hissed, stepping into the pile of its disregarded skin as it turned to focus on Johanna. "Moloch."
Moloch. The same demon that held Ichabod's wife hostage for the Horseman. The same demon that had ordered his death all those years ago.
"Oh yeah?" Johanna seemed unfazed by this. She even had the cheek to twirl the dagger. Abbie watched as Johanna continued to distract the demon with the blade. "Well, you can tell Moloch that he can go fuck himself." Johanna threw the dagger at the demon with a deadly precision. It lodged itself in the demon's throat, spouting blood. The demon howled in pain, like 10,000 nails on a chalkboard. It yanked the blade from its throat and threw it to the ground. The wound was smoking.
"St. Eligius sends his regards." Johanna spat on the demon as it writhed in pain before it disappeared in a mess of smoke that smelled like sulfur. Johanna retrieved the knife from the ground and pulled something from the hilt and put it into her pocket. The blade disappeared back into what now resembled a crucifix.
"Did you kill it?" Abbie asked, not able to stand the silence as they all stared at each other. She and Ichabod in awe, but Johanna's expression was more akin to amusement.
"No." She said simply, walking to her car and putting the crucifix carefully into a velvet case full of other deadly weapons. Before Johanna shut the trunk, Abbie was able to spot a morningstar, a broadsword, a rifle, and a set of sais. Johanna and her sister would be the best of friends, judging by their respective weapons collections. "I wounded it. Why are you here?"
"We received a call about a disturbance." Ichabod said simply.
"You received a call about a disturbance?" Johanna laughed, crossing her arms as she leaned on her trunk. "Do you always talk like you're two hundred years old?"
"I am two hundred years old." Johanna raised an eyebrow, not saying anything. Ichabod continued. "I know that you probably think that I am insane. Abbie thought the same when we first became acquainted—"
"So am I." Ichabod stopped dead at Johanna's words.
Abbie was sure that her jaw hit the floor at that moment. "You're two hundred years old?"
Johanna shrugged, "Give or take a few decades." After a moment, Johanna hopped off of her car and came closer, "What do you say we team up? I want revenge and you two obviously want something…"
"Miss Mills and I are destined to be Witnesses; we are to avert the apocalypse."
"Is this how he always talks?" Johanna asked Abbie incredulously.
Abbie gave a relieved smile, "Welcome to my life."
Feedback is welcome. Any questions or comments, leave them in the reviews and I will respond accordingly.
xoxo - Vivienne-Devereaux