"Hey Sherlock, John," I greeted, smiling.
"Morning Lucy," John replied. He pursed his lips and stuck his neck out a tiny bit, obviously phrasing a thought and asked, "What exactly happened here?"
"Oh. Dean was underestimating my level of preparedness and tried to convince me that this case was too dangerous for me to handle. I figured a demonstration was the best way to prove it."
"Ahh," John nodded. "I hope you didn't hurt the poor fellow."
"Don't worry. He's fine." I glanced back at Sam and Dean, who were both waiting to be introduced. "Oh introductions! Sorry. Sam," I gestured to the taller of the two hunters and then to his brother, "and Dean Winchester meet Sherlock Holmes and John Watson."
Dean raised his fingers in a hello, while Sam extended his hand out to the detective and his blogger. "Are you really the great detective Sherlock Holmes?"
"Obviously," answered Sherlock. "And you are Sam Winchester. Tell me Sam what do you hunt?"
"How could you-?" Sam was interrupted by Sherlock, who launched into his deduction speech.
"You have scars from knives and similar weapons. They could be from anything, but they span your entire body, and they aren't all from the same time. You can tell, because some are fainter than others. Therefore, the scars must be an occupational hazard. Your stance implies someone who is confident, but isn't an authority. You stay in less than optimal motel rooms most of the time, judging by how you keep rubbing the cramp in your neck" Sherlock pointed at Sam's hand, which was, indeed. massaging the back of his neck. "A traveler with scars, weapons as there is some remaining gunpowder on your fingers, and little money, I take it you must be hunting something. So what is it?"
"Wow," Sam swallowed nervously. He glanced back at Dean, who nodded in response to the question in Sam's eyes. Answering honestly, Sam watched Sherlock's expression closely. "We hunt ghosts, demons, werewolves, vampires- basically anything supernatural that's killing human beings for their own purposes."
"They don't exist," Sherlock replied instantly. "I haven't ever seen any proof of it."
"People like us destroy any reliable proof, so the general population doesn't start looking for them." Sam answered.
"Ghosts, demons, hell even djinn are hard enough for us to take care of, plus we know how this stuff works. Anyone else will get overwhelmed by them, so it's better to try and keep everyone in the dark as much as possible." Dean added in.
Sherlock shook his head, "John, I think you should check if either of these boys have concussions. Perhaps Lucy hit their heads harder than she thought." I rolled my eyes. I would do no such thing.
"Have you ever had an unsolved case?" Sam blurted out just as Sherlock was turning away. "A case where you knew, you knew, the victim was killed, but you couldn't find any way to prove it."
Sherlock's eyes darted to John's, roving his face for any sign of agreement. John looked up the ceiling, thinking for a moment, then returned Sherlock's gaze and nodded. The detective rounded on Sam, looking down at him (despite the fact that Sam was nearly a head taller than him). "Do you mean a suicide that most definitely was not a suicide."
"Yeah that could happen. Sometimes ghosts will kill people in an echo in the way they were killed."
"Can ghosts… hang people?" John asked addressing Sam, but looking at Sherlock.
"Yeah," Sam answered. "The ghost could tie the rope around the victim's neck, and make it looked like the victim did it."
"Ohh!" Sherlock was looking down at John, but his gaze had retreated to somewhere inside that brilliant mind. Neither John nor I were concerned by Sherlock's sudden absence, but both hunters were anxious.
"Is he okay?" Dean asked quickly, moving to see the detective's eyes more clearly. He noted that they weren't black, just a strange mixture or blue, green, and grey that seemed alien.
John shook his head fondly. "Sorry. He does that sometimes. He doesn't care if it's the middle of a conversation. If he needs to retrieve a fact from his mind palace, then he's going to do it. I'm usually the one stuck apologizing for his lack of social skills."
"So he's not possessed? This is normal?" Sam questioned.
"Pretty much," John nodded.
"I feel bad for the bastard that has to live with this guy," Dean added backing away from Sherlock. I held back a laugh at the look of disgust that Sam shot his brother.
"It's not easy I'll tell you that," John said scratching his ear. "He leaves body parts in the fridge and plays the violin at three o'clock in the bloody morning. I don't mind living with him too much, though. The cases are fun, and I like blogging about them."
"So are you two a thing?" Dean asked. I should be getting some type of award for holding in all of those screams and squeals. Of course John and Sherlock were a thing! They just… hadn't quite realized it yet.
"Um, no. No we aren't going out." John answered shifting from foot to foot. Sam caught the glare I was sending John's way and looked at me perplexed. I rolled my eyes, motioning to talk about it later.
"That's why there was no chair, John!" Sherlock exclaimed, catching us off guard. "I told him! I told Lestrade it was a murder. If the victim had hanged herself she'd need a chair or a box, something to push out from under her feet. There wasn't anything she could have used when we got the crime scene. There weren't even any fingerprints or disturbances in the dust on the ceiling beams. That must explain it! Why didn't I see it before? It had to be a ghost. Oh, it makes so much more sense," Sherlock's eyes radiated delight as he looked at all of us.
"No shit, Sherlock." Dean mocked. I burst into laughter. I had waiting for someone to say that. Sam chuckled too, and John smirked.
Sherlock didn't seem to care looking down at his phone, typing away with intense focus. Sam, once he stopped laughing, seemed relieved that the detective was taking him and his brother seriously. I was a bit surprised myself, but Sherlock did like new information. I could only imagine the number of hours of supernatural talk and experiments John will have to endure in the upcoming months. Meanwhile, John looked over his friend's shoulder to see what he was typing.
"No. NO! Sherlock I am not acting as ghost bait for your blooming experiment!"
"It's for science John. I have to know! I need to prove they exist!" Sherlock whined.
"No. Absolutely not."
I stifled another laugh, stepping into the conversation before it could elevate any further. "John, were you and Sherlock leaving? I wanted to see your findings, and these guys need to be updated on the murders. I think they could prove helpful."
"We were on our way to the diner across the street. I don't think Sherlock's consumed anything besides a cup of tea this morning, but we could spare another few minutes." John said easily.
Sherlock spun on his toe already half way down the hall. "You're all so slow. Hurry up. I have new theories to test!"
When the rest of us entered the morgue, Sherlock was already standing over the body.
"Put those on," he said gesturing to a box containing latex gloves. Everyone took a pair and approached the body. Ally Johnson had barely been a sixteen year old girl. Honestly, I was only a five years older than her. I easily could have been the lying on the table instead of her if I had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I grimaced a bit, but held back most of the other emotions rising up in my stomach.
"You said she died of a puncture wound of the chest, right?" Sam asked addressing me.
"Yeah, well, she died because her heart was ripped out. The puncture wound was just the indicator of that." I replied glancing at Sam. His hair really was cuter in season two before he grew it all out, I decided. I missed the fringe that he had in season one, but this wasn't too far from it. Plus he hadn't reached all the events that tore his heart to pieces to become the sad man I saw on the screen nowadays. It was a nice change.
"Right," Sam approached the corpse. "Are there any other wounds? Any sign of a struggle?"
"There's no sign of a struggle. The wound has a pretty clean entry and exit. If she were struggling it would have been a lot messier," Doctor Watson replied.
"Was there any sedative in the blood stream?" I asked Sherlock.
"None that I could find."
"What about sulfur?" Sam asked.
"In the blood stream? No. I would have noticed that." Sherlock circled around the body. "There's something I'm missing though. The wound- it doesn't look like a knife or any sort of claw."
Dean leaned in closer. I saw him make a face at the body, which made me feel slightly better. At least I wasn't the only one a bit squeamish around dead bodies. "It's not any wound I've seen before. It looks like someone stuck her threw with a power drill, but pattern the tissues ripped in doesn't match those of a power drill."
"What do you think, Lucy?" Sam asked.
"I- uhh- haven't looked that closely at it." I responded. Sam looked at me curiously his brown eyes going softer for a second.
"It's okay if the body freaks you out." He said, trying to judge my hesitance to approach the dead girl.
"I'm not freaked out by it. It just… smells bad." It was a weak argument, but I didn't care. It was better than admitting to some vulnerability. Snapping my gloves, I walked toward the body determinedly. I had only watched Sherlock and John examine the wound before. I had just stood off to the side, watching them work. I bent over the wound to see it more clearly. It went straight through to the girl's back and was sort of funnel shaped. The exit of the object out her back was fairly small, only an inch in diameter. The entry, however, was six or seven inches wide.
Looking closer at the entry portion of the wound I realized it didn't have much of a circular shape, as I had been imagining. Instead, it looked like the bite mark that a pair of scissors would make.
"Sherlock, do you see that?" I asked pointing at a line of flesh near where the heart would have been. It had more ripped up tissue than anywhere else in or around the wound.
"It's nice to see that not everyone is as idiotic as Anderson." He snapped immediately, eyes dancing. I took it as a compliment. Stepping closer he pointed to the line of tissue I had mentioned, "It looks like a second bite. If there had been teeth marks they'd be here and here." The detective gestured to a small space both above and below the wound. "However, there are not any teeth marks. Instead there's just a slightly deeper puncture of flesh from those two areas."
"So you think it is a bite mark, but the animal doesn't have teeth?"
"Or the animal has teeth further back in its mouth."
"That narrows down the range considerably," Dean noted sarcastically. I disagreed. The information did help us rule out most, if not all humanoid creatures as well as some nastier animal based ones.
I was beginning to step away from the body when something else caught my eye. I leaned in closer to the girl's left hand. There was a small, very precise cut in the shape of an 'N' on the pad of her thumb.
"The other victims had a letter marked on their body as well," Sherlock said noticing my gaze.
"When were you going to mention that?" I asked.
"Eventually," Sherlock said waving his hand.
"Does it spell out anything?" Sam asked leaning in closer to inspect the hand. I backed up so he would have more space. I moved to the side of the room where John and Dean where both leaning up against the wall. I took off the latex gloves and washed my hands (twice just in case) and joined them. I leaned beside Dean. I knew Sherlock would glare if I stood next to John. It was almost endearing how protective the detective was of his blogger, but he was an idiot to realize that I wasn't a threat.
"Not that we can tell. It just looks like a jumble of random letters." John answered, breaking my internal monologue.
"Do you remember them?"
"No, but I wrote them down." He took a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. John went to hand it to Sam, but he shook his head.
"My hands are covered in blood right now. I shouldn't touch anything clean at the moment. Hand it over to Lucy. I'll be there in a second." Sam went over to the corner of the room to dispose of his gloves, while Dr. Watson reached across Dean to hand me the sheet of paper.
I took it, but a quick glance at Dean stopped me. His face was tense and his eyes burned a hole in Sam's back. "Here," I said casually, poking one of his hands folded across his chest with the paper. "You should be the one holding this. My hands tend to shake when I'm trying to hold something still. I'll just look over your shoulder."
Dean looked at me surprised. I shrugged in response. I knew Dean was jealous that Sam picked me over him, and I couldn't have that. As promised I leaned my head over Dean's shoulder and he held out the paper so I could see.
" Y N"
As far as I could see, there were only seventeen letters. I pointed this out to John, and he nodded his head. "Sherlock said the same thing, but two of the bodies had no records of a letter being written anywhere."
"Idiots, there were no letters in the autopsy report? None?"
"None," John replied.
"Are these in chronological order?" Dean asked. I stared at him for a moment. That was going to be my next question.
"Umm," John's eyebrows lowered as he tried to remember, "I think so. Yes."
"Can you insert were the blank bodies were?" I asked.
"One moment," John pulled out a notebook from his pockets and started flipping through it. "Right. The first blank body was in 1794, landing it between the S and the Y. The second one," the pages of his notebook shuffled as he found the second blank, "is between the U and the N."
Dean dug in his pockets for a nonexistent pencil. I smiled a little and handed him one from my backpack. He took it, adding in the blanks to the series of letters.
" - - N"
"Does that mean anything to you?" He asked handing me back the pencil.
"It just looks like a mess of letters. Why even put in the effort to do that in the first place?"
"I don't know," it was nice to see that Dean and John looked just as confused as I was.
A sound like a growling underwater monster broke our locked attention on the paper. I heard the noise again, but felt a clench in my belly as well. I looked down at my stomach, feeling my cheeks go red. "Sorry. That was… me."
I heard Sam laughing as he walked across the room, gloves removed and hands cleaned. Dean smiled, though I wasn't sure if it was at Sam's laughter or the noises my stomach was capable of making. I'd guess the former honestly.
"Have you eaten at all today?" John questioned me. I could see his doctor side kicking in.
"I had some pie earlier." Technically, it was true, but I had forgone breakfast and lunch to continue reading.
"Dude, you barely ate half your slice. You were talking most of the time," Sam criticized. Dean didn't say anything, but the horrified look on his face told me that not finishing that slice of pie was an action close to sinning in his books.
"I was a little distracted at the time," I answered back defensively. "Maybe we should start heading over to the diner?"
"Sure thing," John replied. "Sherlock!"
Sherlock was standing by the sink, unmoving. John sighed and ambled towards the detective. Putting his hand on the taller man's shoulder John repeated, "Sherlock. Sherlock we're going to get some lunch, and you have to come too."
"Do we still have the autopsies and crime scene reports," Sherlock asked immediately emerging from his stupor.
"Yeah, over there," John gestured to one of the tables I was standing by with a pile of folders sitting in the middle of it. "But Sherlock we're going out for lunch now. You need to eat."
"I never eat when I'm on a case, John. You know that." Sherlock headed straight for the papers. I moved over to the desk first and grabbed all the folders. Gripping them tightly to my chest, I waited to see what Sherlock would do. He looked at me then back at John as if asking him to remove the obstacle in the way of his information.
"I'll give these back to you at the diner," I said simply. I turned on my heel and walked out of the room.
Once I was in the hallway, I didn't hear any noise in the room for almost a full twenty seconds. It wasn't until I was nearing the elevator that I heard all four of the boys rushing out of the room. I pushed the up button on the elevator and waited for it to come down.
It sounded like they were all running. I turned around to watch them approach. They instantly stopped, pretending that they had been walking casually down the hall the entire time. I rolled my eyes. Idiots. All of them were idiots. The elevator dinged, opening the doors.
"Hurry up guys, before the doors close!" I yelled. They all did a weird half jogging- half power walking skip to the elevator. I held the door open for them, my other hand still gripping the folders. When the last person, John, was finally inside, I let the doors close.
The elevator wasn't exactly roomy. I was squished between Sam and the buttons directing where the elevator went. I didn't even have enough room to take my backpack off as I had planned.
"Sam, would you mind slipping these into my backpack? I don't want the nurse to think I'm stealing evidence from a current investigation."
"You are." Sherlock stated from the corner. John grimaced at him, but I couldn't help but fangirl over a moping Sherlock. He was just so… childish. It was wonderful to see this side of his personality in comparison to the genius extraordinaire.
"I don't mind," Sam answered, after verifying that he was out of Sherlock's reach. I handed him the folders and turned my back so he could put them into my bag. I felt the weight added to my backpack and the zipper put back into its original space.
"Thanks," I smiled.
"Don't mention it."
We left the hospital without a hitch. The receptionist really seemed to like me for whatever reason, wishing me luck on the way out the door. We were on our way to the diner when Dean heard a noise from a back alleyway.
They both pulled out their guns and approached. I followed right behind with John and Sherlock on my tail. The all too familiar noise echoed again. I nearly overcome with joy. The TARDIS noise was getting louder, and I could see the blue box starting to appear right where Sam was.
"Sam watch out!" I yelled. He turned around quickly, but didn't move from the spot. I huffed a breath, resolving to shove him out of the way. I was fairly certain that the TARDIS would just take whomever it landed on into its console room, but I figured it was better to bet that with my own life instead of Sam's. I ran over to the hunter, pushing him out of the way just as the box finished materializing right where I stood.
