Sherlock Holmes had been an insufferable prat for the past three days.
Well, more of an insufferable prat than usual.
He had taken to plastering the walls with ridiculous cases plucked out of tabloids. The southern wall was covered with animal mutilations supposedly done by extraterrestrials. A series of deaths attributed to a werewolf plastered the east wall, and the north wall had dozens of missing persons, all ascribed to spontaneous combustion.
This recent epidemic of fantastical cases came about after Lestrade banned them from Scotland Yard for a week, to be followed by a 'probationary period' until Sherlock Holmes apologized.
It was hardly Lestrade's fault. John and Sherlock had attempted to break into a van to prove that the man who owned it was decapitating people. Their efforts proved fruitful, but nearly cost John his head, quite literally. It was dumb luck that Donovan and Lestrade arrived in time to stop the attack, which gave them cause to collect the van.
But it had landed them in the hot seat with Lestrade, who insisted that they had been reckless, even without knowing about the book Sherlock lifted.
So Sherlock had decided to leaf through tabloids to find something to solve, since his connection with the Yard would be on pause indefinitely.
"Peculiar," Sherlock mused.
"Sorry, we talking about the aliens or the combustion?" John asked.
"Don't be stupid, I only put those up to irk Mrs. Hudson. What I find peculiar is that Lestrade has yet to retract his unnecessary restriction – "
"It's been three days!" John interrupted. "Three. He's still pissed at both of us."
"That's hardly a reason."
"Hardly a – Hardly?"
"Nothing, John! There's nothing to do. No cases. No clients."
"What's all this then?" John said, indicating the latest wall decorations.
The bell rang before Sherlock could answer.
"Lestrade?" Sherlock suggested. "No, too tentative to be him."
John went to the door, expecting an angry neighbor or possibly Molly Hooper.
Instead, he found a man in a deep pallor, shaking on the front stoop.
"Are you Sherlock Holmes?" the man asked.
"He's upstairs," John said. "I'm John Watson. Come in."
"Arthur Morris," the man said. "I'm here about an incident with my wife."
John led Arthur up the stairs. "Sherlock, we've got a client."
"Start from the beginning," Sherlock said. "But quite quickly."
"My wife, Samantha, she was attacked three months ago," Arthur said. "Mauled, really. She's been in a bad way ever since."
"Naturally," John said. "Three months ago?"
"Yes, that's right."
"What John means is, what happened last night?" Sherlock asked. "Or rather early this morning, I suppose. You aren't a man who waits three months to investigate a crime. You're still exhibiting symptoms of shock, so whatever it is, it happened recently."
"Early this morning, she... well," Arthur produced an afternoon-release tabloid. The title read WEREWOLF PANDEMIC SPREADS AS VICTIM BECOMES ATTACKER.
"What's this?" John asked, taking the article. "Seriously?"
"Your wife was mauled by the so-called werewolf?" Sherlock asked.
"She was badly scarred. Not just physically," Arthur said. "She spent weeks in the hospital because she couldn't sleep without... it was bad, but she was coming up, you know?"
"What happened?" Sherlock demanded.
"She was fine. Fine, I mean that. But all this nonsense... this printed nonsense, I was able to keep it from her. But she found it, and it was like a... a trigger. She went out and just..."
"She mauled someone?" Sherlock asked dispassionately.
"Hardly. She just bashed him up a bit," Arthur said. "God, that's me being awful, isn't it? She didn't bite and slash at him, she just beat him senseless..."
"Interesting," Sherlock said. "Did she do it with her bare hands?"
"Sherlock!" John warned.
"Yes, she attacked clobbered him. She kept yelling 'bad dog, bad dog!'"
"She believed she was defending herself from her assailant," Sherlock said in his 'bored' voice.
"Yes, but the police – "
"Bored. Get her treated for PTSD. Go away."
"I've already done!" Arthur said. "I didn't come here for a therapist. I came here for a detective."
"What's there to detect exactly?" Sherlock asked.
"I want to know about the sod who did this to my wife," Arthur replied. "And the Yard hasn't got a clue. Last they told me, it was some dozy dog!"
"Can't've been a dog, there weren't any claw marks in the other cases," Sherlock dismissed. "The attacks weren't done by a canine. Not exclusively."
"My wife called him the Big Bad Wolf," Arthur said. "He wasn't a man or a wolf, but something in between. And she drew all this pictures, see?" He held out several grotesque, hand-drawn illustrations. "The Big Bad Wolf."
"Fantastic!" Sherlock boomed. "We will begin working on this case right away. Come on, John! People to question! Killers to track down!"
St. Bart's had received all those injured or killed in the so-called werewolf attacks. The survivors came in as emergent patients; the dead came in as murder victims. There was a total of twelve in the past three months, four of which resulted in death.
Molly produced the bodies they still had, along with the medical records of those attacked. Thus, John stood apart from three mangled individuals, laid out on slabs.
"Sherlock, the Yard is actively work in on this," John said. "If Lestrade finds out, he will – "
"Lestrade is too busy being an idiot. If it were otherwise, he would've handed over his meager case file immediately after the first murder."
"The first murder? Why would he have done? At the time, it was just an animal attack," John said.
"Just an animal attack? Look at the wound patterns. Nothing about this is just an animal attack! All the victims – both living and dead - have the same basic configuration of injuries, so clearly the same assailant. Yet it wasn't until this month that anyone died from an attack from the Big Bad Wolf."
"What is it with you and the Big Bad Wolf?" John asked.
"What?"
"The Big Bad Wolf. It was like the 'monstrous hound' thing we went through on the Baskerville case, except this time, there's honestly no reason. Seriously. 'Big bad wolf' isn't uncommon enough to be interesting."
"John, John, John. How quickly you forget Moriarty."
"Oh, yeah. Easy to forget the evil git that poisoned my life for years, after nearly killing me by strapping me with explosives at a pool. Slipped my mind till this very moment."
"Consider, then, his final game. His last crafted criminal act."
"Stealing the crown jewels... no, hang on, pushing you to kill yourself? Getting you to be dead for two years?"
"No, John, before that," Sherlock said, clearly bored.
"Right. The kidnapping. Left that ridiculous bag of breadcrumbs and tried to kill the kids with chocolates, like Hansel and Gretel," John said. As if suddenly just realizing, he added, "Fairy tales. He was using fairy story motifs. Is that what this is, Sherlock? Is he back? Because he's dead. Dead."
"I doubt it's the man himself. It forgoes his dramatic elements: the messages, the endgame, and most of all, it lacks the man himself. If this was his plan, there would've been some hint of him. A cameo."
John said, "You sound disappointed."
Sherlock ignored him. He said, "Suddenly, an assailant content to maul his victims slays three in the past two nights. Clearly escalation."
"What about the first victim?" John asked. "The one attacked alongside Samantha Morris."
"Who?"
"The client's wife, Sherlock. Another man was attacked right in front of her."
"Right, that one, Nathan Zoth. He doesn't count."
"He doesn't count?" John repeated.
"No. Not at all. His injuries were serious, but he could've survived had he gotten himself to an ER. Instead, he jammed himself inside a rubbish bin, likely to hide from the assailant. Whatever the reason, he became unconscious in a concealed location. Bled out before anyone found him. No, his wounds were not nearly as severe as the most recent victims. His death was incidental; these last three were purposeful. The killer built up to it."
"The killer? We're not calling him the werewolf anymore?"
"Don't be an idiot. I know it's hard for you, but do try. No, the tabloids labeled this a werewolf simply because the time frame."
"Canine-like maulings during the three nights of the full moon," John said. "Yeah, that does spell it werewolf doesn't it?"
"No, it underscores the theme: the Big Bad Wolf."
John waited for Sherlock to elaborate. When he didn't, he asked, "And?"
"And what?"
"And why are we here? Did you drag me out here to look at mangled bodies?"
"No, you're here because I am here."
"Fine. Then why are you here?"
Sherlock stared at the bodies for several minutes in silence. John waited.
"Well?"
"There's something about them," Sherlock said. "They're similar."
John looked over the three bodies: one woman, two men. Two were white (olive complexion, Irish complexion complete with freckles), and one had medium-brown skin, perhaps Southeastern Asian. The more he looked at them, the more differences he collected.
"Sorry, what similarities?" John asked. "You seeing something I'm not?"
"See?" Sherlock repeated. "Oh, see!" he exclaimed.
Then he ran off to his lab.
John hesitated. He could just grab a cab and head home, leaving Sherlock to his own devices at his favorite playground. Before he made up his mind, Sherlock returned with a swab kit.
"You went to get that yourself?" John asked, confused. Given the opportunity to order someone around, Sherlock Holmes always went for the command.
"Delicate work, John. Can't trust you or Molly to do it without my hand in it," Sherlock said, unpacking the kit.
"You're swabbing armpits," John commented. "How is that delicate?"
"As ever, your untrained eye betrays your abject ignorance," Sherlock mumbled.
"I'm leaving."
"No, you can't," Sherlock said. "I need you to harvest sweat glands from each of these individuals, in case these samples fail to yield adequate results."
"Have you even run this by Molly?" John asked.
"No. Why? Not feeling up to the task?"
"No, Sherlock, because these are her bodies. Her responsibility."
"They're dead. They're nobody's responsibility anymore."
"Don't be daft. You'd be the first prat to piss all over everyone if the forensics of these bodies became compromised before you got in to see them," John said harshly.
"The difference is that me seeing evidence is actually effective for the investigation."
"Fine, I'll do it, then."
"Where are you going?" Sherlock demanded.
"I need better tools than your swab kit," John said as he exited. He decided not to mention a conversation with Molly Hooper.
John was normally quite good at 'collecting data,' as Sherlock called it. Unfortunately, he couldn't allow Lestrade to discover their inquiry, so he had to put together a history of the attacks without the resources of Scotland Yard or the luxury of speaking with witnesses.
So he mapped the attack locations by digging up information from local news articles. The process was incredibly slow. So Sherlock did... whatever the hell Sherlock was doing, as John collaged a series of news articles from the web.
"All the attacks were within a stone's throw of a tube station," John said. "That's something."
"Moorgate," Sherlock said.
"No, sorry. None of them were near – "
"Moorgate Station. Come on, John, we've only a few hours."
"What are you on about? There's nothing near Moorgate station."
"If you were to kill someone, would you do it near Baker Street?"
"Generally, I only kill people when they're trying to kill me. I don't pick the location."
"Yes, yes, fine. But if you could pick a location. Would you pick it just 'round from your front door? Or would you leave the bodies elsewhere?"
"So now I'm killing multiple people?" John asked, just to annoy him. "And leaving their bodies all over London? Is that what you're planning?"
"Droll," Sherlock said. "Boring. Let's go."
"Go where?"
"It's the last night of the full moon. We're off to collect our werewolf," Sherlock said as he slipped out the door.
"Last time you went off like this, it ended with me nearly getting my head chopped off!" John said loudly as they ducked into a cab.
"Rhino and Turret," Sherlock said to the cabbie.
"Hang on, the restaurant?" John asked
"Which one?" the cabbie asked.
"Moorgate," Sherlock replied. "You look surprised."
"That would be because I am. I am surprised."
"Really? I'm peckish."
They road in silence for several minutes. John didn't know why Sherlock would look for a werewolf, or any kind of wolf, in a popular restaurant. He still didn't understand why Sherlock wanted the sweat glands of the previous victims, let alone why the man thought that Moorgate was the place to start.
"So, you going to fill me in?" he finally asked.
"About what?"
"What we're doing. Where we're going. What we do when we get there."
"Ah, we're here. You have cash?" Sherlock said as he exited the cab.
John paid, fuming over being kept in the dark.
They were immediately seated at a respectable table. The decor was all dark wood and beige with hints of toned red. The lighting was dim, almost romantic. Almost.
It made John uncomfortable, but Sherlock seemed unphased.
"Dinner is on me," Sherlock said.
"It's barely four," John replied.
"Do stop thinking about food. We're here to catch a killer, John."
"How? Does he work here?"
"No. Why should he?"
"Then why are we here?"
"Didn't you look at the autopsy reports?" Sherlock asked.
Kevin, their waiter, dropped off a small dish for each of them.
"We haven't ordered anything," John said.
"Compliments of the chef," Kevin said before he left.
"Let me guess. You're going to tell me that I saw but didn't deduce. That I observed but failed to conclude. How 'bout you just skip it and get to the point?"
"I see," Sherlock said. "I do say that repeatedly to you, but only because it happens to be true very often. No, this time I was going to say that you didn't read the autopsies. Specifically stomach contents. Unremarkable except for the mix of truffles, steak, and a particular sauce, currently being served here compliments of the chef." Sherlock waved to his plate. "I've heard good things."
"The only place in London serving something with truffles and steak is this restaurant?" John asked. "Even you can't know that."
"All the bodies were found near tube stations. All of the surviving victims were attacked near tube stations. All of them, all of them, John, took the tube right before being attacked. Some of our victims had money, but none were particularly well off. Price range narrows down the possible locations considerably. Factoring time of travel, this is the only likely candidate."
"So, we're eating here?"
"It is a restaurant."
"Where the victims ate."
"I've just said."
"Then, I assume we're taking the tube, just like the victims."
"Is this a problem?"
"You're planning on him attacking us, is that it?" John asked.
"After dinner."
"Right. Of course, what else would we be doing?" John asked sarcastically. "How about we invite Lestrade?"
"We can't. Our werewolf never attacks more than two people at a time. Certainly wouldn't attack someone from the Yard, even if it was Lestrade in his off-duty attire. No, it has to be us, John. Now, dinner?"
The entire idea was absolutely mad.
It was one thing to try and draw out a killer; certainly, they'd done that before. But this particular killer followed the lunar cycle and apparently stalked his victims for quite a distance before attacking.
John noticed no suspicious activity while they ate. Sherlock seemed content to jibber on about the assailant's unique weapon and the clothing she or he must don to conceal it properly.
"Sherlock, has it occurred to you that this is a long shot?" John asked. "We still don't know how the killer selects victims."
"Fine point."
Sherlock produced a vial with a large eye dropped. He filled the dropped and thoroughly doused John's left sleeve.
"What are you doing?" John asked, withdrawing his arm from the table.
"You said it, John. You couldn't see any connection. It's not seeing. It's smelling."
"Seriously?"
"Big Bad Wolf. Werewolf. Acute sense of smell fits both. I need your other sleeve."
"What about you?"
"I've already done."
"You seriously think someone is hunting people using some kind of scent?" John asked.
"I was able to replicate it by using a – "
"I don't want to know," John interrupted.
"Your other sleeve."
Their tube ride was unremarkable. Sherlock led them around and around, keeping John on the tips of his toes.
"It's been almost half an hour," John said. "Maybe we should give it a rest?"
"He's waiting for proper darkness," Sherlock replied.
"Oh, right," John said. "Him. He. Who, Sherlock? Who?"
"That man, right there," Sherlock said.
Something hard slammed into John, throwing him off balance. He felt a sharp slicing sensation as he crashed into the hard rough of the pavement.
Sherlock rushed toward the struggle, throwing an awkward right hook. Whatever he did pushed the attacker back, giving John the time to turn back and get to his feet.
At a glance, the assailant was an enormously tall figure in a black coat. Sherlock managed to land a few solid hits, but the Big Bad Wolf retaliated and threw him back.
John grasped whatever he could, finally putting his hands on a broken piece of the sidewalk. It was awkwardly shaped and not terribly large, but it was all he had. He crouched down, lifted it, and then hurled the awkward object directly at the werewolf.
A harsh gruff sound emanated from the attacker as he dropped his weapon. The hood over his face fell back, and for just a moment, Sherlock and John caught sight of his face: thick eyebrows, red eyes, scruffy beard, and odd skin stippling.
But in the next instant, his face was pale and clean-shaven, and his dark eyes were wide in surprise. The Big Bad Wolf crashed to the ground.
John got up and checked his pulse: weak but there. His projectile had hit the wolf squarely under the jaw before continuing onto his neck.
Sherlock grabbed for the killer's weapon while John assessed the injuries.
"He could have a crushed larynx," John said. "Definitely head trauma. We should call for help."
"We've got our werewolf, John," Sherlock said. "All and all, rather uneventful."
"Uneventful? What about his attack dog?"
"What attack dog?"
"The dog he used to attack all the victims," John turned to look at Sherlock properly. "What? What is that?"
"His weapon. Obviously."
"It's a skull."
"Clearly."
"You said 'weapon.'"
"He's been using it to kill people. The term applies."
"It's a skull."
"All the victims were bitten and shaken."
"By a skull?" John repeated.
"Yes, John. A skull!"
"But it... Sherlock that doesn't make any sense."
"You should really call Lestrade. With the body and all. And the client."
"So, to be clear," Lestrade began. "You were walking around Baker Street. Not going anywhere, just walking."
"John insists upon me not smoking," Sherlock replied.
"They've got patches for that."
"Walking works as well," John said.
"Don't even talk," Lestrade said loudly.
"You brought us to the Yard to give statements without talking?" John asked. "Now you're just being difficult."
"You think this is a joke?"
"Of course it's a joke," Sherlock replied.
"You'd think that, not him," Lestrade said.
"Look. We were attacked. I had to do something, or he'd've killed us," John said. "He also happens to be a serial killer."
"Sherlock's fingerprints were all over that weapon. The same weapon that's killed four people."
"The hospital reports on the surviving victims all claimed 'animal attack,' but from the wounds, it was easy to deduce the killer used some kind of artifice to mimic the crushing of a bite. Not a real animal, but I needed to examine it to be certain."
"There was no need," Lestrade pointed out. "He was unconscious. There was no danger to you."
"We hardly knew that at the time," Sherlock said. "As I said, I needed confirmation."
"Confirmation? Confirmation?" Lestrade said loudly.
"Yes. Are we quite done? We've places to be."
"I should lock you up."
"Oh, for what?" Sherlock asked. "We just stopped a serial killer that you lot ignored for months. So, yes, do lock us up. Eventually my brother will be forced to collect us and will be completely insufferable about it."
"Get out," Lestrade said. "Just, go, the both of you. Donovan will deal with your statements later."
As Sherlock rushed out, John followed on his heels.
"You need to apologize," John said. "I know you're Sherlock Holmes, but let's face it. Without Lestrade, we're basically just rummaging – "
"What? No. We don't rummage. We deduce. I deduce, at least. Come on, John, we've got to tell our client that his werewolf has been tamed. Terrible, isn't it? This case had such promise."