First off, sorry for giving you guys a lot of rapid-fire chapters and then going silent for half a year. I'm just really overwhelmed by everything, my life is in shambles, and I have a lot of priority slots to fill before I can find time to write for this story. I'd have really liked to keep up the pace I had going back in December but alas, I couldn't cut it. Can't really make promises as for the next chapter either, but you know what, I will anyway: it will not be six months. (It really ought to be far less, but I won't include that bit in the promise, just in case.) In any case, hopefully you find this chapter worth waiting for.

Second off, as you may have guessed, I'm taking some small liberties with Santa Barbarian geography. I scouted locations on Google Maps and eventually decided to just insert this stretch of land that doesn't actually exist. It's by the seaside, in an area that looks similar to how it does just west of the Mesa Lane Steps, if anybody wants to check that out to better visualize this.

Third, it totally snuck up on me, but there are probably going to be only two or three chapters after this one. We are nearing the end of a very long journey.

And fourth, since the last chapter this story hit (and exceeded!) seventy favorites. Now I don't know why, but I have this sense that that's a significant milestone, and I am very happy to have reached it. So, a very special thank you to you seventy-plus. It really means a lot.


Henry huffs and puffs at the back of the group, very, very much over being so physically limited. Each step pains him but he pushes that pain down into the deepest pit in his arsenal. It's never mattered more.

Finding the way downstairs is a tricky business. There's no direct path, or if there is, they don't stumble across it in their mad dash. If Henry were at his best right now, he'd be the one picking directions. But it's all he can do just to keep up.

He can't stop thinking about the man they've just left behind, bleeding on the floor. The man who looked just like his son. And he knows that that man doesn't even merit further thought, that he's the same person who filled Henry with such doubt and fear earlier today, who tested his trust in Lassiter and very nearly killed Juliet…

…But he looked just like Shawn.

He almost barrels straight into Juliet as the entire group seems to have stopped, yet again, trying to discern which path to take. They're standing at a T in the long hallway. Henry's eyes dart back and forth as he surveys the scene, and, seeing a bit of natural light glowing from below at the end of the longer branch, giving away the presence of a stairwell heading downward, he starts in that direction, saying only, "This way."

Gus quickly runs ahead, followed more slowly by Sebastian, but Juliet just stands in place for a long moment, hands on her knees as she bends over and tries to catch her breath. She's white as a sheet, and Henry is getting increasingly worried about her. Under any other circumstance, if they were trying to save anyone else, he'd say they should both hang back, that they'll hinder more than help, and they should just try to stay safe and look after each other. But his logical brain isn't going to win out when it's Shawn who's on the line. And even if he did make such a proposal, Juliet would never bite.

So he just silently offers his arm as a means of support, and she accepts it without question.

They're halfway down the hall when a shadow looms in the faint glow of sunlight coming from below, and Henry instinctively whisper-shouts, "Stop!" Gus and Sebastian skid to a halt, looking back at him, eyes wide with alarm, but they quickly pick up on the approach of another party when the sound of rapid footsteps reaches all their ears. Henry, for his part, can only stare in trepidation at the top of the stairwell, trying to quash the hope that it might be Shawn.

The person who presently appears, running like the devil and skidding to a surprised stop upon seeing that he is not alone, is not Shawn, but he is familiar to them.

"Thank God," Juliet gasps, and they all run ahead to meet Lassiter, who looks equal parts relieved and afraid. Now that they're all together again, Henry takes a moment to survey the group. He knew he and Juliet were compromised, but his eyes linger also on Sebastian, who looks like he was very much in need of this respite. He's leaning his whole body against the wall, and his eyes are turned outward but his breathing is extremely labored.

On the whole, they're in pretty terrible shape.

"What's going on here?" Lassiter demands. "Where's Shawn?"

"Wasn't Shawn," Juliet responds succinctly.

Lassiter, perhaps predictably, looks baffled. "But—"

"It was the same guy who posed as you earlier," Henry snaps, patience running thin.

Lassiter blinks, processing this, but after a split second and with a small shake of his head seems to decide that the processing will take too long. He glances at his watch. "We have nine and a half minutes."

Until what? some voice in Henry's head asks futilely for the nth time, but he pushes it away.

"Guster, my gun," Lassiter says swiftly, holding out his hand, and Gus compliantly hands the weapon over. Lassiter looks down, cocking it, and as he does, a look of slow realization comes over his face, and he says, "If that wasn't really him, then he's downstairs."

Henry doesn't care what he's basing this on. "That's where we're going," he says, and a single step forward on his part prompts everyone around him to start back in the direction Lassiter came from.

They run, many of them stumbling and falling behind, following Lassiter's lead. At one point they skid past a spot of blood on the floor across from the young woman they saw earlier, unconscious and handcuffed to a door. Henry barely registers it and it doesn't matter anyway.

They quickly descend a nearby stairwell, and after that point, Lassiter seems less sure of where to go. Fortunately, another set of stairs leading down isn't too far off, and they come into what certainly appears to be the lowest level of the house—very spacious, with wide glass doors leading out to a patio, and various smaller doors along the walls. Lassiter immediately heads towards the nearest one and starts down the line, with Juliet and Sebastian following.

Gus, knowing better, hangs back, just watching Henry, who performs a quick scan of the area, and locates the one door, in the opposite direction, that hangs ever so slightly ajar.

Gus dashes ahead of him as soon as it's clear which door Henry's zeroed in on, but Henry's not too far behind when Gus flings the door open and turns on the light.

In the middle of the room stands a low table, anchored down with screws into the floor, and lain supine across that table with his head towards the door, bound firmly to it, is Shawn.

"He's in here but the Master isn't, go!" Henry shouts behind them as they circle around quickly to his side. His eyes are closed as if in sleep, his lips parted slightly, and for some damn reason he's got nothing on but his boxers—wait, his clothes, that fake Shawn was wearing his clothes, this is all so sick—showing the majority of his deathly pale skin. A couple pieces of blue masking tape dangle by their corners from his right arm, and from a spot between them, a single thick rivulet of blood runs down the side of the arm to drip to the floor, accumulating in a small puddle at the base of the table. But worse than any of this is his complete and utter lack of movement.

"Oh God," Gus chokes out, but he lunges forward in front of Henry and claps his hands down over the source of the bleeding.

"I can't do anything about this," Sebastian says, speaking decisively even as he seems frozen in place, staring at Shawn with wide eyes. "He just needs blood. I might be able to put it back in him if it's still sterile but I need to have it. Don't leave him." And with another glance at Shawn and one final shudder, he turns and vanishes after the detectives.

Henry immediately pushes two fingers into his son's neck. For several long seconds he can find nothing, and he is too blank to properly register what this implies, but finally he locates the faintest pulse he's ever felt.

"I've got a pulse," he manages. "Weak one, but it's there."

Gus's knees buckle slightly. "Thank God. Oh, thank God."

"Gus, we're losing him. He's hanging on for now, but he won't for much longer."

Gus nods emphatically, and looks down at himself for a split second before releasing Shawn's arm to tear off his button-down. He's got a tight grey undershirt on underneath it, but the collared shirt is already ruined by the blood. He quickly gets to tying it around Shawn's arm, as Henry pulls out Sebastian's knife and begins cutting ropes.

There are a lot. It's going to take a few minutes.

Gus finishes securing his shirt around Shawn's arm and begins attempting to untie some of the ropes, so Henry moves to the zip ties. All the while Shawn doesn't stir, and the rise and fall of his chest is barely detectable. He looks dead.

But so did Juliet, less than an hour ago.

"Hang on, Shawn," Henry orders, voice cracking. "We've got you."


It kills Juliet to keep running without even stopping to see Shawn. Absolutely kills her. But the urgency in Henry's voice helped to spur her to action, and he's right—there is no time for useless redundancies like her presence. The man who caused all this is still out there. Still very close. They can't let him get away.

Sebastian seems to be in almost as terrible a state as she is. She can only assume that fixing Henry to the furthest extent he was able left him depleted of all energy. That coupled with his civilian status would normally be cause enough to leave him behind. But she can't bring herself to send him away. Not with all he says he can do.

When he joins her and Lassiter, she almost snaps at him to go back and help Shawn, but before she can say anything he pants, "I need to have his blood." And she doesn't question him. He'd know better than she would.

Carlton throws open the glass door leading to the patio, and they spill out on either side of him. Juliet's gaze sweeps the area, but Carlton is immediately throwing his arm out, hissing, "Shhh!"

His wrist is right in front of Juliet's face. The number his watch bears is low enough to stop her heart.

Neither she nor Sebastian makes a sound. And in an instant, through the air the nearby sound of a car engine comes to them.

They break immediately into a run, with Lassiter leading and Sebastian and Juliet struggling to follow, in that order. Very quickly a red Toyota sitting in the driveway facing towards the road comes into their view as they circle the house. The driver's side door is open. A figure is yanking something out from the passenger's side, and without hesitation turns to sprint into the trees just a few yards down a gentle incline.

"Freeze!" Carlton shouts, taking aim towards the figure, but it does not stop. He lets off one shot before the person vanishes into the trees.

There's nothing left to do but run.

Juliet's head is spinning and she's breathing like she's just run several miles. It's a wonder she hasn't keeled over yet, and she's sure she will before the day is out, but she just has to put off that moment for as long as possible.

The underbrush is not forgiving, whipping against their faces and scratching up their ankles. At some point Sebastian falls flat on his face over some brambles, and she knows she shouldn't leave him, but she shouldn't leave Carlton either. So she stumbles ahead of Sebastian, leaving him to pick himself up.

They're headed right towards the ocean. The smell of salt fills her nose and the sea breeze ruffles her hair. She doesn't know what this man's game is. She doesn't know what they're going to find when they corner him. She doesn't know what they're going to find when they get back to Shawn. And she is terrified.

They break suddenly out of the trees, stumbling into a small open area between the treeline and a sheer cliff, beyond which stretches endlessly the open ocean. The ground gradually dips closer to sea level and becomes more and more rocky, the terrain more and more dangerous. And standing in the middle of the rapidly receding grass is a man.

He's unremarkable-looking, really. His dress is business casual; he appears to be some form of mixed race, probably predominantly Indian or somewhere in the Middle East; and his dark hair is gelled and styled meticulously.

Most notable is the object he's carrying: a large red and white cooler. And Juliet has a pretty good guess of what's inside.

"Detectives Lassiter and O'Hara," the man says, smiling calmly, resting most of his weight on one leg, the picture of casualness. "What an absolute pleasure it is to finally meet you face to face."

Juliet takes aim, but her gun goes flying out of her hand and sails over the man's head and out of sight. She doesn't even have time to gape in astonishment, let alone try to figure out how that happened, before Carlton shouts in pain next to her as a crack splits the air and his gun flies right after hers, and both the weapons they had between them are lost to the sea.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" cries the man before them, not sounding very sorry at all. "Was that too hard? Did I break your hand?" He shrugs. "This ability is very new to me, and very strong; I'm still testing the waters. Not to worry, though; I'll figure it out."

Twigs snap behind them, and Sebastian appears between them, heralded by his own desperate wheezing. Juliet dares to glance at him. He's covered in scratches and looks ready to fall over any moment, but his gaze latches immediately on the man before them and he demands, voice hard and cold as stone, "Give me that blood."

As the man speaks, he takes a few rapid strides in Carlton's direction. "Oh, Mr. Randolf, I was so very much hoping you'd be here and I'm so glad you are!" Out of nowhere, he withdraws a gun of his own and points it directly at Carlton's forehead, still staring at Sebastian. "This is the same firearm that killed your father. Come with me before even more people die on your account."

Juliet sees Sebastian freeze up before her eyes. And she curses silently, because it was clearly exactly the thing to say to overwhelm him nearly to the point of mental shutdown. And it is overwhelmingly likely that that was very intentional and carefully calculated.

Carlton's gripping his right hand with his left tightly, and carefully refraining from excessive movement given the gun that's trained on him, but he ventures to say, "You killed his father?"

"In fact, I did not," the man replies. "Mr. Spencer didn't tell you? I'm certain that he found out. Oh yes, Mr. Randolf, he knew exactly what happened to your family. A sad story, really. Oh, but I did tell you your family was cursed. Although it was no voodoo that brought that curse about, but rather you. Your mere existence."

Sebastian is shaking violently now, and Juliet winces as he falls to his knees, apparently simply unable to hold himself up any longer. "Y-you…" he manages through his rising tears.

The man scowls. "No, none of that, there's no time. Get up, now, and empty your pockets of all blades you have, or Detective Lassiter goes to join your family." For a moment, his gaze fixes on Juliet and Carlton. "And Mr. Spencer."

Juliet stops breathing.

She didn't even check to see if he was alive.

Sebastian climbs unsteadily but unhesitatingly to his feet, already reaching into his pockets, and Juliet watches with wide eyes, utter helplessness and despair washing over her like a wave.

They're out of cards to play.


It takes what feels like an eternity just to cut through all the zip ties keeping Shawn in place, let alone the thick ropes. Near the end of the process—okay, at regular intervals throughout, Henry checks his son's pulse. And it becomes increasingly harder to find. Shawn's life is calculably slipping away before his very eyes, and he finds his own heartbeat becoming faster and faster as Shawn's diminishes.

Finally, he is unable to locate a pulse at all. He checks his wrist, then his neck, then his wrist again. Nothing flutters even lightly beneath his fingertips. Shawn's skin is cold, almost clammy.

"Gus," he says, beginning to enter the throes of panic, "I can't find a pulse."

Immediately Gus seizes Shawn's other wrist, adjusts his fingers slightly, and holds absolutely still for the longest second of Henry's life. At its end, he looks up at Henry, and his expression says everything words don't need to.

"Oh, God! Come on, Shawn!" In desperation, he begins mouth-to-mouth. Seconds tick by with no response at all, supporting what Henry already knew to be the case—he's simply too weak. He needs blood. "Shawn! Shawn!" He swears all light and air is fleeing from the room. Shawn doesn't move. Gus shakes his shoulders to no avail, and Henry takes his face between his hands, finding his pallid skin cold to the touch and himself unable to elicit any kind of response. The world is going blurry around the edges. His son isn't moving.

"Shawn!"


Lassiter is just standing still as he can when his watch beeps, and he automatically glances down at his battered wrist to observe it. 00:00 flashes dimly at him.

Time's up.

He sees the look in O'Hara's eyes, and he knows they're thinking the same thing—nothing of particular note that they can see happened in the very instant the clock ran out.

So either they prevented whatever end Shawn was warning them about and didn't realize as they were doing it… or they have failed fundamentally in their mission and weren't even there to witness it.

The man's eyes fix on O'Hara. "You know, Detective O'Hara, you are very much supposed to be dead," he observes. "It seems Mr. Randolf here made use of his own abilities to prevent that." A soft smile plays at his lips. "You should know that Mr. Spencer died painfully, and in despair, believing that you were dead."

"I'll kill you," she promises, voice strangled.

"There is something very poetic in your presence here, however." He pauses, looking around at all three of them, apparently deep in thought.

And a knife flies from the depths of his jacket, cuts straight through the air, and embeds itself into O'Hara's side.

Lassiter hears himself scream. He's not sure it forms into words. He sees her fall, clutching the handle, and he snakes forward to catch her, forgetting completely about the gun locked on him, and she falls right into his arms and she's still awake, thank God she's still awake. He holds her upper body in his lap, hunched desperately over her, and she feels so small. The man's voice comes to him, clearly directed towards him but also almost introspectively musing, "Come now, it hit nothing major, and it's a very small blade. She could survive. Just stay with her—her life depends on you."

"Juliet," Lassiter whispers, trying to control his own emotions, but it's true, her eyes are still open, she's moving weakly but little more so than before, and maybe—maybe she can survive losing a little more blood…

He looks up. The man has put away his gun and is now holding Jaeger by the shirt and directing him along the cliff in a particular direction that suggests that somewhere nearby there's a safe path downward.

O'Hara feebly grasps his forearm, and he looks down at her again. "Go," she whispers.

Lassiter's trapped. He can't fight this man. He has powers Lassiter can't begin to understand. Lassiter has no weapon and at the very least a couple broken fingers. And his partner might be dying.

It's all perfectly planned.

"I can't," he admits softly, and they're not words he ever says, not even when they're true, but in this case… there is simply nothing else to be said.

There is nothing else to be done.

All at once, the warm ocean air enveloping them turns to something straight out of winter. The temperature drops by twenty degrees in the space of a few seconds. It's instinct that leads Lassiter to look up to search for the source of this incredibly sudden strangeness, even though there's no logical reason to be looking for something physical.

But he's been seeing things all day that transcend the boundaries of logic.

And this leaves them all behind.

From thin air a form coalesces slowly. Behind the man who is the cause of all this there forms a grey figure, entirely unclear at first, but inside a few seconds shoulders take shape, supporting a neck and a head, and a face, which becomes increasingly detailed, and chillingly recognizable. The short hair, flatter than it usually is—the eyes, now haunted, but carrying always that spark of strange brilliance behind them that anybody with eyes themselves could see—even the unwanted tattoo adorning the forehead—it's all there.

Lassiter can't move. It's like the entire world has frozen except for the gentle ebb and flow of the mist that comprises the figure, and the man who supposedly calls himself the Master, though at this point he too seems to have realized that something is deeply wrong. He ceases his retreat long enough to turn in sudden fright, releasing Jaeger's shirt collar in a rough twisting motion that sends him to the ground.

The ethereal form stares him in the eye for about one second before speaking aloud in Shawn's voice: "Get the hell away from my friends, you son of a bitch."

He doesn't make a move. Maybe he can't. But Jaeger does.

In a second moment of realization, the man whips back towards Jaeger, who's spent the precious few seconds he's had scrambling around on the ground. And in the same moment he turns back towards his next victim, Jaeger grasps a large branch lying on the rocks and plunges it upwards into the man's abdomen.

The look of absolute shock freezes on the man's face—eyes wide, mouth open, as he stares first at Jaeger and then down at the branch protruding from his stomach.

Jaeger snakes forward, grabbing the cooler of blood from the man's hand and hugging it towards his own chest, and thrusts his foot up into the man's chest in a mighty kick that sends him backward over the edge, crashing right through the image of Shawn and dispelling it into wisps of fog that soon vanish as completely as the man did.

And then they are both gone.