A/N Yay, back to the angst!

Thanks to NinjaGirlRebecca, Motaku1235, AstheRavenflies, Harriate Slate-Res-Hari-Agnew, total-animal-lover, DuShuZi, and Guest

Disclaimer I don't own Sherlock or any associated characters, events, etc.

LXV. Horror

Close… I've got to be close.

John tries to hold his hand steady, disregarding the fact that the effort is entirely ineffective. His flashlight beam darts over the walls and ceiling of the dark warehouse, illuminating whirling vortexes of pale silver dust, which lays over the scattered tables and boxes like a thin carpet. He flicks it down to the metal floor to check that he's on the right trail. Sure enough, several unsteady, scuffed-up trails of footprints cut through the pale grey layer. The individual tracks aren't quite distinguishable—if Sherlock was here, he thinks with a tightening of his chest, he'd be able to read them like a map.

But Sherlock isn't here, and that's the point of it, that's why he's come in the first place. For a moment, his thoughts dart back, he recalls what brought him here—Sherlock's inexplicable absence at the flat, the forced fingernail marks cutting through the paint on the door… he closes his eyes for a moment, swallows and tries to school his thoughts back into some semblance of order.

He has to focus.

A crashing noise suddenly stirs the air, loud and fierce, and he freezes, his eyes stretching wide as his forefinger hovers over the flashlight's power button. Seconds whisk by—one, two, three, four—there's nothing.

"Sh—Sherlock…?" he whispers, the name scratching in his throat, forced into a nearly whispered lowness. The response is silence, and he curses himself for being stupid enough to speak aloud. He can't shake the feeling that there are eyes on him, their owners hidden somewhere in the dark shadows cloaking the high roof. After another half-minute or so of poised stillness, he begins to creep forward again, breathing softly through his lips and glancing around obsessively.

A quick look at the floor reveals it.

There's blood, seemingly everywhere—chillingly deep puzzles of vivid scarlet liquid, glinting in the flashlight beam and seeping over the metal ground, fragments of dust swimming in its surface. Splashes cut across the sides of the nearest boxes, and trails lace here and there across the floor, like the set of some horror movie. Nausea spins John's stomach, and he raises a hand over his nose and mouth, trying to hold back the fierce tears that suddenly attack the back of his eyes.

Oh, God, Sherlock… Sherlock… "Sherlock!" he cries out desperately, unable to hold himself back any longer. He's stumbling forward, slipping in the crimson puddles, the stench seeping into his sinuses and triggering his gag reflex with its hot, metallic sweetness. Where the hell are you? But there's nothing, and even as he cries out again and again, there's no response, not from Sherlock or any potential attackers. Just that horrible, oppressive silence, pounding in on him from all directions, cruel and unending. He can feel his throat clenching up now, and the next time he calls out the other's name, it comes out as a broken sob.

"Sherlock!"