Necessary Faith
By Alecto Perdita
Chapter 8 - Ships that pass in the night
Rating: R
Posted: May 6, 2012
Revised: August 13, 2012
"Mary! Where are you?"
There is only the sound of rushing water and crickets.
"Mary!"
He cast the light from his torch over the river's surface and curses loudly. They should have never split up. When was splitting up ever a good idea in horror movies? He then catches a glimpse of a crumpled body face-down in the water. The light catches on the muddy blond of the hair.
John's heart stutters and his breath hitches.
"Oh my god, Mary!"
He wades through three feet of water to reach her. Since it's early June, the river is still chilled. Mary's body remains limp and unresponsive as he drags her to shore. How long had she been in the water?
Was he too late?
"No!" John snarls and checks her pulse, but finds none. "Come on, Mary."
He lays her out on the ground, pushing back the folds of her jacket and beginning chest compression. The two minutes in which he performs CPR feels more like an unforgiving eternity. Her lips are cold and wet, and all he can do is fear the worst. Suddenly, she jerks her head to the side and dispels almost half a liter of water from her lungs. John resists the urge to immediately sweep her body into his arms, allowing her a few needed moments to reorient herself and breathe.
Her eyes are bright, but the feverish quality in them is starting to fade.
John licks his lower lip before breaking the quiet, "You're not playing bait next time."
"Ugh, I'd be a terrible CO if I send my medic as bait." Her small attempt at humor does help to calm John's heartbeat. "Who's going to patch me up then?"
"The two of us hardly constitutes an army. Besides, I taught you first aid."
"Still not a doctor. Teacher, remember?"
He corrects her gently. She's so much more than that. "A hunter."
"Yeah..."
John finally reaches out to touch her, brushing wet strands out of her face. Her skin is warm underneath his fingertips, the woman herself so absolutely alive. He sighs a breath of relief and cradles her clammy hands, willing them to warm up quickly.
-x-x-x-
The first and only time they fall into bed together is on Mary's birthday in late August. They are both giddy after finding another pearl and drunk from the two bottles of wine they had celebrating over dinner. When they stumble into their darkened hotel room, neither goes for the lights. The curtains are drawn open, letting the moon's rays bath the room with ringlets of silvery light.
John presses a hand against her flushed cheek and she leans into the touch.
"John..."
He answers with a crushing kiss against her plump lips. Sliding his tongue across hers, he can taste the wine and cream sauce from dinner. She moans, digging her fingernails into his hips.
A small part of mind is still trying to reason with the rest. But the voice is quickly drowned out by the rush of blood in his ears when she draws one of his hands under her skirt, pushing aside her panties and thrusting one of his fingers between the wet folds.
The world dissolves into flashes of sensation, shedding articles of clothing until skin is sliding against skin. His mouth never leaves hers, both of them drawing out and drinking in each other's groans. He brings her to orgasm with his fingers brushing against her inner walls as she works her own clit. She shudders, moans, and clenches around him; drawing him tighter against her.
He pulls away long enough to retrieve the condom from his wallet, sheaths himself, and sinks back between her spread legs. He moves without thinking about it.
It's not lovemaking, just a coupling borne of desperation.
He empties himself with a shout and feels nothing but numbness. She makes no protest when he immediately rolls off her onto his back. Both of them are waiting for their hearts to slow and their breaths to steady.
Mary is the one to voice what they're both thinking, "We shouldn't have done that."
John presses the heel of his hands into his eyes, savoring the brief flare of pain and self-loathing. Anything's better than the utter emptiness tearing his soul apart.
"No, we shouldn't have."
Because it's not fair for either of them to make the other compete with the memory of some dead man.
John redresses and leaves the room without another word or glance. She doesn't try to stop him. His mind remains pleasantly blank while wandering the streets of Darlington for hours.
She's awake when he finally returns to the room at dawn. But he can deduce from her rumpled state and the bags under her eyes that she hasn't slept either. They say nothing to each other and go through their usual morning rituals. After an equally silent and terse breakfast at a corner cafe, they pack themselves into the car and head for Scotland.
John spends the rest of the day trying to wash the taste of regret out of his mouth.
-x-x-x-
Things go unexpectedly pear-shaped in Edinburgh. Everything has been looking up as it appears they are close to the end of their journey (and answers, Mary is starting to become so desperate for them) with only about two or three more pearls to find before they reconstruct the bracelet.
Mary and he are there for less than three days (an unusually high turn-over rate for them) before they narrow down where the next pearl is located. Unfortunately for them, it's in the hands of some rather vicious mobsters. More specifically, it's in the hands of a lycanthrope embedded into the organization as a courier.
They spend another three days watching the warehouse that's a known drop-off point for illegal goods. When he and Mary make their move, they're not the only ones. John quickly picks up on the fact that someone loud and conspicuous has broken in just minutes before them. It turns out to be a handy distraction, because all the mobsters are too busy pursuing the other to notice the two hunters.
They're making their way toward their target when an explosion outside rocks the entire warehouse. But John can tell it's a controlled explosion that's not actually meant to take down a building.
Shouting coming from the other end of the building sends them both diving behind the nearest cover.
"Find him now! Don't let him get away!" someone orders.
John rearranges his grip on his Browning and Mary mirrors his action with her revolver. Both of their guns are both loaded with silver-cast hollow point bullets, nasty enough for any human and instantly fatal to skinwalkers and werewolves alike.
Skinwalkers generally aren't nice creatures, probably even less so if they liked smuggling for the mafia.
A second detonation takes place in the southwest direction. The mobsters previously occupied with sweeping the warehouse for their intruder storm off like a stampede of elephants. John listens as several men panic loudly about a weapon cache being hit. Then there is blissful silence when they're gone.
He and Mary exchange relieved grins.
More footsteps cutting across the floor drains both of their expressions. John stills his body and listens. It's just one man moving swiftly and with purpose around the stacked boxes. It could be one of the mobsters, but not likely. More likely it was the intruder setting off the bombs. He and Mary should really take this chance to track down the pearl.
He peers around the shelf, catching a glimpse of a flying coat tail. His heart skips a beat.
It's not so much his appearance (not that John could see the details from that distance and lightning), but the way the dark stranger moves with an all-too-familiar gait. John can't help but stare at the way the figure presses his lanky frame against each row of boxes . He knows in what way the man's arms will swing and how his head will peer around corners to catch a glimpse of possible threats. John has seen it a million times before against the backdrop of London. He rises to his feet and calls urgently, "Sherlock."
Mary's hand clamps around him like a vice grip. "John, what are you doing?"
His mind is racing when he turns and looks down at her. "It's Sherlock, I think I see Sherlock."
"That's mad!"
"Is it? We both hunt things, unbelievable things."
Before he can protest further, the tremors from a third explosion rocks them. Mary tightens her grip.
"We have to move now. The police will be here soon. If the pearl and our clue get taken in as evidence, we'll have missed our chance." She's begging now.
Or worse, they could be arrested.
When John looks back, the dark stranger is nowhere in sight. He shakes his head to clear it and follows Mary out of the storeroom.
They easily find the skinwalker still in human form, who is busy shoveling trinkets and stolen merchandise into a rolling suitcase.
"Leaving already?"
John catches the skinwalker unaware, who barely manages to snarl before the butt of John's gun robs him of consciousness. He binds the man's arms and legs, while Mary pats him down. She crowed triumphantly when she digs a rumpled envelope addressed to her. John tosses the prone body into a nearby utility closet. They won't have time to do more.
Sirens are closing in when they exit the building. They turn and run the other way, racing past burnt wreckage from the explosions. When they slip through the gap in the chain-link fence and dash toward Mary's car, his mind wanders back to the other intruder he saw. He pauses with one foot inside the car as Mary scrambles to start up the engine. His body is tense like a drawn bowstring, thrumming with nervous energy and the magnetism pulling him back in the direction that they came.
He wants to go see. He needs to double back and make sure he isn't losing his mind!
"John!" Mary's strong grip closes around his limp wrist and tugs. "Get in the car now!"
As they drive away, John's heart continues to hammer against his ribcage with a steady beat: Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock...
-x-x-x-
The arrests are splashed over the front page of every major Scottish newspaper the next day. His and Mary's break-in into the compound had apparently coincided with the largest raid and take-down of an organized crime ring in Scotland. Not only had all the illegal goods and weapons been confiscated by the police, but several major crime bosses were arrested at an Edinburgh pub that was long thought to be a front for the criminal organization. The list of charges is even more impressive: conspiracy to assassinate government officials, several degrees of murder and manslaughter, arms dealing, trafficking Class A drugs, money laundering, and so much more...
John mentally gives the Scottish police force a hearty pat on their collective back. He can't even begin to imagine the months and years they took to plan and gather evidence of this magnitude. Especially since not every police force is so lucky to have a brilliant consulting detective like Sherlock Holmes.
He frowns, almost mad at himself for thinking of Sherlock at this moment. He has managed to brush off yesterday's encounter, even before Mary tried to sit him down and convince him otherwise. He knows who he saw wasn't Sherlock. Though not a hallucination per say, Sherlock Holmes had not been in that warehouse with them. It was some other man, some law enforcement official working the raid or maybe someone working undercover. It was all in John's mind—giddy and high on adrenaline (being the junkie that he is), tricks of light, visceral reactions to the explosions (Afghanistan, IEDs, Moriarty's mad bombs, a vest of Semtex), and still (stupidly and unrepentant about) wishing that Sherlock still lives (rise from the ashes like a phoenix, still waiting for a miracle befitting of a Christ figure).
But it couldn't have been Sherlock—because Sherlock is dead and if his best friend isn't actually dead...
John shakes his head, unwilling to fully consider the ramification of what that would mean. Mary projects a worried glance over the top of her newspaper. In hopes of easing her concern, he forces a smile. Forcing himself to not contemplate the front-page news of the day, he quickly turns over to the next page of the newspaper in search of strange deaths and unexplained disappearances instead.
Ordinary crimes, after all, are not really his area anymore.
Sorry, a shorter chapter this time, but still eventful.
Oh John, poor John. You were so close. That really was Sherlock... Their paths cross and they barely even know it. I admit, this is a bit cruel on my part.
Thank you for everyone for reading, reviewing, favoriting, and alerting!