Sorry everyone, I had to repost this chapter because there was a problem with it.
It was long past sunset before they could put their plan in action. According to Ziva's informant with the police, the muggings happened most often in the exact spot where Sergeant Miller had been found. So, that's where they were. Gibbs waited down the block with the van while Ziva hid in the darkness of the winding alley, gun ready. McGee waited even further in the labyrinth, in case the muggers got scared off and decided to run.
That left DiNozzo, who had strategically placed himself down the street, dressed in the nicest clothes he had, and wearing Tim's watch for all to see.
"I don't see why you have to use my watch to get mugged," McGee had muttered, handing it over.
"I forgot mine at the hotel," Tony defended himself. "This one is awesome, McGee. You're gonna have to tell me where you got it."
"How about we do this after we catch the guy," Gibbs had ordered, snapping everyone back into focus.
Ziva watched two young men pass her, and whispered into her hand-held radio. "Two men, both look very suspicious, moving in the direction of the street."
Apparently, the back streets of Valero Notte were used quite commonly, especially by locals to escape the tourist crowds. Several people had already walked past Ziva. But now that the populated sidewalks on the main road were hardly crowded, what with most sightseers at their hotels, Tony would be more vulnerable to robbers.
"Alright," DiNozzo said into his radio as he began to stroll down the sidewalk. Ziva watched as the two men eyed him eagerly. Once he was at the mouth of the alley, they came into his view.
"Give me your wallet," one of the men snapped at Tony, who decided to play dumb.
"What?"
"You heard him," the second one said, brandishing a handgun. "Your wallet. And your watch."
"How about you drop the weapon," Ziva said, stepping into sight and aiming her gun at them. "Now!"
The two men looked at each other in panic, then turned and ran into the shadows, one of them taking a left, the other a right.
Tony cursed as he dashed after one, Ziva close on his heels.
"McGee, there are two of them. We are going after one. The other one is heading in your direction," she said, speaking into her handheld radio.
"I'm on it," Tim radioed back, moving into position. He could hear the sound of footsteps running in his direction.
The mugger turned the corner and ran straight into Tim, who braced himself against the impact. The criminal tried to get away by running around the agent and sprinting into the darkness of the alley once again, but McGee knew better than that.
"I don't think so," he said, grabbing the mugger from behind. However, the man was much larger and stronger, and wrenched himself out of Tim's grasp. Without blinking an eye, the man aimed his gun and fired twice at McGee, his gun on a silencer.
Contrary to popular belief, a silencer does not make a gun completely silent. Usually there is still an audible click, and the echo (almost a shadow) of a gunshot. Tony or Ziva should have been able to hear it as the sound resounded against the walls of the alleyway. But the silencer, combined with the noise of traffic and nightlife moving steadily along the road, smothered any sound they might have heard...and leaving McGee without help.
The bullets hit him at close range, dragging ice and fire through his shoulder and his collarbone. Two bullets, two seconds.
Tim hit the ground with a gasp, unable to breathe. His attacker turned and ran, leaving him to die.
The NCIS agent felt so heavy. The blood leaving his chest pooled around him, soaking his shirt and getting in his hair. So this was it- he was going to die, alone, in some back street in a foreign country without even his team...
His team! Tim had forgotten about the radio. With a shaking hand, he pulled it off of his belt and held it to his face. Pressing the button as hard as he could in his weakening state, he choked out a single "help" before dropping it to his side.
Gibbs didn't hear Tim's quiet plea, but he saw as one of the muggers dodged out of the mouth of the alley and down the street. The oldest agent jumped in the van, put it in gear and raced after him. As the criminal was about to run across a cross-walk, Gibbs jerked the car in his path. Without the ability to stop himself in time, the man slammed into the door of the van and fell on his back with a groan, his gun clattering away. Jethro jumped out of the car and cuffed their suspect, throwing him into the back seat without a word.
The second mugger led DiNozzo and Ziva far away from McGee, in the opposite direction. Ziva heard the crackle of the walkie-talkie before Tony did, and put hers to her ear as she ran.
"McGee?" she asked, before hearing a strangled "help." Ziva skidded to a stop; Tony noticed and did the same.
"McGee? Tim?" Ziva called over the radio, but received no answer. Her eyes went wide, and she turned to DiNozzo. "McGee needs help."
Just as McGee let go of the radio, he heard a shocked "oh my god," from a voice he didn't recognize, but he was too tired to care. It wasn't until someone put their hand on his shoulder wound that he gasped again in pain, his eyes shooting open and his body trying to twist away from the cause of the discomfort
"Woah, easy there son," a kind male voice said. "I'm trying to keep your shoulder from bleeding- oh lord, you're hit in the chest too. Who did this to you? No no, you need to keep your eyes open."
Through a stupor of blood loss and pain, Tim's eyes found his savior's, and he was struck dumb in amazement. The man's eyes were a vibrant, radiating caramel brown, the color of light shining through whiskey; they were inhuman. But they were not the greatest shock of the night, because large, glistening wings extended out from the stranger's back.
The strange being noticed Tim staring, and smiled. "Yeah, that ought to keep you awake," he commented. Before he could speak again, he noticed a light shining from underneath Tim's chest, and his eyes widened in shock.
"You..." he began, but McGee couldn't hear him. A fiery agony shot out from his chest and engulfed him, causing the young man to cry out.
"We need to get you somewhere safe," the man said with a frown, and looked around him. "Guess I'm going to have to carry you," he muttered, more to himself than to McGee. As he was about to pick him up, Tony and Ziva came around the corner, guns drawn, ready to help their friend. What they saw frightened them to no measurable extent. A sophisticated, winged man stood over McGee, who lay on the ground writhing in pain. Blood was everywhere, notably on the creature's hands. The moonlight thrown across the scene did nothing but add a touch of terror.
"What the hell?" Tony whispered in horror.
The creature looked at them with narrowed eyes, misinterpreting their intent. He thought that these two newcomers were here to attack; they must have been with whoever had shot this young man.
Although the creature didn't know the victim on the ground, he knew he couldn't leave him there to defend himself- especially since the young man's chest was glowing, a sign that only the winged man understood. No, he was going to save himself and this stranger.
The odd being stretched out his wings to their full span and hissed at them ferociously, succeeding in scaring the two agents. DiNozzo fired but missed, and the monster gathered up McGee. Ziva and Tony tried their hardest to shoot at him, but with their quivering hands, it was hard to try and hit their opponent without hitting Tim as well.
A few strong flaps of the wings, and the two were gone, leaving Ziva and Tony in the alley, shaking and gasping in shock.
Gibbs, though he hadn't heard the radio call for help, did hear the gunshots as he pulled the van up to the mouth of the dark maze, and came sprinting to his agents, his heart pounding. He'd be damned if one of his kids was going to get hurt on his watch.
When he came around the corner, he was hit full force by the sight of Tony and Ziva, wide eyed and shaking, blood all over the ground. Tim was nowhere in sight.
The boss rushed to his kids, grabbing their shoulders and shaking them lightly to get their attention. "Hey, hey. What happened? Where's McGee?"
It was DiNozzo who spoke first. "He...he was bleeding...there was a guy...he had...he had wings, boss! What...he took Tim..."
It was as if ice water had been poured down his back. Jethro couldn't do anything but hold a gasping Tony and a shaking Ziva until they calmed down as much as possible.
"What was that thing?" Ziva whispered as the quakes stopped.
"Come on," Gibbs said, ignoring the question. "Get in the van, we need to get back to the hotel."
Ziva and Tony followed him and got in, all but ignoring the man handcuffed in the back seat.
When they got to the station, Gibbs yanked the mugger out and dragged him inside, where he met Agent Mallory.
"Agent Gibbs, what-" he was cut off as the team leader practically shoved the mugger at him.
"Lock him up in a holding cell," Gibbs ordered. Back outside in the van, Tony and Ziva didn't say a word, but simply stared into space, even when Gibbs got back in and drove them to the hotel.
They followed him inside and up the stairs without a word, operating on autopilot as Gibbs knocked on a room's door, which opened to reveal Ducky. "Jethro! You're back early, what..." he trailed off as he saw the agents' expressions. "Oh dear lord, come inside," he said, pulling his medical bag out along with some liquor for his patients. They were going to need it.
...
He felt little more than pain when he first regained consciousness. Everything was heavy, and he couldn't move, which caused him to absently wonder if he was in a coma. No, he wasn't, he could tell, because his head just tilted to the side a little bit.
He tried his eyes next, and as they fluttered, he heard a whispered curse from what sounded like an otherwise gentle voice. "He's waking up," the voice said. "I'm not finished. He'll be in pain."
Something was tugging at his chest and his shoulder, but it was a detached feeling, and he chose to ignore it.
"Give him another dose. A small one."
A dose? A dose of what? He wanted to refuse, but he couldn't move. Were his hands strapped down...?
A small point of pressure was felt on his arm, and he fell back into the realm of unconsciousness.
...
Ducky regarded Anthony and Ziva sadly. It would have been better for Gibbs to tell them all sooner...Maybe Tim would still be alive.
Jethro was pacing the room, unsure of how to explain this new reality to his remaining agents. The guilt and pain of loosing Tim was crushing him, and he felt that if he didn't do something to relieve the pressure, he would surely collapse. A glance at DiNozzo and David told him that they were as ready as they'd ever be, and he sat across from them (they were both perched on the edge of the bed) and met their eyes.
"Ready to talk about it?" he said as if they were children. They nodded silently.
"Alright. What did you see?" he began.
"Tim called for help over the radio, and we ran to him..." Ziva said. "We found him on the ground, bleeding. There was blood everywhere," she said, holding back a sob.
"Where was he bleeding from?" Ducky asked gently.
"His chest," Tony said bitterly, his eyes cast on the ground. "I didn't see exactly where, just on his chest."
Ducky nodded, and Tony continued. "There was a guy...his hands were covered in blood..." he said, but stopped, unable to finish.
"Did he have wings?" their boss asked. "Big white feathery wings?"
Ziva and Tony nodded. "Like those pictures of angels you see in kids' books," DiNozzo added.
Gibbs scoffed. "That was far from an angel."
"A demon?"
"No, not that either," he said, looking at Ducky, who took up the explanation.
"It was called a Flightling, Anthony," Doctor Mallard said. "Partially human, partially...well, no one knows what they are descended from. Most believe that their ancestors were angels that procreated with humans, but they are not celestial beings. They are horrid things."
If they hadn't seen it for themselves, they never would have believed the agent and the doctor.
"What makes them horrid?" Ziva asked, afraid of the answer. Gibbs and Ducky shared a saddened look before turning to her.
"They absorb the souls of their human victims, then kill them," Ducky said. "It leaves said victims with a grayish pallor."
"That's why Vance assigned us this case," Jethro admitted. "Miller looked like a victim of a flightling attack."
"Vance knows about them?" Tony asked. "Who else knows about them?"
Gibbs shrugged. "There are hunters here and there. The only other person who you know would be Fornell."
"Tobias Fornell? He knows about these things too?" Tony asked. "Why doesn't everybody?"
"Hunters like to keep it a secret," Gibbs shrugged. "To prevent mass hysteria."
"Not that anyone would believe it," the ME said.
"You hunt them, Gibbs?" Ziva asked.
"Yeah. And I should have told you about them sooner. But it's a miserable thing to be involved in. I didn't want to risk your lives."
After a long tense moment, his agents nodded. "I guess I understand," Tony said.
"Me too," his partner agreed.
It was quiet for a minute, then DiNozzo asked the question everyone had on their minds.
"So they...they took Tim? They took his soul?"
"It's how they become more powerful," Ducky answered, saying 'yes' without actually saying it.
Tears came to Ziva's eyes. "How many are there?"
"About 25,000 are left in the world, by our estimates," Ducky said. "Their population has been on a slow but steady downward trend over the past two centuries."
"They're easier to kill with modern weapons," Gibbs admitted.
Somehow, this information didn't comfort anyone in the room. Their youngest was dead, and they all blamed themselves.