Castle met Beckett and Ryan at the entrance to the building. It did not escape Beckett's notice that Castle was carrying a tray with three cups of coffee as opposed to their customary pair. Castle handed her a vanilla latte, then handed Ryan a cup of black coffee without ceremony.

Ryan, though, heard Castle's unspoken communication. Alexis called me. How's it going?

Better than yesterday, not that that's saying much. Ryan replied with a slight shrug. Thanks, though.

"Esposito and Lanie are already upstairs," Castle told the pair. "They'll fill you in when we get up there."

The elevator ride to the third floor was blessedly quick. As the doors opened, Beckett noticed a smell that was all too familiar. She tugged on her partner's arm, pulling him aside. "Castle, do you smell that?"

It briefly crossed Castle's mind that he might never be able to answer that question in the affirmative again. "What do you smell, Beckett?"

"Burning sulfur. The same smell I woke up to in your apartment on Friday."

Castle took note of Beckett's observations as Esposito met them at the door. "Okay, our victims are Gloria Cho and her daughter Jessica." As Beckett and Ryan walked the living room of the apartment as best they could, Esposito continued his summary. "The apartment is registered to a David Cho, probably the husband. He's nowhere to be found. There's also a son, neighbors told me his name is Matthew. He apparently witnessed what happened to his mom and sister."

Beckett noticed that the kids' bedroom had been cordoned off. "Has someone taken his statement?"

"Uh," Esposito hesitated, "not exactly. According to the uniforms, Matthew's been locked away for our protection. Bellvue's been called."

Standing in the doorframe, Castle turned to Esposito, confused. "Why?"

Esposito could only shrug. "They wouldn't tell me. But they were both freaked out by even the mention of the kid's name."

Beckett turned her attention to the medical examiner, who had been quietly attending to the two bodies as her boyfriend updated the group. The detective knelt down and asked her friend, "So Lanie, what do we got?"

"This one's a doozy. Mom had her neck broken, obviously." Lanie motioned to the adult's body which had head and torso going in opposite directions. "But, the daughter died from blood loss. Someone or something ripped out a good chunk of her neck with its teeth."

The damage to the daughter's body was apparently severe enough that someone had requested a sheet, so Lanie had to kneel down and lift up the sheet to show Beckett the extent of the damage. Standing behind Beckett, Ryan and Castle recoiled from the gruesomeness of what they were seeing. "Whoa," commented Castle, "no wonder the kid went crazy. To see your sister like that..."

"Let us know what you get off the bite marks?" asked Beckett. Lanie nodded in agreement.

The team moved on to the master bedroom. "Wow," marveled Castle, "guess we know how the killer got in..."

"From the third floor?" asked Esposito. "The killer climbed up the side of the building, planted explosives, and blew this giant hole in the wall *just* to avoid going in the front door?"

"I don't think our killer planted explosives," Beckett mused idly. "Does this look familiar to anyone else?" Ryan nodded.

This caused Esposito to take a second look at the scene around him. With a gasp, he made the connection the others had made before him. "The window at the loft looked just like this..." he whispered. The others nodded with a solemn level of respect.

Beckett turned to her junior detectives, hoping her meaning was clear. "Esposito, any 'thoughts'?"

Esposito shook his head. "Sorry, boss. I got nothin'."

Beckett left the master bedroom and crossed the living room quickly. Her attention was totally focused on the locked room and the witness that was behind its door. She asked the two men guarding the door, "I'd like to see what state the witness is in, maybe see if I can talk to him?"

To her surprise, the uniforms vigorously shook their heads. The fear on their faces was evident. One of the men warned Beckett, "Detective, I'm sorry, but that kid's like a wild dog in there. He even tried to bite two of the other men. I can't let you go in there."

Beckett left the two uniforms and turned back to Ryan. "Considering what we saw in the other room," she told him, "I'm wondering if we can find out what the kid saw through...unconventional methods?"

"Because the kid can't talk?" replied Ryan. Beckett nodded, and Ryan understood her meaning immediately. Trying to recall everything he could from the Hamptons, Ryan crossed the room to talk to the uniforms, hoping that peace was radiating from every pore of his being.

Sure enough, the fear seemed to ease off the two men before Ryan got within five feet of them. Ryan couldn't help but smile a little at the result. He could swear he even heard a chuckle from Lanie behind him as she continued her work with the bodies.

"Gentlemen," Ryan quietly asked the uniforms, "are you *sure* we can't get in there?"

The two men looked at each other, then at the door they were guarding. With their state of panic gone, they seemed to be more willing to reconsider the idea. Nevertheless, they were still extremely hesitant. "Detective..."

"I'm sure that Detective Beckett is willing to take full responsibility if anything should happen to me." Ryan interjected.

When Beckett nodded her consent behind Ryan, the two uniforms relented. One of the men opened the door with a sigh of resignation. "Your funeral, detective."

Ryan stood in the doorway and looked at the boy. The uniforms hadn't been far off in their description of Matthew Cho's behavior. His hair wild from lack of grooming, the boy had jumped up on his bed and was crouched in a corner. Matthew was panting, drooling and snarling in a way that reinforced the wild dog description. The detective crossed the room in as submissive a posture he could think of, focusing as much on radiating peace as he possibly could.

Matthew never moved; he simply stared wild-eyed at Ryan. Ryan reached out with his mind in an attempt to communicate. Surprised at his results, Ryan called for backup. "Beckett! Esposito! Can you come in here, please?"

Beckett entered the room first. Quietly, she asked, "Ryan? What's going on? What'd he tell you?"

As Ryan watched his partner enter the room, he quietly told both of the detectives, "It's not what he told me, it's what he didn't tell me. Guys, I can't get in. I can't really explain it, but there's something blocking me. I can't reach him."

"And it's not-?" asked Esposito.

I can get through to you guys just fine, replied Ryan in his partner's mind. "But with him, it's like I'm running into a wall."

Esposito noticed that while the boy was definitely not well, he was also not as feral as the uniforms had said he was...a change that he knew he could only credit to his partner. "While you've got him calmed down," asked Esposito, "mind if I take a crack at it?"

Ryan moved slightly to his left to allow Esposito access to their witness while still keeping Matthew calm. It took only the briefest of touches before a visibly shaken Esposito declared, "Okay, I got what we need. Let's let the kid get some help."

"Are you sure-?" asked Beckett.

"Trust me," the younger detective replied, "that is *not* an experience I care to repeat."

"In that case," Beckett concluded, watching her friend with concern, "let's go back to the precinct, grab a conference room and see what we have."

The two uniformed officers watched their colleagues leave the bedroom in complete bewilderment. Officer Brian McMurphy took his hand away from his radio for the first time since the team of detectives had entered the room to take a look at their 'witness'.

It floored the veteran officer to realize that the kid had not only seemed to have calmed down, but that apparently the detectives were actually able to get a usable statement from the boy. Turning to his partner, he asked, "Hey Jerry?"

"Yeah Murph?"

"How d'you think they got anything outta the kid?"

Jerry shrugged. "Beats the hell outta me, Murph. You think the kid's better?"

"No clue," Brian acknowledged. "Should we check?"

"Might as well."

Cautiously, Brian opened the door a crack, just enough to make eye contact with the boy...then slammed the door shut when the kid crossed the room in an instant and attacked him. Brian let his heart rate return to something approaching normal, thanking all his lucky stars that he had gotten that door closed in time. How the hell did they get anything out of *that*?

After over twenty years on the force, Brian had learned long ago that sometimes there were questions you were better off not knowing the answer to.

This, Brian quickly decided, was one of those questions.

Seeing Castle, Beckett, Ryan and Esposito sitting around the conference table was nothing unusual to the those in homicide. If those other detectives had been able to listen to the conversation the four were having, though, they probably would have been stunned to hear a conversation that was anything but usual. "So, Esposito, what did you see?" asked Beckett.

"Apparently, we weren't the only one to have a ball of lightning crash through the window on Thursday night."

"We got that from the evidence in the master bedroom," commented Beckett, "but none of us ended up with a broken neck."

"The difference," Esposito countered, "is that someone did come into the apartment riding this particular bolt of lightning."

That was news to everyone. "Can you identify this guy? Enough for us to get an artist's sketch?" asked Ryan.

Esposito rolled his eyes at his partner's questions. "If you can come up with a good excuse for *me* to be the one to give a description to the artist and have it not get back to *Gates*, I'll go. But I doubt it would do any good anyway."

"Why not?" asked Castle.

"This guy's a wizard, Castle, like you. Although apparently he's been issued the uniform: grey robe, long staff with a silver dragon on top. David Cho was the first one to investigate the broken window, which was his mistake. The wizard stabbed him with his staff. Trouble was, the guy didn't die-he kinda...changed."

"Changed? How?" asked Ryan.

"Like a version of that kid on steroids. The kids found him first. Matthew got away, but the girl...God...let's just say Cho was the cause for what we saw. He *ate* her."

Everyone in the room shuddered, not wanting to think about dying in that kind of terrible way. Beckett asked, "And the mother? Did he snap her neck?"

Esposito nodded. "The wizard had a weird reaction to it, though...like he was mad at himself for what Cho did. The wizard found Matthew himself and stabbed him, I guess hoping the kid would give him the response he was looking for."

"Did he?" asked Castle.

"Well, you saw the kid. Apparently after Matthew changed he ran into that bedroom. When the wizard tried to coax the kid to come out, Matthew tried to him. This ticked the wizard off enough that he just grabbed Cho and left. That's it."

"So our perp is a wizard who used a spell to force a guy to kill his wife and...eat his daughter," Beckett summarized. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. The frustration with their current situation was evident on her face. "Anyone else getting a headache?"

Three hands went up in sympathy. Beckett continued, "This guy clearly wants something from his victims, otherwise he would have just killed Cho instead of turning him into...whatever he turned him into. But what?"

Ryan spoke so quietly only Beckett could hear him. "A zombie..."

"A zombie?" Beckett repeated, the tone of her voice clearly betraying her skepticism. She started to automatically state that there was no such thing as zombies...then remembered the circumstances of her audience and stopped herself.

"Think about it. The wizard had control over him as they left. He seemingly had no mental capacities except for pure rage. And he did eat flesh..." Ryan looked nauseated at the thought.

Beckett asked, "The why was he mad at himself when Cho attacked? If the wizard was looking for a slaughterfest, it would seem he got what he wanted..."

"But that wasn't what he wanted," Castle chimed in, the connections being made in his mind even as he spoke. When he noticed how he had the group's attention, Castle explained, "out of four people, he got one slave, one 'reject' and two corpses. If he's trying to create a zombie army that's a lousy return on investment. David Cho wasn't just violent, he was *too* violent. He wanted slaves who would multiply themselves, not line the streets with corpses. At least, not yet."

"So we can assume he's going to regroup and strike again, probably attacking more people next time?" asked Esposito.

Beckett nodded. "That would be my guess. The question is, where would he go?" A call from dispatch ended their conversation when Beckett answered the phone. "Beckett...I see. Tell the uniforms on the scene to consider them extremely dangerous. They are carriers of an deadly virus and anyone who touches the subjects should follow bio weapon protocols. We're on our way." Once Beckett hung up the phone, she told her team, "a diner has just been attacked. One dead, seventeen missing..."

"And?" asked Ryan.

"And two people in the same condition as Matthew Cho."