The Omega Sutra. Chapter Fifteen/?. The Fundamentals of Chemistry

[ghislainem70]

 
The Omega Sutra. Chapter Fifteen/?. The Fundamentals of Chemistry
author: ghislainem70
word count: 5,000  this chapter/ 85,300 total to date
rating: NC-17
Summary: Sherlock Holmes has a secret life. John Watson should'nt want to be part of it.
Warnings: Omegaverse.  Explicit sex, kink
disclaimer: I own nothing.



How long
how long
will I slide
Separate my side

I don't believe it's bad. . . .
S**  my throat,
It's all I ever . . .

I heard your voice through a photograph
I thought it up and brought up the past
Once you've know
you can never go back
I've got to take it on the otherside

Centuries are what it meant to me
cemetery where I marry the sea
Stranger things
could never change my mind
I've got to take it on the otherside

---- Otherside, Red Hot Chili Peppers, all rights reserved

Listen to Paul Oakenfold vs Red Hot Chili Peppers Remix  HERE

bond

n something that binds, fastens, confines, or holds together.

n. The force of attraction holding two neighboring atoms of a molecule in place and resisting their separation, usually accomplished by the transfer or sharing of one or more electrons or pairs of electrons between the atoms.

n binding security; firm assurance.

synonyms:  bonds, chains, fetters.

John rubbed his face, stretched. His body protested at every move. He had a headache, a stabbing pain. He knew perfectly well this was heat withdrawal, especially difficult after so long on suppressants. His body wasn’t accustomed to such violent hormonal fluctuations. He stubbornly resisted taking any one of a number of allieveiants to smooth out the androgen crash. He rubbed the painful spot between his brows that seemed to be the center of the pain.

This was the clinic’s late night shift and another doctor was supposed to be here to take over. He checked his watch. Twenty minutes past his time. He ought to have been on his way back to Baker Street by now. He was unaccountably nervous about the delay and reached for his mobile, thinking to text Sherlock, let him know he’d be later than he had thought. Not, he thought resignedly, that Sherlock was likely to notice he was late. He no longer believed, however, that Sherlock didn’t notice when he was gone. He had come to understand that it was the opposite: Sherlock, when absorbed in the science of deduction, simply assumed John was always there.

There was a commotion in reception. "Doctor Watson!"

There was crashing, hectic shouting. John ran out to find a deceptively fragile young man struggling and shouting while two female beta nurses tried to calm him. When the man struck out with his fist at one of the nurses, John neatly swept his feet out from under him and made sure he fell against a chair, where John penned him in by holding his wrists. The boy’s eyes were glassy, pupils huge.

"Are you all right, Nancy," John asked over his shoulder.

"He pushed past and was tearing through the closet. Looking to steal drugs, that one," Nancy said calmly. "Shall I ring the police, then?"

They all saw the signs. Heatwave. It was mandatory to report it. But looking into the shivering boy’s eyes, John didn’t have the heart to do it.

"I’ll take care of it, Nancy. Call that Doctor Chandra -- find out where he is. I can’t stay late tonight," he said, dragging his reluctant new patient behind him. He pulled him into an examining room and gave him some water, looked him over and with a sigh, prepared a hypodermic.

"Don’t turn me in," the boy panted. "Please. I’ve never done it before. I swear. It was - a dare, like. Look, I’ll do you right," he swayed closer, tried to clutch at John’s trousers. John knocked his hand away in disgust.

"None of that or I will call the police, understand? Where do you live? Is there someone who can take you home, watch you?"

The boy shook his head sullenly, shivering. He had huge purple circles under his eyes. John looked closer. The boy looked like he’d been living rough and Heatwave wasn’t the only drug he’d been abusing.

"I won’t call the police- on one condition. Who gave you the stuff?" The boy was dark-haired and delicate looking, almost an innocent. Almost. John’s irritability swelled to a dull anger. He couldn’t help imagining Sherlock, first meeting Maxim, naively - he gritted his teeth and helped the boy roll up his sleeve, plunged in with the injection.

"I got it from . . . a mate. Dunno know where he got it, do I? Ohmygod, help me," he panted. "I feel - I need -" He clutched at John’s sleeve, his face shocked and desperate. His Omega scent exploded in the room. Through the throbbing of his headache John observed that it had no effect on him at all. He was bonded to Sherlock; no other Omega pheromones could arouse him now.

"Shhhh. Where’s your friend, then?" He couldn’t account for his curiousity; he’d treated dozens of Heatwave cases since starting at the clinic, dozens more in the Army medical corps.

Here the boy looked shifty, the lying look that was always right below the surface whenever you dealt with an addict. John groaned. He really ought to turn him in. He’d done it before, often enough; but the dryout tanks were harsh places and he’d heard the horror stories. He took the boy’s pulse. Slowing now.

"What’s your name?"

Another shifty look. "C’mon, please let me . . .fuck - " he said slyly, but then his eyelids were starting to get heavy. He sighed, almost a sob.

"Shut it. I’ll let you sleep here. I need your identification."

The boy fumbled in his pocket, dropped a crumpled wad of papers to the floor. John stooped and scooped it up, then caught the boy as he slumped over. Possibly intentionally. He held the boy away from him. He was radiating the heat of fever. Of heat.

"Listen to me. You can’t take this stuff any more, do you hear? It’s poison." He was holding the boy’s arm too tight. He let it go. The boy couldn’t hear him anyway. He sank back onto the examining table, curled up with his eyes closed. John found a thin blanket, tossed it over the boy.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered. He threw his coat on and went out, almost crashing into the night doctor, Chandra.

"About time - listen, I just treated a Heatwave, he’s sleeping it off. If you could check in on him every hour or so. . . .Just - don’t call it in, all right? He’s . . . learned his lesson." He had some vague idea of telling Sherlock about the boy, seeing if his homeless network could shed any light. It was highly unusual for such an expensive drug to be found on a street boy. He hated to think of what could have happened, ugly things that happened in the dark places in the city every night. Sometimes in places not so dark. An image of the vast glass doors of Imperial Wharf, a luxurious glow within.

Chandra was curious. Doctor Watson was behaving oddly. He was known to be very strict with drugs cases. But John’s face, tight and impatient, the frown between his brows, made him hold in his questions. Clear case of androgen crash. He thought for the thousandth time how grateful he was to be a beta.

"Just this once," he said. "Lad like that ought to stay off the street now, anyway. That Sleeping Beauty killer is on the loose. They just found another dead Omega - you’ve seen the news? I’d have thought that Sherlock Holmes - "

"Yes, good," John said shortly, rushing out the door. He’d seen fragments of news everywhere, all about the terrible string of murders: the nurses clustered around the screen, gasping in sorrow and shock for the young victims. The last thing he wanted was for Sherlock to get swept up in a new serial murder case just now. He craved just a few days peace and quiet to recover and get their bearings. Settle into their new life as a bonded pair. As he passed, the nurses whispered behind him; how very different Doctor Watson had been, of late.

Nancy for one might have been inclined to challenge him for not calling the police; but one look at Doctor Watson’s implacable face and she kept it to herself. She felt it wouldn’t be wise to get on his bad side. In truth, she hadn’t really thought he had one before now. Watching Doctor Watson almost storm out into the street, she felt a wave of aggression in his wake.

# # #

The Thai shop was just closing. He took two curries and hurried the final two blocks home. It was cold, winter was coming. He had lost all track of time in India, even more in Scotland. He had seen a newspaper and was shocked to realise it was almost All Hallows Eve.

He looked up; the night sky was clear and the moon, brilliant. This made him smile a little, thinking of Sherlock’s diligence in restoring the solar system to his mind palace, describing Pluto to him. ("It’s very cold . . . and very very dark so far from the sun.") Pluto the cast-off planet was also the name of a very powerful god: the ancient god of the underworld. A faint memory rattling around in his pain-wracked brain reminded him that Pluto had first been known as Hades; later, Hades had become the name of his domain.

His smile faded to a frown. The aching in his head was getting more insistent. He allowed that a paracetamol was overdue.

He pushed open the door to 221b and set down the curries. It was very quiet.

"Sherlock!"

He started toward Sherlock’s bedroom, imagining happily that he might be tired from a cause other than the prodigious exertions of their first heat. His eye caught the gentle flutter of a slip of paper hanging neatly from the skull’s forehead, covered with a hasty scrawl. His hands flexed, closed into fists as he carefully crossed the room as if through a minefield. Sherlock’s note was short and very clear.

He didn’t move again for some minutes. When he did, it was to tear the note from the skull. The first clear feeling in a storm of feelings he recognised readily enough: dread; not yet fear, not yet terror. Not yet. He swallowed hard and willed his hand not to shake.

The first clear thought he had was that it was . . . how grotesque; yes, that was the word - how grotesque for Sherlock to have left these words, announcing an event that ought to have been so intimate, so joyful. Left the words attached to a skull. The skull was a reminder of death. Not that he needed reminding. He looked into its dark sockets. For the first time it seemed sinister and he wondered why he had never noticed that before. As if it could see dark things. Bad things.

He crumpled the note and it dropped to the carpet.

His leaden legs carried him to the bathroom. There, three Omega pregnancy test sticks were laid out in a precise row on the sink’s edge. Three pink "+" signs. Undeniable.

He reached out and very carefully picked one up, brought it close to his face; stared at the little symbol. The plus sign. Which meant, "positive." As in, "yes."

A plus sign was, of course, a mathematical symbol indicating the operation of addition: the adding of one thing to another. To create something larger.

His leaden heart skiddered in confusion - wanting to beat with joy, but weighed down as though by strong chains.

Alpha and Omega were symbols too. Bonded couples commonly wore bracelets engraved "Á + Ù." He had idly looked at an advert for one in a slick magazine on the train back from Scotland. Imagining fastening one around Sherlock’s slim wrist. Sherlock having scoffed, once, at the custom: "One might as well wear handcuffs," he had said with seeming contempt. And yet John had felt that curious, intense gaze, waiting to see what John might do or say.

# # #

Clearly, upon the occasion of learning he was bearing their child, Sherlock Holmes had not felt compelled to ascertain what John Watson might do or say, or even want, given the cruelly succinct facts he had written out in his note.

John gently placed the little test stick exactly where Sherlock had left it. He stared remotely at the pattern of hexagonal white tiles on the floor. He hardly noticed that he was heaving great breaths.

Seemingly a lifetime ago, he had been sitting on the edge of the tub, letting water run over these tiles. Sherlock had burst in; he’d been afraid, he’d said, that John had hurt himself.

The pain in his skull broke loose and joined with black ire; together, they marauded through him. He thought it might get too big for him to take. He wondered what would happen, then.

Sherlock hadn’t cared in the slightest that he was hurting John now, a hurt far worse than the blow to his head all those weeks ago. A blow to his heart he might have called it, except that he had thought their hearts were one now. That was what bonding was supposed to be. But he could still recall a time when he had thought that Sherlock Holmes didn’t possess a heart. Not like other people did. Standing here alone in the bathroom of 221b, he remembered exactly why. Probably he had been very stupid indeed to have forgotten it.

A bond could never be broken. Bonded mates took on traits of the other, a mysterious osmosis that could be a blessing- and a curse. But bonding did not change what a person fundamentally was.

John had flash, a vision of himself. Of Afghanistan. Blood on his hands and in his eyes. He looked up finally into the mirror and confronted himself. His hand strayed back to the test stick.

Clearly Sherlock Holmes, brilliant chemist that he was, had forgotten one of the fundamentals of chemistry: Only Alpha and an Omega binding together at a molecular level could form a new bond and create the miracle of a new life.

But it wasn’t chemistry that was uppermost in Sherlock’s mind, apparently. Sherlock Holmes, his bonded, the love of his life and the father of their unborn child was bent on acting alone, possibly putting his own life and that of their child, at risk.

All over this Sleeping Beauties case.

The dread and pain and anger took him. Now there was a keen new pain. His hand was lacerated. Blood dripped steadily onto the white tiles. The mirror was gone.

John stepped in his own blood, crushing sliver shards beneath his feet.

# # #

He stopped himself from storming out the door to try to hunt Sherlock down in London streets. To find Sherlock would require calm analysis, the last thing he felt capable of. He sat down on the sofa and closed his eyes. What did he know?

First, not one day back from their sojourn in Scotland, had Sherlock gone after the Sleeping Beauties killer - for surely, that was what he was doing - fully aware of his new condition. Deep inside, beneath his fear and his anger, John heard a warning voice telling him that there was something driving Sherlock here, something he could not turn from.

The Sleeping Beauties case dominated the news. John started reading on his laptop. There were photographs of the victims - not their bodies of course, but happy smiling faces of the boys in life. He froze. The boys all had a certain look about them.

He pulled up a video link that Mycroft had given him. Andrew Kearn, the boy who had vanished on the way to Dharamasala, smiling. Chattering excitedly about Paramananda Pharmaceuticals. John hit "pause." He studied Andrew Kearn’s face, frozen in time; the last time anyone had seen him alive. John pushed back black emotion and tried harder to focus. The thought of those little test sticks in the bath parted the fog and permitted him a glimpse of the way forward.

The face of Andrew Kearn lead him to another fact: Mycroft Holmes suspected Maxim of murdering Kearn. The Mumbai authorities had as well, but then they had given up. Maxim had been too clever for them all. John remembered saying to Mycroft, "He looks like Sherlock." Mycroft had thought so, too.

Finally, there were the "Sleeping Beauties," Omega boys turning up dead around London. Their arresting, dark-haired beauty reminded him of the missing Kearn boy.

Another fact - the press was speculating that the "Sleeping Beauties" had taken - or had been given --- some new sort of club drug.

A drug manufactured by Paramananda Pharmaceuticals, possibly?

Sherlock was hunting Maxim Purcell.

Maxim Purcell was the Sleeping Beauties murderer.

Sherlock said in his note that he’d "be back tomorrow, probably." If Sherlock would be gone longer than a day, it was likely because he planned to leave London. But not too far.

# # #

The fundamental problem here, John decided, was that Sherlock Holmes was in need of a demonstration of what bonding really was, what bonding truly meant.

And it wasn’t the acts performed in heat, no matter how exhilarating. His anger momentarily slipped and he was back in the cottage, enfolded in purest rapture. But the blackness took him back, his feet planted firmly on the floor of 221b. He vaguely noticed that his shredded knuckles were slowly dripping blood onto the carpet.

He willed himself to stillness and made a decision. John Watson was very good at making decisions. The decision he made was very simple. If Sherlock Holmes was willing to risk himself and their child, John Watson was willing to do whatever it took to preserve them both, at all costs. And if Sherlock Holmes required education in the meaning of a bond, he was ready to make a demonstration.

# # #

So much for strategy. Time for tactics.

As for how he would go about finding Sherlock, he knew of only one likely source: Lestrade. But an excruciating half an hour of frustrated effort yielded precisely nothing - Lestrade was out of touch, Donovan wasn’t taking his calls. He thought of calling DI Dimmock, but instead decided to attack the problem from the opposite angle. The morgue at Barts.

Molly Hooper did not look happy to see him. "Doctor Watson! You can’t be here - if you’ve read the news you know why." She looked pale and more nervous than usual and was frowning over a stack of computer printouts.

"Look - I think I can help."

"You can help - where’s Sherlock, then?"

John steeled himself to outward calmness. "He’s following leads. In the Sleeping Beauty case. He - he asked me to see you. Ask if you’d found out anything new." He was floundering here, which made him even angrier, but he was still sufficiently in control to understand that anger wouldn’t work with Molly Hooper.

Later, he would give it full reign.

"I didn’t know Sherlock was on the case. DI Lestrade would have said something."

"Look. Haven’t you checked out whether it’s a Heatwave?"

"Of course we did. But it isn’t. And the look. . . too peaceful for that. If you understand what I mean."

He did. He had seen corpses of Heatwave victims. During rigor mortis, their faces were frozen in frightful contortions.

"Listen, Molly. There’s a company in India, Mumbai. . . .Paramananda Pharmaceuticals. The Mumbai police just seized all of their drugs. They were manufacturing new sorts of Heatwaves, black market pheromones. Sherlock thinks . . . maybe these boys were being

given something made there. Something new."

"How do you know all this?" She said suspiciously. "I’ve been running tests on a little vial that was found on the first victim. But it’s been kept strictly within the investigation, no one knows about it."

"Does it have. . . a gold label? With a lotus?" He couldn’t keep his voice from choking with revulsion, imaging all the times that Maxim had poured such stuff down Sherlock’s throat. Then terror as his brain couldn’t help sliding toward a vision of him doing the same to Sherlock now. Sherlock and their -

Molly put her papers down and looked at John, really looked. And backed away. "John? You seem - look, maybe you’d better go," she whispered. John blinked and realised she was afraid of him.

"No, Molly - I’m, I’m sorry. It’s Sherlock - he’s gotten himself into something - this murderer, he knows him. And he thinks he can handle it alone. And he can’t. I can’t let him."

Molly softened a little but didn’t come any closer. Betas were very intimidated by Alpha fury, and she had never felt one as dangerous as this. It didn’t feel like John Watson at all. She glanced at the door. She wanted to get away. John put his hand on hers, and she gasped. He clenched firmly, not hurting. But he wasn’t going to let her go.

"Show me anything you have. Anything at all that might help me find out. . . where these boys were actually killed. . . . or where they might have been going." He was thinking now of Andrew Kearn, who had blithely announced that he was on his way to Dharamasala - "private plane!" before vanishing.

She was mesmerised: a rabbit before a cobra. Frozen, Molly held her breath, didn’t move, colour draining from her face. John felt a twinge of remorse. Only a twinge.

"Molly. He’s - I can’t let him get hurt. He’s my bonded now. Do you understand what that means? And, and.. . . he’s. We’re. He’s -"

"He’s what? What’s wrong with Sherlock? You’re frightening me, John."

John crumpled and let go her hand. He put his hands over his eyes, and she saw the raw cuts, ragged strips of flesh clotted with fresh blood. "He’s pregnant."

Molly sat slowly down on a stool. She hadn’t the faintest idea what to say. Such a thing seemed impossible. Now at least she understood the change that had come over John. She pushed one toward John with her foot and he sat too.

"All the other evidence has been taken by the Yard. But there was that boy brought in two nights ago. I found something. But it might be nothing." She pulled over a laptop and brought up a fuzzy pixelated image that was slowly resolving into something sharper. While John stared, she quietly sterilized and bound his cuts. He felt nothing. Finally the picture was still, crisp and clear.

What they were looking at was a close-up of woven fabric. On it was a blurry pattern that seemed to be words, maybe a code? Then he realised they were simply reversed.

"Oh. Sorry," she said, and pressed a key. The image reversed.

"The victim had a scrap of paper in his pocket. There was drug residue in the pocket as well: that was our first priority. The body lay in the rain for a long time. The paper itself turned to pulp. But the ink had soaked into the lining of his trouser pocket. It left an impression. I noticed it when we were removing the drugs residue."

They looked at the image. The words were:

"Hants, AHE"

"Hants? Hampshire?" Molly printed the photograph, then looked at John and silently printed another. "This’s for the Yard to sort. Maybe . . . he had a friend in Hampshire? Anyway, it’ll be a day or two for toxicology."

John folded the image and put it in his pocket.

"What will you do now?" Molly asked.

"Bring Sherlock, bring them back home safe," John said.

She watched the doors swing closed behind him and took a deep calming breath. It really

was true about Alphas when their mate was in danger. She had never seen it up close before, although she had seen the result often enough. She had worked with corpses so battered and mutilated that they almost didn’t pass for human. Alpha rage could be almost supernatural in its power. The fact that it didn’t really show in John’s face didn’t count. She had looked into his eyes.

She decided to make a call. No one seemed to know where DI Lestrade was, but she left him a message and put him in the picture, and felt a little relieved for having done so. Then she turned to her notes on the effects found on the bodies of the Sleeping Beauties victims to date.

One boy had indeed been found with a little vial, a scrap of a golden label nearly rubbed off. She pulled up that image and decided that if you looked closely, the image might be the petal of a flower. Possibly a lotus.

# # #

Reaching into his pocket for his Oyster card, John felt an unfamiliar wad of papers and groaned. It was the papers the Omega boy at the clinic had dropped. He unfolded it. Unsurprisingly, there was no ID. But there was a grubby little folded card, a little bigger than a business card. It had an engraving of the outline of a grand house, some sort of manor or hall. Beneath, it read,

Hantswood Hall

Tatsfield, Surrey TN16 2BJ

All Hallows Eve.

Ten O’ Clock

On the reverse was a now-familiar symbol, this time not golden. A black lotus.

He rang the clinic. Chandra answered curtly.

"Doctor Chandra. Is the boy still sleeping?"

"That boy woke up. You didn’t dose him enough, Doctor. But I suppose you were being conservative, he was in frail condition. Not too frail to leave, though."

"He’s gone? Did he leave his name, number, anything?"

"That sort! What do you think. Right back on the street. You asked me not to report him. I thought you were fine with him going, once he was better. Is there something you’re not telling me, Doctor Watson?"

"Forget it," he said shortly. It didn’t matter now. He studied the card. Hantswood. Like the note pressed into the dead boy’s pocket. One of the Sleeping Beauties" "Hants" Not Hampshire at all. Surrey. Not far, then. And "AHE" was plain enough. All Hallow’s Eve.

("I’ll be back tomorrow, probably.")

John didn’t have a mind palace; nevertheless, he possessed an excellent memory. John had excelled in physics, a required course for premed.

"For every action," he recited to himself coldly, "there is an equal and opposite reaction."

# # #

A pub on the North Downs, Surrey. The next day.

A tall bearded man, a beta in a rough tweed coat and thick boots, sat quietly in the darkest corner of an ancient half-timbered pub. He appeared to be a local farmer. Smoke clung to the beams from yesteryear’s cigarettes and pipes, wafted from the ancient blackened fireplace. There was a malty, doughy aroma of ale.

The man who might have been a farmer paid for steady half pints, ate heartily of a shepherd’s pie. Nobody noticed he didn’t actually drink. After a while, nobody noticed him at all.

Night fell.

A small, frail looking old man in an overcoat and muffled up in a scarf entered and directly approached the farmer. The old man carried a small battered case, like an antique traveling trunk. He sat at the farmer’s table.

They regarded each other silently for a few moments. The old man’s eyes were dark with the sorrows of the past, and of knowing too much of the future.

" There is nothing to be done. You’re . . . " The old man looked down.

Sherlock Holmes nodded. He looked down too. "I knew you’d feel it. He’ll feel it too. I can’t have that. Of course I can’t ingest . . . well, anything at all, now."

"But I admire your mixture. An oil, perhaps? The very centre of a beta of the countryside."

"The air in here helps. So many mature old notes. People mind their business here, anyway."

El Brujo gave Sherlock a commanding look. "Go back. Your Alpha fought for you, he freed you. Why are you alone?"

"Because no one else can pay for this. It has to be me. You’ve been in London, you know what he’s doing now, surely."

"Your homeless friends, they do not say much. But I came anyway. I thought this might be your idea. But I didn’t expect you to be -"

"Yes, yes, " Sherlock muttered. "I need to get very close to him. He can’t know about my condition, he can’t even know it’s me. This beta oil is all very well for public consumption. Maxim would never be fooled, obviously. Will you help me? There’s no time, you see - or I’d do it myself."

"You use the words, "me," and "myself," far too much, my reckless friend. This does not become an Omega who is bonded. Have you thought truly of what you mean to do? What could happen?" El Brujo was too old and too wise not to pretend not to be afraid. "I’ve helped you before."

Sherlock flushed a little at this, felt the rebuke. He remembered El Brujo’s gift: the old bottles, draining their contents. Maxim’s rage.

"What would my friend Damchok Rimpoche say about this plan?"

Sherlock’s eyes widened. El Brujo did not smile. His eyes glittered. Sherlock looked away.

"I will tell you what he says. He says to remember what he told you. In Dharamasala."

Sherlock frowned, remembering. They had spoken of many things that day. John had been with him, then. He was with him now, too; he felt John strongly. Not just inside, not just the spark of new life that was still more an idea than an actual feeling; this was John himself. He had never felt impressions like this from John. He didn’t want this feeling, it was frightening, and Sherlock Holmes was never afraid. Almost never. (In a cottage on a loch he lay against tangled sheets, shivering. "Don’t be afraid," John said.) He felt a foreboding, like opening a familiar door and finding something behind it that was not supposed to be there.

"Damchok Rimpoche said," Sherlock began slowly, "Your Alpha is not easily changed -"

"- once his mind is made up about something," El Brujo finished.

Sherlock nodded. It was true. "Then I need to be quick. What I have to do, I have to do before John . . . tries to find me."

El Brujo closed his eyes, steepled his fingertips. "You are on the wrong road. But I can see you won’t turn back. We need someplace to work. A quiet place."

"I’ve rented a room from the publican. The outbuilding across the way. I’ll go now. Wait, then follow me."

Sherlock doffed his cap and went out into the night. El Brujo watched out the window as he crossed the road, then walked up a chalky slope that shone very white in the moonlight. Outlined in the brilliant silver light of the autumn moon, Sherlock looked radiant.

And very alone.

To be continued.. . .

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