Fic: When the Earth Moved - Sanctuary/The Closer - Part Two
Title: When the Earth Moved
Author(s): JoelTheCat
Artist: AzureMonkey
Crossover: Sanctuary/The Closer
Type: Het
Rating: R for gore
Word Count: 15551
Characters/Pairings: Sharon Raydor/John Druitt, plus assorted canon pairings from both shows
Warnings: Gore. Non-con. References to animal abuse. More gore. Crawling around in John Druitt's head. Child kidnapping in the backstory.
Spoilers: whole run of Sanctuary; all but the last six episodes of The Closer.
Summary: Serial killings of prostitutes attract the Sanctuary team to Los Angeles, much to the chagrin of the LAPD
Author’s Notes: Blessed be Creepylicious, who beta-read this monstrosity under less than optimal conditions.
Link to Story Master Post: Master Post
Link to Art Master Post: The Art
Brenda Leigh Johnson smiled her most predatory smile, and Gavin fought the urge to bang his head against the desk.
"Do you have an interest in the LAPD's internal workings, Mr. Greeley?" she asked.
"Crime reporters can hardly avoid a bit of curiosity," Tesla said.
"In Internal Affairs?"
The man shrugged. Gavin looked back and forth between the two, wondering which was actually in the ascendancy.
"Makes for good stories," Tesla said. That was good, that was noncommittal. It might get Brenda to let something slip.
In a couple of million years.
"And what story were you researching at the time you were invited to this interview?"
"Huh?"
"The pictures on your computer, Mr. Greeley. What is your interest in them?"
"The redhead? She's the one who led me to the body at the airport. I needed some background about her."
"How did you even know her name?" Brenda asked.
Okay, that was enough.
"I told him," said Gavin. "I recognized his description. There aren't a whole lot of redheads in senior positions in the LAPD, and even fewer with... what was that phrase, Mr. Greeley? 'A rack and a half?' It had to be Sharon."
"I looked up the picture to be sure," Tesla said. Good, at least he could follow where he was led. "And was reading the article for background when... when your invitation came."
"And your colleagues?"
"She's an interesting woman. Not a lot of heiresses take the cop test. She might be worth a profile in her own right. Who's her boyfriend? Anybody?"
Brenda smiled.
"I told you, Mr. Greeley, I ask the questions here."
Brenda's lips might be smiling, Gavin noted, but her eyes were not. Her eyes were very, very worried.
Brenda Leigh Johnson knew something about John Druitt, something that had aroused her concern, and that was the best news Gavin Q. Baker had had all day.
John sat on the ground sandwiched between a warm boulder and a warmer woman leaning back against him, and asked himself why he had just done something so phenomenally stupid.
"Science then," he tried to explain, "was far less of a step-by-step matter than it is now. There was so very much that we didn't know. People could strike out into the wilderness and make discoveries and not have them dismissed as impossible. The abnormals, not the ones that could pass for human, but the extreme cases, had been hidden for most of human history, until this sudden burst of curiosity found them out."
"And how did that go over?" Sharon asked.
"You're a police officer," John reminded her. "How do you think it went over? They had to be hidden for their own protection, and that was the beginning of the English Sanctuary from which the whole network sprang."
"That seems laudable," she said, "but you sound as if there's more to it. You're not just an abnormal, are you?"
"No," he said. "That same boundless reach that led to discoveries of new planets and new species and new forces of nature... well, we knew no bounds, no reason to curb our daring. We found a vial, a vial containing the blood of a long-extinct species."
"And you analyzed it?"
"That's not how nineteenth century science worked. We experimented... we injected it... into ourselves."
"Dear God. And you lived?"
"We did, and we kept on living. Out of all the brilliant minds of the nineteenth century, only we...'only the chosen, left alive, immortals all, the holy five...' only the Five are left... well, three of us, anyway. It gave us all long life, but it interacted differently with the chemistry of each body. I gained the ability to teleport as I just showed you."
Sharon was silent, thinking. John would have given a great deal to know exactly what was running through her mind. Eventually she spoke.
"So," she said, "if we were to become closer, how would this... affect me?"
"It would decrease your travel expenses considerably," he answered.
"Be serious," she said. "Is it... unhealthy?"
Sharon did have a brain, didn't she? She'd hit the nail square on the head.
"Not to be around," he told her. He took a deep breath to tell her about his problem, then let it out again. There was no statute of limitations on murder. He could be prosecuted for every woman he'd ever killed, from the first girl in Whitechapel all the way down... he shuddered, and Sharon looked up at him.
"For you?" she asked.
"Put it into perspective," he said. "This is the twenty-first century. Most of my colleagues did not last until the end of the nineteenth. Unhealthy is a relative matter. I don't do it any more than I can manage, but I wanted you to see...."
She hugged the arms wrapped around her waist.
"Of course you did," she said. "I'm glad you trusted me with this. I only wish I had something half equal to this to offer in return."
"Don't know anything about earthquakes, do you?" he asked.
"The tremors we've been having lately?"
"There is an opinion that they may be a manufactured phenomenon."
Sharon shuddered in his arms.
"Why would anyone create...?"
"Blackmail?"
She shuddered again, and squeezed his arms tighter around her.
"Who would do a thing like that?"
"A group," he told her, "that believes its ancestors were systematically excluded from the human power structure. Unjustly excluded."
"Abnormals?"
"Not necessarily. Find their headquarters and we'll find out."
"Worth looking into," she said, "but I'll need to talk to some people."
"Be careful."
"I will. Would you take me back now, please?"
"Brenda?" said Fritzi. "You may have a problem."
"I was under the impression that I had several." She took the Panda Express bag from him and set out the containers on her dining table.
"This would be a new one. The FBI is interested in your earthquakes."
"Tell the FBI they can have all the earthquakes they want at Quantico, and Los Angeles will not begrudge them a single one."
She brought their enameled chopsticks from the kitchen and set each pair in place. Brenda's daddy had been stationed in Japan for much of his early career, and he had not allowed his family to eat Asian food with a fork. Brenda had tried when she left home, but it always felt wrong.
"We may have a line," Fritz said. Brenda lost all interest in the food.
"On what?" she asked with feigned composure.
Fritz grinned like an idiot. She was not fooling him one bit.
"On an informal summer session for undergraduates from second-tier colleges, kids who almost got into the big schools, or who did and then were kicked out for misbehavior. They met in Hawaii last year just about the time all the waterspouts hit. Year before that, Tallahassee when the sinkholes started caving in."
"You think they're responsible?"
"There's more. This conference has entertainment."
"Girls?"
"Some of them say the guys were a little rough. One of the entertainers in Maui was never seen again."
"So I've got crazy frat boys messing up hookers and generating earthquakes?"
"Maybe. Maybe not, but it's certainly suggestive."
"Oh, yeah."
"Brenda?"
"What?"
"Could you pass the walnut shrimp, please?"
Gavin could never get over the sense that he was entering the principal's office.
"You asked to see me, Doctor Magnus?"
"Yes, Gavin." She handed him another photograph. "Do you know this man?"
It was an old picture, sepia-toned, but the casually dressed man could have come from any era. He seemed familiar, somehow. Gavin closed his eyes and went through mental files of every photograph he had ever seen, from his father showing him his mother holding his baby sister when he was three right up until school when they....
...when they had learned about the Five, and about their associates.
"Adam Worth," he said, relegating his internal file of visual images back to their mental cubbyholes. "An associate of yours from your early days at Oxford, with particular interests in biochemistry and...."
"And earth science, among other things." Magnus finished for him. "He has become active again. He maintains a web site for students interested in geology, geophysics and meteorology, for bright children who somehow do not gain access to the right education. They have conventions."
"I thought Worth was dead."
"He's a time traveler," Dr. Magnus said. "Killing him only anchors the end of his timeline. It can still loop around until it becomes quite tangled."
"Is Adam Worth responsible for the seismic anomalies in the last few weeks?"
"I have no way of knowing," she said, "but I think it is something that should be investigated. I have relatively few resources here. Do you think the police could be interested...?"
"Oh, yeah," said Gavin, "if I can get the information to them in a way that they'll believe, they'll be all over it. The trouble is making it credible."
Sharon didn't close her eyes when John teleported them back to her car, but she got no more visual information than she had the first time. Well, things did turn pink, but it was just blank pink and then she was standing in his arms beside her car in a downtown parking lot with a reddened sun lowering at them between tall buildings.
"I suppose," she said, "it would be superfluous to offer you a ride home."
"For the pleasure of your company, my dear, I would forgo more conveniences than this. And as I said, I try not to overdo it."
Sharon's phone rang. She answered and listened for a moment, then thumbed it off and dropped it in her pocket.
"I'm afraid it will have to be just a ride home," she said. "Some lost soul with a badge and a gun just drank himself into a stupor and shot his neighbor's cat."
"Oh, dear. What had the poor animal done?"
"Peed on his lawn."
"Does one shoot cats for doing that?"
"Usually not."
"I wouldn't have thought."
"This cat's owner was apparently engaging in inappropriate activities with the officer's wife."
"Did the cat put them up to it, then?"
Sharon smiled.
"For a moment you sounded like Chief Pope."
"Animal lover, is he?"
"His first promotion was into Narcotics as a dog handler. He has a rapport with animals."
"Just a normal rapport? He's human, or no?"
"I...." Sharon thought about this. The existence of abnormals raised all sorts of questions. Chief Pope's pet dogs did things for him that she's never seen animals do, not even in circuses. For all she knew, he might be an abnormal with a gift for understanding dogs. Brenda Leigh Johnson might be more than a CIA-trained interrogator. Provenza....
Being stupid wasn't an abnormal gift. Was it?
"John, if there have been abnormals among the human population for all this time... do they all know what they are? Are there people walking around with abnormal gifts who don't have any idea what they can do?"
"The serious cases, the shape-changers and mermaids and so forth, they have to know. I suspect there may be a few cases of interbreeding where abnormals think they're human, and considerably more where they choose to pass as human."
"As you do?"
"Is that a problem for you?"
"No," she told him. "It's not a problem. My problem is a trigger-happy drunk in East LA. I'll drop you at home before I go. Oh, and please don't tell anyone I told you about the cat. I'm not supposed to talk about my cases."
John assured her he would remain mum. She drove him to the hotel and he kissed her and got out of the car. Sharon drove away, watching in the rear view mirror as John stood on the sidewalk watching her in turn. She caught herself smiling, and banished the expression. Her world might have turned upside down, and not just because of the existence of abnormals, but Sharon Raydor had a job to do, and right now she had to write a report determining whether or not Officer Greene had been justified in shooting a urinating housepet.
Gavin tapped on her door as quietly as he could. Brenda Leigh Johnson was hard enough to deal with without startling her first.
"Should you be here?" she asked. "Since we're on opposite sides, so to speak?"
"I'm not here to talk about that case. I can't tell you what case I am here about, though, or who's involved."
"Uh-huh." Brenda's eyes narrowed in a way that was even more unpleasant than the tone of her reply.
"There is a real limit to what I can tell you. I'm sure you understand."
"You haven't told me anything that makes sense so far."
"It's important."
"You want to talk about important? Go outside and look at the dismembered women on my murder board and then come tell me about important. Go look in every holding cell and county lockup this side of Barstow and listen to the women who want to get back to work even if it kills them, and come talk to me about important. You have something to tell me that will help them?"
"There's a guy you may want to talk to about your earthquakes."
"My earthquakes?"
"You know, when the earth moves?"
"What do you know?"
Brenda's sudden interest gave Gavin pause. She knew something that he didn't. Of course, she was a cop investigating this case, so it was good that she knew things, as long as what she knew didn't get her into trouble.
"His name is Adam Worth," Gavin told her. "He's a scientist of sorts who runs an academic fraternity for students studying geophysics and so on. They're having a convocation in Los Angeles."
"And you know this how?"
"I can't tell you that, but it's unrelated to any other case." He sincerely hoped it was unrelated. He hoped he could eventually get Brenda to drop the trespassing charges against Nicola Tesla, but in the mean time....
"That figures. Well, you can tell Dr. Tesla the charges against him are dropped."
"I... I beg your pardon?" How on earth did Brenda know that name?
"We ran his fingerprints," she said. "Some former associates of mine got back to me real quick. It seems your client is a big wheel in some circles doing something real important. I got told to back off him. So, I'm backing."
"Thank you."
"Off him."
"Ungh...."
"Do you know somebody named Helen Magnus?"
The gig was so up.
"She was my teacher," he said. "She called me as soon as she arrived."
"She's in Los Angeles?"
"Yeah. I spoke to her last night."
Brenda's nose wrinkled.
"Did she tell you about this Worth character?"
"We have discussed him on several occasions."
"What do you know about him that I don't?"
"Do you promise to believe me?"
"Gavin, when do I take anybody at face value?"
"This is particularly unbelievable."
"Tell me."
"His father was killed in the aftermath of the American Civil War. He was born on a ship on the way back to England."
"This is the Civil War we had in the middle of the nineteenth century?"
"That's the one."
"So this Worth person is over 150 years old?"
"Just about."
"You're right. That is unbelievable."
"Some people have special talents, Brenda. One of those talents, for some people, is living longer than average."
"Gavin, someone out there could be carving a prostitute like a Thanksgiving turkey right now, and you are wasting my time with some fairy story about...."
"Do you remember the first time we met? In my office? Do you remember what you were wearing? I do." He described her clothing and her husband's, right down to the tiny pagan tie tack Fritz had worn. He quoted their conversation, word for word. He closed his eyes and started back through it again, demonstrating each of her gestures. She stopped him.
"I get it," she said. "You have a real good memory, but what does that have...."
"The first thing I remember seeing was this thing my parents hung over my crib. I could make out the bright colors before the shapes. There was a red disk and yellow stars and a black and white cow jumping over a blue moon."
"Children that young don't remember."
"I do. I remember everything, Brenda, all the way back to that mobile, and it's all tucked away and organized so I can use it."
"Really? Prove it. Fritz gave you a check." He recited the date, the amount, the routing number and back account number and the number of the check, then the name of the bank and Fritz's personal information.
"That is freaky," she said.
"And convenient, but it doesn't have anything to do with your case. Adam Worth maybe does."
"Okay," she said. "I'll look into it, but I don't know how I'm going to tell Chief Pope about this."
"Most major police departments know about Dr. Magnus and her organization," he told her, "at least at the highest levels. He may be more receptive than you think. Just, don't tell him about me, okay?"
"You never go anywhere near my murder room again," she said.
"You think I'm a danger to you?"
"A lawyer with a perfect memory in the same room with my murder board? Damn right, you're a danger."
Something started beating on the inside of Will Pope's skull halfway through the meeting. The information was disturbing enough, but this was....
...this was Brenda Leigh, bursting through his door as if he worked for her, boiling about some injustice he seemed to have committed. His companion stopped talking, eyes wide.
"Who," Brenda demanded, "is Helen Magnus, and what does she have to do with my case?"
He was dumbfounded. He felt his mouth opening and closing like a gasping fish, but the force of Brenda's anger overwhelmed him as it always did, and he could form no words. His companion, however, could.
"I'm Helen Magnus," she said. "What case is this that you believe I have to do with?"
Brenda shook Dr. Magnus's hand, apparently from reflex, but then she spun on Will.
"You knew about this," she said, "and you weren't going to tell me?"
The pressure inside his head was overwhelming.
"Brenda...."
"You'll give him a coronary, if you're not careful," Dr. Magnus said.
"I beg your pardon? If my boss holds back information on a case he himself asked me to investigate, I think I have the right to give him a piece of my mind!"
"Then control your emotions and do it verbally, or you may do real damage!"
"What are you talking about?"
Magnus stepped around Brenda and took Will's hand, then turned it over and touched two fingers to his pulse.
"Not a full-fledged telepath," she said softly. "Empath?"
He finally managed to shape words.
"None," he said, "of your business."
The blaze of Brenda's anger was gone. Dark fear sat in her throat, fear not of him but for him, fear tinged... tinged with awe. Oh, God, she was hearing all this, taking it in, and she believed it.
"My organization," said Dr. Magnus, "can show you ways to shield yourself."
"There is nothing from which I need to be shielded," he told her firmly.
"I think we both know better than that," the doctor said. It was her patronizing attitude that finally made Will lose his grip on his temper.
"My father," he said, "told you to stay away from us, and I'm telling you again: stay away. Deal with Chief Johnson if you know anything about this case, but you stay the hell away from me!"
Dr. Magnus looked puzzled, but she started to speak again. Brenda stepped between them and lifted the doctor's fingers off Will's hand.
"Excuse me," she said, "but what part of 'stay the hell away' do you not understand?"
"He needs...."
"He's a grown man. He knows what he needs, and he asked you to leave him alone." Will could feel Brenda's anger again. This time it was not blazing, but ice cold, and it was directed at Helen Magnus. "If you'd be kind enough to wait for me outside, I'll be with you in a minute."
The doctor took a deep breath, and backed down.
"Of course," she said. She closed the door on her way out. Brenda turned and put her arms around Will.
"Don't let her know I have kids," he blurted.
"It'll be all right," Brenda said. The anger was gone now, and the worry was back. Worry for him.
"Really," he said, "don't let her know. They use people like us...."
"So does the CIA," said Brenda, "but don't tell anyone I told you so. You know they probably already know about you, anyway."
"Oh, God."
"Shh. If they wanted you, they would have taken you years ago."
"My kids...."
"Shh. It'll be all right."
"You're not... surprised?"
"Somebody else told me some of it. I suppose I should have known. My mother can't tell what's going on inside my head the way you can. Can you tell if someone's lying?"
"I can't do it with everybody. Mostly just animals. People, just if there's a really strong connection: love, hate, sometimes a buddy thing."
"Yeah, well, I'm glad. I don't think anybody could love me for all these years without some special gift to deal with my bullshit."
"Fritz does," he told her, not really sure why he said it.
"Maybe."
"No, he does."
"How do you...?" She looked up at him, and suddenly she understood, and Will felt her heart break.
The woman was very blond, probably more so than was natural, but her eyes were chocolaty brown. Helen wondered if she herself was not some sort of abnormal, although there seemed to be no signs of it. The Baker boy... no, the full-grown attorney... had known her for years, and he would have noticed any significant abnormality. Still, he had also met this Chief Pope, and Gavin had said nothing about the man being a powerful empath who had apparently encountered Sanctuary operatives as a child. One would think that sort of thing would deserve mentioning.
Chief Johnson came out of her superior's office dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. Helen stood to meet her.
"Is he all right?" Helen asked.
"He prefers that I not discuss that with you."
"All right," she said, "but would it do any harm to listen? The two of you are obviously very close...."
"Follow me," the woman said, "down to my interview room, please. I'd rather not talk about my case in the hallways."
"Chief's going to be pissed," said Gabriel.
"How's that?" Provenza asked.
"We got that list of kids who flunked out of Stamford and MIT and Georgia Tech and all, and went back into second-rank schools. None of them are actually in school right now. They're at some sort of event, and we don't know where."
The interview room door closed behind her, and Brenda turned off the video feed.
"All right," she told Dr. Magnus. "I've known Will Pope for a couple of decades, and the only problem he's ever had with this thing is when he met you. He does not need your help."
"There may be complications later."
"I can't convince him to trust you, and I'm not sure I would if I could."
"He must have been very young. Children sometimes misunderstand what they see."
"Children with his particular gift? Not likely."
"Do you not want the information that might save his life? Simple things, like herbal teas to sharpen or dull his sensitivity, or how to deal with the migraines and the leakage into his dreams."
Brenda smiled. She already knew some pretty effective ways to calm Will down when he woke up screaming. But...
"I'm not his wife," she said.
"Then you do know what I mean."
"What I want to know," Brenda said, flipping the recorder back on, "is what you know about Adam Worth."
"I know where he's staying right now," she said. "He's at a hotel near a theme park. I'll write it down for you."
"All right," said Brenda. She flipped the switch off again. "And write down those teas you were talking about, please. Thank you."
"There is one other thing," the doctor said. "One of your colleagues may be in some danger."
John counted his cash and found it necessary to make another after-hours trip to the bank. He restocked his cash supply, then popped back to his room.
Or rather, he tried to. He actually materialized six inches above the floor and came down on the carpet with a thud.
The floor, indeed the whole building was still shaking. John probed it gingerly, feeling along the guidelines that let him find his way around the planet. They were warped, bent in an unnatural manner. Someone was playing with his planet.
This would not do. John could just have easily had materialized six inches too low, with his legs through the floor. This was not on. He closed his eyes, mapping the twists and strains, tracing them as they vibrated with an almost musical intensity, until he found... there! He had the geographical location.
He could... he could do what? Pop in there and demand that it be stopped because it inconvenienced him? Stop it by force? He probably could, but it would just pop up again somewhere else. To take out an entire organization....
...perhaps he needed an organization. He thumbed Sharon's number.
Three hours later, Brenda was back in Pope's office, this time with Sharon Raydor in tow.
"They think there's some possibility that these people are causing the earthquakes," she said.
"Why would anyone cause an earthquake?" Raydor asked yet again.
"The man they suspect," Brenda said, "is not entirely sane. He suffers from the effects... now, this is coming from this woman that Chief Pope tells me is sane and reliable... he was possessed by an energy creature as a complication of his ability to teleport."
"Sharon," Will said, "what's wrong?"
"N... nothing."
Brenda had not seen Sharon Raydor this discomfitted since... come to think of it, she'd never seen the woman this bad off.
"This is not the first time you've heard this story," Brenda said.
Pope's gaze swiveled from one woman to another.
"Tell him," Brenda ordered, "or I will."
"I didn't know anything about... about the possession."
"Did you know he's a killer? That he has a history of murdering prostitutes in exactly the same manner as the serial killer...."
"We haven't decided that we have a serial killer," Pope broke in.
"Trust me, if he did it, this man has a very long history. Sharon, did he tell you...."
"Wait a minute!" Will stopped her again. "John Druitt?"
"Your friend Doctor Magnus...."
"She's no friend of mine!" he reminded her.
"Did you know that Druitt is her daughter's father, Captain?"
"I... he told me he had a daughter, that he was worried about her."
"He can stop worrying. Ashley's dead. Of course, he already knows that."
"No, she's not. I looked her up. Her father was worried, but she won't speak to him. Or to her mother. She told me about her mother."
"This sounds," Pope said, "like each of you has heard one side of the story of a very nasty divorce."
"Energy creature?" said Brenda.
"I'll ask John," said Sharon. Her phone chirped, announcing a text message. "It's him." She thumbed her phone and read. "He wants me to meet him. He says he knows something about the earthquakes."
"Not alone," Pope said.
"Oh, please. If he wanted to hurt me, nothing any of us could do could stop him."
"What do you mean?" Brenda asked. "What do you know?"
"The part about the teleporting is true. But I don't believe the rest of it, and until you have hard evidence...."
"I have two dead...."
"Two women who could have been killed by anyone, and the unsupported testimony of the man's hostile ex-wife."
"They were never actually married," Pope said. "In the stories I heard, I mean."
"She's certainly hostile," Sharon asserted.
"That she is," Brenda admitted. "She claims he was Jack the Ripper. Literally."
"Right. Well, then, I have to go get carved up in place of some poor prostitute."
"Is there any way I can talk you out of this?" Will asked.
"No."
"Then call me when you go in, and when you come out. Take too long, Captain, and I will have a SWAT team break in on your romantic interlude."
"He can teleport, Chief." Sharon reminded him.
"How do you know that?" Brenda asked. "Did he tell you himself?"
"He showed me." There was total silence in the room. "I have to go," she said finally. She crossed the room, stepped outside and closed the door behind her.
"You think she's in any real danger?" Pope asked.
"I think John Druitt may be."
"Sharon's not that bad," he said, "if you don't butt heads with her like a couple of rutting mountain goats."
"I don't think Druitt's doing the earthquakes," she said. "My information points in another direction, but I need to check something out before we talk about it."
"Okay, but you be careful, too."
He felt a rush of bubbly laughter like champagne.
"I'll be okay. After all, I protected you from the horrible Dr. Magnus, didn't I?"
"She took my sister," Will said. "Annie was worse than me. She could actually read minds. She was five, and she didn't know to keep quiet about it. She'd tell her kindergarten teacher what she was thinking. One day Dr. Magnus showed up and offered to take her, to put her in a special school."
"Something like the X-Men?"
"More like the X Files. My father said 'no.' He told her Annie belonged with her family. Six weeks later the Welfare people took her. They said Annie had special needs, and we couldn't provide for her. They... they asked about me. My mom and I got in the car as soon as they were gone. We never saw Annie or my father again."
"I'm sorry." She tried to let it permeate her, to let him feel that she felt his grief. "That's a horrible way to live."
He smiled.
"Whatever you do," he said, "don't let her know I have kids. I sent them to their mother, but... just don't let her know, okay?"
"She won't find out from me, anyway. I have to go talk to this Dr. Worth about the earthquake thing."
"You think he knows something?"
"I think he's an expert in the field, and I'd like to have this off our blotter."
"And every street hooker in Los Angeles out of jail?"
"And into some other way of life, yes, but I'll start with Dr. Worth."
Will sat alone at his desk for the better part of two hours. His stomach was churning. Fear for Leo and Connie ate at him, along with fear for Brenda and even a bit of apprehension for Sharon Raydor. He had not expected her to....
His office walls flushed with pink, then returned to normal. Sharon Raydor was standing by the window, leaning against Druitt, whose arm was around her waist.
"You wanted to see me, Will?" he said.
"Uh, yeah." Pope could recover as well as anyone else. It was not as if he didn't know that abnormals existed. "Uh, did you kill two prostitutes in Los Angles in the last week or so?"
"Er...no."
"Okay."
"That's it?" Raydor said, her eyebrows climbing toward her bangs.
"Yeah," Pope told her. "He has no reason to lie. We have no practical means of holding him, even if we had a case, which we don't. All we have is wild accusations that couldn't be proven even if they were true."
"I beg your pardon?" said Druitt.
"I called Scotland Yard. These murders Dr. Magnus claims you did? The bodies are dust. There is no physical evidence, no fingerprints, no nothing. The cases are open, it's true, but there is no way to convict anyone of those crimes short of a confession, and they're not going to believe a confession. Whoever killed those women is off the hook."
"That," said Sharon, "is sad. No way to give them justice, ever."
"Some cases are just too cold," Pope said. "I...."
Then he felt a pain in his temples that drove speech from him, that squeezed his eyelids shut as his eyes burned behind them, and the pain resolved itself into fear, fear coming from....
"Brenda," he gasped. "She...."
"She's what?" Druitt asked.
"Terrified," Will said. "Offended, and terrified. The case turned itself every which way, and she's... no way out...."
"Where is she?" asked Sharon, reaching for the phone. She looked skeptical, but at least she was doing something.
"She went to speak to Adam Worth," Pope said.
"Oh, dear God," said Druitt. "Do you know where he is?"
"No."
"Do you know where she is? Can you feel her, quite well?"
"I can always feel her."
"Then come here, both of you. Bring your weapons."
Brenda was disgusted with herself. She had walked into what appeared to be the offices attached to a small lab. She had asked the young man at the desk to let her speak to Adam Worth. He introduced her to the doctor, who claimed to know nothing about the earthquakes. When she went back out in the lobby, it was full of boys, young boys who should have been in college.
"We can't find the hookers, Dr. Worth," said one of them. "Maybe we could make do with this one?"
"Excuse me," said Brenda, "but I'm a police officer."
"Might be trouble," Worth said.
"Is it going to matter?" another boy asked. "When you blackmail the world with the threat of earthquakes, the last thing they're going to worry about is what happened to one cop."
"Even if they ever find all the pieces of her," said another with a grin that Brenda didn't like at all. She reached for her weapon, but it was taken from her hand and tossed away. The six boys grasped her by her limbs, her clothing, even her hair, and when she screamed they held her mouth open and stuffed a washcloth in it, a washcloth that didn't taste too clean.
Brenda had never been so terrified in her life. The boys dragged her across the room and lifted her up on a pool table. The one with the nasty grin started cutting her clothes away with a very sharp knife while the others ran their hands over the most personal parts of her body.
She was almost completely naked when the shooting started. She heard Will's voice, then Sharon's, and then an utter hail of gunfire as one of the college boys pulled a piece. Then John Druitt's arms were around Brenda, and everything went pink. She blinked, and found herself in Fritz's office back at the Reagan building. Druitt walked across the room and set her in her husband's arms, then vanished in another blaze of rose. She clutched at Fritz, dug the washcloth out of her mouth and then hugged him some more.
"Brenda?" Fritz asked. "Is there some reason you're naked?"
"It's a really long story," she told him. "Could you just hold me for a minute?"
Sharon and John were back on the rock in the park, but this time the city beneath them was sparkling lights against black velvet.
"So she's all right," Sharon told him, "although she may never forgive Chief Pope for making her go through a rape kit. And my second-in-command has determined that killing six young men who were engaged in sexual assault on a police officer actually is within the bounds of justifiable homicide, 'barely,' as he puts it. Which is a comforting thought for every woman who wears a badge, I'm sure."
"I can imagine." She felt him shudder behind her.
"Also Chief Johnson gave Dr. Magnus a piece of her mind...."
"Ah, but I would have loved to have seen that!"
"...and Dr. Magnus obligingly produced an old man and a middle-aged woman who may or may not be Ann Pope and her father. She still claims Chief Pope misunderstands the situation. Anyway, they're running their DNA against his now. It seems the two of them were under the impression that the woman's mother and brother were killed in an automobile accident, and they've been living in Toronto all this time, or so they say."
"How's Will taking it?"
"He didn't believe a word of it, until the two of the walked into the room. Then he found out he can read this Ann person perfectly, and she can read him. He thinks she's the real deal, and Dr. Magnus is peeved because she thinks someone pulled the wool over her eyes about Pope and his mother."
"Do her good not to get her way for once."
"And your daughter's a uniformed officer in Long Beach."
"Ashley is... here?"
Sharon nodded.
"It's a big city, and she felt she could hide here. It may not have been entirely effective; Worth had her address. Anyway, she says she doesn't want to see you, or her mother. She says she wants to be away from 'all that.' She's somewhat disturbed that it seems she didn't run quite far enough. I told her if she ever changes her mind... but I don't think she will."
"I don't blame her. She didn't exactly see me at my best."
"I suppose not."
"So where does that leave us?" he asked.
"You told me you were dangerous," Sharon said.
"You said that wouldn't be a problem."
"Worth got away, you know."
"He would have had to do. He dies somewhere else."
"I don't know if I can be with a killer, John."
"Neither do I," he said, "but here we are. You just killed four potential rapists and may yet get credit for a fifth...."
"Chief Pope hit them, too."
"Yours were the kill shots. I'll wager they're not the first, either."
"You saw what they were doing to Brenda."
"I saw, and if you and Will hadn't been there I would have killed them myself. Is that what you wanted to hear? Because sometimes people just need to be dead, and those six fell into that category. Does that mean we cannot be together?"
"I feel like you and I are standing on the border of two totally different worlds, and where they touch we can touch each other, but what happens when they spin?"
"We hold on," he said. "We hold on, and when it's over, wherever we are, there we are."
"Will you stay here?" Sharon asked. "In Los Angeles?"
"Best not. It might be best if Helen didn't know where to find me, and... and if Ashley had some room. Does her mother know?"
Sharon shook her head.
"Chief Pope is enamored of this woman who may be his sister, but he still regards Dr. Magnus as a suspicious person. He didn't tell her anything."
"But Worth knows where to find Ashley?"
"I told her that. I impressed on her that he was a dangerous character."
"She knows. You'll keep an eye on her? You'll make sure she's safe?"
"She's a cop. Safety for us is a matter of statistics."
"But you'll keep track of her? And let me know if Worth reappears?"
"Will I know where to find you?" she asked him.
"Always," he said.
Part One | Master Post
Author(s): JoelTheCat
Artist: AzureMonkey
Crossover: Sanctuary/The Closer
Type: Het
Rating: R for gore
Word Count: 15551
Characters/Pairings: Sharon Raydor/John Druitt, plus assorted canon pairings from both shows
Warnings: Gore. Non-con. References to animal abuse. More gore. Crawling around in John Druitt's head. Child kidnapping in the backstory.
Spoilers: whole run of Sanctuary; all but the last six episodes of The Closer.
Summary: Serial killings of prostitutes attract the Sanctuary team to Los Angeles, much to the chagrin of the LAPD
Author’s Notes: Blessed be Creepylicious, who beta-read this monstrosity under less than optimal conditions.
Link to Story Master Post: Master Post
Link to Art Master Post: The Art
Brenda Leigh Johnson smiled her most predatory smile, and Gavin fought the urge to bang his head against the desk.
"Do you have an interest in the LAPD's internal workings, Mr. Greeley?" she asked.
"Crime reporters can hardly avoid a bit of curiosity," Tesla said.
"In Internal Affairs?"
The man shrugged. Gavin looked back and forth between the two, wondering which was actually in the ascendancy.
"Makes for good stories," Tesla said. That was good, that was noncommittal. It might get Brenda to let something slip.
In a couple of million years.
"And what story were you researching at the time you were invited to this interview?"
"Huh?"
"The pictures on your computer, Mr. Greeley. What is your interest in them?"
"The redhead? She's the one who led me to the body at the airport. I needed some background about her."
"How did you even know her name?" Brenda asked.
Okay, that was enough.
"I told him," said Gavin. "I recognized his description. There aren't a whole lot of redheads in senior positions in the LAPD, and even fewer with... what was that phrase, Mr. Greeley? 'A rack and a half?' It had to be Sharon."
"I looked up the picture to be sure," Tesla said. Good, at least he could follow where he was led. "And was reading the article for background when... when your invitation came."
"And your colleagues?"
"She's an interesting woman. Not a lot of heiresses take the cop test. She might be worth a profile in her own right. Who's her boyfriend? Anybody?"
Brenda smiled.
"I told you, Mr. Greeley, I ask the questions here."
Brenda's lips might be smiling, Gavin noted, but her eyes were not. Her eyes were very, very worried.
Brenda Leigh Johnson knew something about John Druitt, something that had aroused her concern, and that was the best news Gavin Q. Baker had had all day.
John sat on the ground sandwiched between a warm boulder and a warmer woman leaning back against him, and asked himself why he had just done something so phenomenally stupid.
"Science then," he tried to explain, "was far less of a step-by-step matter than it is now. There was so very much that we didn't know. People could strike out into the wilderness and make discoveries and not have them dismissed as impossible. The abnormals, not the ones that could pass for human, but the extreme cases, had been hidden for most of human history, until this sudden burst of curiosity found them out."
"And how did that go over?" Sharon asked.
"You're a police officer," John reminded her. "How do you think it went over? They had to be hidden for their own protection, and that was the beginning of the English Sanctuary from which the whole network sprang."
"That seems laudable," she said, "but you sound as if there's more to it. You're not just an abnormal, are you?"
"No," he said. "That same boundless reach that led to discoveries of new planets and new species and new forces of nature... well, we knew no bounds, no reason to curb our daring. We found a vial, a vial containing the blood of a long-extinct species."
"And you analyzed it?"
"That's not how nineteenth century science worked. We experimented... we injected it... into ourselves."
"Dear God. And you lived?"
"We did, and we kept on living. Out of all the brilliant minds of the nineteenth century, only we...'only the chosen, left alive, immortals all, the holy five...' only the Five are left... well, three of us, anyway. It gave us all long life, but it interacted differently with the chemistry of each body. I gained the ability to teleport as I just showed you."
Sharon was silent, thinking. John would have given a great deal to know exactly what was running through her mind. Eventually she spoke.
"So," she said, "if we were to become closer, how would this... affect me?"
"It would decrease your travel expenses considerably," he answered.
"Be serious," she said. "Is it... unhealthy?"
Sharon did have a brain, didn't she? She'd hit the nail square on the head.
"Not to be around," he told her. He took a deep breath to tell her about his problem, then let it out again. There was no statute of limitations on murder. He could be prosecuted for every woman he'd ever killed, from the first girl in Whitechapel all the way down... he shuddered, and Sharon looked up at him.
"For you?" she asked.
"Put it into perspective," he said. "This is the twenty-first century. Most of my colleagues did not last until the end of the nineteenth. Unhealthy is a relative matter. I don't do it any more than I can manage, but I wanted you to see...."
She hugged the arms wrapped around her waist.
"Of course you did," she said. "I'm glad you trusted me with this. I only wish I had something half equal to this to offer in return."
"Don't know anything about earthquakes, do you?" he asked.
"The tremors we've been having lately?"
"There is an opinion that they may be a manufactured phenomenon."
Sharon shuddered in his arms.
"Why would anyone create...?"
"Blackmail?"
She shuddered again, and squeezed his arms tighter around her.
"Who would do a thing like that?"
"A group," he told her, "that believes its ancestors were systematically excluded from the human power structure. Unjustly excluded."
"Abnormals?"
"Not necessarily. Find their headquarters and we'll find out."
"Worth looking into," she said, "but I'll need to talk to some people."
"Be careful."
"I will. Would you take me back now, please?"
"Brenda?" said Fritzi. "You may have a problem."
"I was under the impression that I had several." She took the Panda Express bag from him and set out the containers on her dining table.
"This would be a new one. The FBI is interested in your earthquakes."
"Tell the FBI they can have all the earthquakes they want at Quantico, and Los Angeles will not begrudge them a single one."
She brought their enameled chopsticks from the kitchen and set each pair in place. Brenda's daddy had been stationed in Japan for much of his early career, and he had not allowed his family to eat Asian food with a fork. Brenda had tried when she left home, but it always felt wrong.
"We may have a line," Fritz said. Brenda lost all interest in the food.
"On what?" she asked with feigned composure.
Fritz grinned like an idiot. She was not fooling him one bit.
"On an informal summer session for undergraduates from second-tier colleges, kids who almost got into the big schools, or who did and then were kicked out for misbehavior. They met in Hawaii last year just about the time all the waterspouts hit. Year before that, Tallahassee when the sinkholes started caving in."
"You think they're responsible?"
"There's more. This conference has entertainment."
"Girls?"
"Some of them say the guys were a little rough. One of the entertainers in Maui was never seen again."
"So I've got crazy frat boys messing up hookers and generating earthquakes?"
"Maybe. Maybe not, but it's certainly suggestive."
"Oh, yeah."
"Brenda?"
"What?"
"Could you pass the walnut shrimp, please?"
Gavin could never get over the sense that he was entering the principal's office.
"You asked to see me, Doctor Magnus?"
"Yes, Gavin." She handed him another photograph. "Do you know this man?"
It was an old picture, sepia-toned, but the casually dressed man could have come from any era. He seemed familiar, somehow. Gavin closed his eyes and went through mental files of every photograph he had ever seen, from his father showing him his mother holding his baby sister when he was three right up until school when they....
...when they had learned about the Five, and about their associates.
"Adam Worth," he said, relegating his internal file of visual images back to their mental cubbyholes. "An associate of yours from your early days at Oxford, with particular interests in biochemistry and...."
"And earth science, among other things." Magnus finished for him. "He has become active again. He maintains a web site for students interested in geology, geophysics and meteorology, for bright children who somehow do not gain access to the right education. They have conventions."
"I thought Worth was dead."
"He's a time traveler," Dr. Magnus said. "Killing him only anchors the end of his timeline. It can still loop around until it becomes quite tangled."
"Is Adam Worth responsible for the seismic anomalies in the last few weeks?"
"I have no way of knowing," she said, "but I think it is something that should be investigated. I have relatively few resources here. Do you think the police could be interested...?"
"Oh, yeah," said Gavin, "if I can get the information to them in a way that they'll believe, they'll be all over it. The trouble is making it credible."
Sharon didn't close her eyes when John teleported them back to her car, but she got no more visual information than she had the first time. Well, things did turn pink, but it was just blank pink and then she was standing in his arms beside her car in a downtown parking lot with a reddened sun lowering at them between tall buildings.
"I suppose," she said, "it would be superfluous to offer you a ride home."
"For the pleasure of your company, my dear, I would forgo more conveniences than this. And as I said, I try not to overdo it."
Sharon's phone rang. She answered and listened for a moment, then thumbed it off and dropped it in her pocket.
"I'm afraid it will have to be just a ride home," she said. "Some lost soul with a badge and a gun just drank himself into a stupor and shot his neighbor's cat."
"Oh, dear. What had the poor animal done?"
"Peed on his lawn."
"Does one shoot cats for doing that?"
"Usually not."
"I wouldn't have thought."
"This cat's owner was apparently engaging in inappropriate activities with the officer's wife."
"Did the cat put them up to it, then?"
Sharon smiled.
"For a moment you sounded like Chief Pope."
"Animal lover, is he?"
"His first promotion was into Narcotics as a dog handler. He has a rapport with animals."
"Just a normal rapport? He's human, or no?"
"I...." Sharon thought about this. The existence of abnormals raised all sorts of questions. Chief Pope's pet dogs did things for him that she's never seen animals do, not even in circuses. For all she knew, he might be an abnormal with a gift for understanding dogs. Brenda Leigh Johnson might be more than a CIA-trained interrogator. Provenza....
Being stupid wasn't an abnormal gift. Was it?
"John, if there have been abnormals among the human population for all this time... do they all know what they are? Are there people walking around with abnormal gifts who don't have any idea what they can do?"
"The serious cases, the shape-changers and mermaids and so forth, they have to know. I suspect there may be a few cases of interbreeding where abnormals think they're human, and considerably more where they choose to pass as human."
"As you do?"
"Is that a problem for you?"
"No," she told him. "It's not a problem. My problem is a trigger-happy drunk in East LA. I'll drop you at home before I go. Oh, and please don't tell anyone I told you about the cat. I'm not supposed to talk about my cases."
John assured her he would remain mum. She drove him to the hotel and he kissed her and got out of the car. Sharon drove away, watching in the rear view mirror as John stood on the sidewalk watching her in turn. She caught herself smiling, and banished the expression. Her world might have turned upside down, and not just because of the existence of abnormals, but Sharon Raydor had a job to do, and right now she had to write a report determining whether or not Officer Greene had been justified in shooting a urinating housepet.
Gavin tapped on her door as quietly as he could. Brenda Leigh Johnson was hard enough to deal with without startling her first.
"Should you be here?" she asked. "Since we're on opposite sides, so to speak?"
"I'm not here to talk about that case. I can't tell you what case I am here about, though, or who's involved."
"Uh-huh." Brenda's eyes narrowed in a way that was even more unpleasant than the tone of her reply.
"There is a real limit to what I can tell you. I'm sure you understand."
"You haven't told me anything that makes sense so far."
"It's important."
"You want to talk about important? Go outside and look at the dismembered women on my murder board and then come tell me about important. Go look in every holding cell and county lockup this side of Barstow and listen to the women who want to get back to work even if it kills them, and come talk to me about important. You have something to tell me that will help them?"
"There's a guy you may want to talk to about your earthquakes."
"My earthquakes?"
"You know, when the earth moves?"
"What do you know?"
Brenda's sudden interest gave Gavin pause. She knew something that he didn't. Of course, she was a cop investigating this case, so it was good that she knew things, as long as what she knew didn't get her into trouble.
"His name is Adam Worth," Gavin told her. "He's a scientist of sorts who runs an academic fraternity for students studying geophysics and so on. They're having a convocation in Los Angeles."
"And you know this how?"
"I can't tell you that, but it's unrelated to any other case." He sincerely hoped it was unrelated. He hoped he could eventually get Brenda to drop the trespassing charges against Nicola Tesla, but in the mean time....
"That figures. Well, you can tell Dr. Tesla the charges against him are dropped."
"I... I beg your pardon?" How on earth did Brenda know that name?
"We ran his fingerprints," she said. "Some former associates of mine got back to me real quick. It seems your client is a big wheel in some circles doing something real important. I got told to back off him. So, I'm backing."
"Thank you."
"Off him."
"Ungh...."
"Do you know somebody named Helen Magnus?"
The gig was so up.
"She was my teacher," he said. "She called me as soon as she arrived."
"She's in Los Angeles?"
"Yeah. I spoke to her last night."
Brenda's nose wrinkled.
"Did she tell you about this Worth character?"
"We have discussed him on several occasions."
"What do you know about him that I don't?"
"Do you promise to believe me?"
"Gavin, when do I take anybody at face value?"
"This is particularly unbelievable."
"Tell me."
"His father was killed in the aftermath of the American Civil War. He was born on a ship on the way back to England."
"This is the Civil War we had in the middle of the nineteenth century?"
"That's the one."
"So this Worth person is over 150 years old?"
"Just about."
"You're right. That is unbelievable."
"Some people have special talents, Brenda. One of those talents, for some people, is living longer than average."
"Gavin, someone out there could be carving a prostitute like a Thanksgiving turkey right now, and you are wasting my time with some fairy story about...."
"Do you remember the first time we met? In my office? Do you remember what you were wearing? I do." He described her clothing and her husband's, right down to the tiny pagan tie tack Fritz had worn. He quoted their conversation, word for word. He closed his eyes and started back through it again, demonstrating each of her gestures. She stopped him.
"I get it," she said. "You have a real good memory, but what does that have...."
"The first thing I remember seeing was this thing my parents hung over my crib. I could make out the bright colors before the shapes. There was a red disk and yellow stars and a black and white cow jumping over a blue moon."
"Children that young don't remember."
"I do. I remember everything, Brenda, all the way back to that mobile, and it's all tucked away and organized so I can use it."
"Really? Prove it. Fritz gave you a check." He recited the date, the amount, the routing number and back account number and the number of the check, then the name of the bank and Fritz's personal information.
"That is freaky," she said.
"And convenient, but it doesn't have anything to do with your case. Adam Worth maybe does."
"Okay," she said. "I'll look into it, but I don't know how I'm going to tell Chief Pope about this."
"Most major police departments know about Dr. Magnus and her organization," he told her, "at least at the highest levels. He may be more receptive than you think. Just, don't tell him about me, okay?"
"You never go anywhere near my murder room again," she said.
"You think I'm a danger to you?"
"A lawyer with a perfect memory in the same room with my murder board? Damn right, you're a danger."
Something started beating on the inside of Will Pope's skull halfway through the meeting. The information was disturbing enough, but this was....
...this was Brenda Leigh, bursting through his door as if he worked for her, boiling about some injustice he seemed to have committed. His companion stopped talking, eyes wide.
"Who," Brenda demanded, "is Helen Magnus, and what does she have to do with my case?"
He was dumbfounded. He felt his mouth opening and closing like a gasping fish, but the force of Brenda's anger overwhelmed him as it always did, and he could form no words. His companion, however, could.
"I'm Helen Magnus," she said. "What case is this that you believe I have to do with?"
Brenda shook Dr. Magnus's hand, apparently from reflex, but then she spun on Will.
"You knew about this," she said, "and you weren't going to tell me?"
The pressure inside his head was overwhelming.
"Brenda...."
"You'll give him a coronary, if you're not careful," Dr. Magnus said.
"I beg your pardon? If my boss holds back information on a case he himself asked me to investigate, I think I have the right to give him a piece of my mind!"
"Then control your emotions and do it verbally, or you may do real damage!"
"What are you talking about?"
Magnus stepped around Brenda and took Will's hand, then turned it over and touched two fingers to his pulse.
"Not a full-fledged telepath," she said softly. "Empath?"
He finally managed to shape words.
"None," he said, "of your business."
The blaze of Brenda's anger was gone. Dark fear sat in her throat, fear not of him but for him, fear tinged... tinged with awe. Oh, God, she was hearing all this, taking it in, and she believed it.
"My organization," said Dr. Magnus, "can show you ways to shield yourself."
"There is nothing from which I need to be shielded," he told her firmly.
"I think we both know better than that," the doctor said. It was her patronizing attitude that finally made Will lose his grip on his temper.
"My father," he said, "told you to stay away from us, and I'm telling you again: stay away. Deal with Chief Johnson if you know anything about this case, but you stay the hell away from me!"
Dr. Magnus looked puzzled, but she started to speak again. Brenda stepped between them and lifted the doctor's fingers off Will's hand.
"Excuse me," she said, "but what part of 'stay the hell away' do you not understand?"
"He needs...."
"He's a grown man. He knows what he needs, and he asked you to leave him alone." Will could feel Brenda's anger again. This time it was not blazing, but ice cold, and it was directed at Helen Magnus. "If you'd be kind enough to wait for me outside, I'll be with you in a minute."
The doctor took a deep breath, and backed down.
"Of course," she said. She closed the door on her way out. Brenda turned and put her arms around Will.
"Don't let her know I have kids," he blurted.
"It'll be all right," Brenda said. The anger was gone now, and the worry was back. Worry for him.
"Really," he said, "don't let her know. They use people like us...."
"So does the CIA," said Brenda, "but don't tell anyone I told you so. You know they probably already know about you, anyway."
"Oh, God."
"Shh. If they wanted you, they would have taken you years ago."
"My kids...."
"Shh. It'll be all right."
"You're not... surprised?"
"Somebody else told me some of it. I suppose I should have known. My mother can't tell what's going on inside my head the way you can. Can you tell if someone's lying?"
"I can't do it with everybody. Mostly just animals. People, just if there's a really strong connection: love, hate, sometimes a buddy thing."
"Yeah, well, I'm glad. I don't think anybody could love me for all these years without some special gift to deal with my bullshit."
"Fritz does," he told her, not really sure why he said it.
"Maybe."
"No, he does."
"How do you...?" She looked up at him, and suddenly she understood, and Will felt her heart break.
The woman was very blond, probably more so than was natural, but her eyes were chocolaty brown. Helen wondered if she herself was not some sort of abnormal, although there seemed to be no signs of it. The Baker boy... no, the full-grown attorney... had known her for years, and he would have noticed any significant abnormality. Still, he had also met this Chief Pope, and Gavin had said nothing about the man being a powerful empath who had apparently encountered Sanctuary operatives as a child. One would think that sort of thing would deserve mentioning.
Chief Johnson came out of her superior's office dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. Helen stood to meet her.
"Is he all right?" Helen asked.
"He prefers that I not discuss that with you."
"All right," she said, "but would it do any harm to listen? The two of you are obviously very close...."
"Follow me," the woman said, "down to my interview room, please. I'd rather not talk about my case in the hallways."
"Chief's going to be pissed," said Gabriel.
"How's that?" Provenza asked.
"We got that list of kids who flunked out of Stamford and MIT and Georgia Tech and all, and went back into second-rank schools. None of them are actually in school right now. They're at some sort of event, and we don't know where."
The interview room door closed behind her, and Brenda turned off the video feed.
"All right," she told Dr. Magnus. "I've known Will Pope for a couple of decades, and the only problem he's ever had with this thing is when he met you. He does not need your help."
"There may be complications later."
"I can't convince him to trust you, and I'm not sure I would if I could."
"He must have been very young. Children sometimes misunderstand what they see."
"Children with his particular gift? Not likely."
"Do you not want the information that might save his life? Simple things, like herbal teas to sharpen or dull his sensitivity, or how to deal with the migraines and the leakage into his dreams."
Brenda smiled. She already knew some pretty effective ways to calm Will down when he woke up screaming. But...
"I'm not his wife," she said.
"Then you do know what I mean."
"What I want to know," Brenda said, flipping the recorder back on, "is what you know about Adam Worth."
"I know where he's staying right now," she said. "He's at a hotel near a theme park. I'll write it down for you."
"All right," said Brenda. She flipped the switch off again. "And write down those teas you were talking about, please. Thank you."
"There is one other thing," the doctor said. "One of your colleagues may be in some danger."
John counted his cash and found it necessary to make another after-hours trip to the bank. He restocked his cash supply, then popped back to his room.
Or rather, he tried to. He actually materialized six inches above the floor and came down on the carpet with a thud.
The floor, indeed the whole building was still shaking. John probed it gingerly, feeling along the guidelines that let him find his way around the planet. They were warped, bent in an unnatural manner. Someone was playing with his planet.
This would not do. John could just have easily had materialized six inches too low, with his legs through the floor. This was not on. He closed his eyes, mapping the twists and strains, tracing them as they vibrated with an almost musical intensity, until he found... there! He had the geographical location.
He could... he could do what? Pop in there and demand that it be stopped because it inconvenienced him? Stop it by force? He probably could, but it would just pop up again somewhere else. To take out an entire organization....
...perhaps he needed an organization. He thumbed Sharon's number.
Three hours later, Brenda was back in Pope's office, this time with Sharon Raydor in tow.
"They think there's some possibility that these people are causing the earthquakes," she said.
"Why would anyone cause an earthquake?" Raydor asked yet again.
"The man they suspect," Brenda said, "is not entirely sane. He suffers from the effects... now, this is coming from this woman that Chief Pope tells me is sane and reliable... he was possessed by an energy creature as a complication of his ability to teleport."
"Sharon," Will said, "what's wrong?"
"N... nothing."
Brenda had not seen Sharon Raydor this discomfitted since... come to think of it, she'd never seen the woman this bad off.
"This is not the first time you've heard this story," Brenda said.
Pope's gaze swiveled from one woman to another.
"Tell him," Brenda ordered, "or I will."
"I didn't know anything about... about the possession."
"Did you know he's a killer? That he has a history of murdering prostitutes in exactly the same manner as the serial killer...."
"We haven't decided that we have a serial killer," Pope broke in.
"Trust me, if he did it, this man has a very long history. Sharon, did he tell you...."
"Wait a minute!" Will stopped her again. "John Druitt?"
"Your friend Doctor Magnus...."
"She's no friend of mine!" he reminded her.
"Did you know that Druitt is her daughter's father, Captain?"
"I... he told me he had a daughter, that he was worried about her."
"He can stop worrying. Ashley's dead. Of course, he already knows that."
"No, she's not. I looked her up. Her father was worried, but she won't speak to him. Or to her mother. She told me about her mother."
"This sounds," Pope said, "like each of you has heard one side of the story of a very nasty divorce."
"Energy creature?" said Brenda.
"I'll ask John," said Sharon. Her phone chirped, announcing a text message. "It's him." She thumbed her phone and read. "He wants me to meet him. He says he knows something about the earthquakes."
"Not alone," Pope said.
"Oh, please. If he wanted to hurt me, nothing any of us could do could stop him."
"What do you mean?" Brenda asked. "What do you know?"
"The part about the teleporting is true. But I don't believe the rest of it, and until you have hard evidence...."
"I have two dead...."
"Two women who could have been killed by anyone, and the unsupported testimony of the man's hostile ex-wife."
"They were never actually married," Pope said. "In the stories I heard, I mean."
"She's certainly hostile," Sharon asserted.
"That she is," Brenda admitted. "She claims he was Jack the Ripper. Literally."
"Right. Well, then, I have to go get carved up in place of some poor prostitute."
"Is there any way I can talk you out of this?" Will asked.
"No."
"Then call me when you go in, and when you come out. Take too long, Captain, and I will have a SWAT team break in on your romantic interlude."
"He can teleport, Chief." Sharon reminded him.
"How do you know that?" Brenda asked. "Did he tell you himself?"
"He showed me." There was total silence in the room. "I have to go," she said finally. She crossed the room, stepped outside and closed the door behind her.
"You think she's in any real danger?" Pope asked.
"I think John Druitt may be."
"Sharon's not that bad," he said, "if you don't butt heads with her like a couple of rutting mountain goats."
"I don't think Druitt's doing the earthquakes," she said. "My information points in another direction, but I need to check something out before we talk about it."
"Okay, but you be careful, too."
He felt a rush of bubbly laughter like champagne.
"I'll be okay. After all, I protected you from the horrible Dr. Magnus, didn't I?"
"She took my sister," Will said. "Annie was worse than me. She could actually read minds. She was five, and she didn't know to keep quiet about it. She'd tell her kindergarten teacher what she was thinking. One day Dr. Magnus showed up and offered to take her, to put her in a special school."
"Something like the X-Men?"
"More like the X Files. My father said 'no.' He told her Annie belonged with her family. Six weeks later the Welfare people took her. They said Annie had special needs, and we couldn't provide for her. They... they asked about me. My mom and I got in the car as soon as they were gone. We never saw Annie or my father again."
"I'm sorry." She tried to let it permeate her, to let him feel that she felt his grief. "That's a horrible way to live."
He smiled.
"Whatever you do," he said, "don't let her know I have kids. I sent them to their mother, but... just don't let her know, okay?"
"She won't find out from me, anyway. I have to go talk to this Dr. Worth about the earthquake thing."
"You think he knows something?"
"I think he's an expert in the field, and I'd like to have this off our blotter."
"And every street hooker in Los Angeles out of jail?"
"And into some other way of life, yes, but I'll start with Dr. Worth."
Will sat alone at his desk for the better part of two hours. His stomach was churning. Fear for Leo and Connie ate at him, along with fear for Brenda and even a bit of apprehension for Sharon Raydor. He had not expected her to....
His office walls flushed with pink, then returned to normal. Sharon Raydor was standing by the window, leaning against Druitt, whose arm was around her waist.
"You wanted to see me, Will?" he said.
"Uh, yeah." Pope could recover as well as anyone else. It was not as if he didn't know that abnormals existed. "Uh, did you kill two prostitutes in Los Angles in the last week or so?"
"Er...no."
"Okay."
"That's it?" Raydor said, her eyebrows climbing toward her bangs.
"Yeah," Pope told her. "He has no reason to lie. We have no practical means of holding him, even if we had a case, which we don't. All we have is wild accusations that couldn't be proven even if they were true."
"I beg your pardon?" said Druitt.
"I called Scotland Yard. These murders Dr. Magnus claims you did? The bodies are dust. There is no physical evidence, no fingerprints, no nothing. The cases are open, it's true, but there is no way to convict anyone of those crimes short of a confession, and they're not going to believe a confession. Whoever killed those women is off the hook."
"That," said Sharon, "is sad. No way to give them justice, ever."
"Some cases are just too cold," Pope said. "I...."
Then he felt a pain in his temples that drove speech from him, that squeezed his eyelids shut as his eyes burned behind them, and the pain resolved itself into fear, fear coming from....
"Brenda," he gasped. "She...."
"She's what?" Druitt asked.
"Terrified," Will said. "Offended, and terrified. The case turned itself every which way, and she's... no way out...."
"Where is she?" asked Sharon, reaching for the phone. She looked skeptical, but at least she was doing something.
"She went to speak to Adam Worth," Pope said.
"Oh, dear God," said Druitt. "Do you know where he is?"
"No."
"Do you know where she is? Can you feel her, quite well?"
"I can always feel her."
"Then come here, both of you. Bring your weapons."
Brenda was disgusted with herself. She had walked into what appeared to be the offices attached to a small lab. She had asked the young man at the desk to let her speak to Adam Worth. He introduced her to the doctor, who claimed to know nothing about the earthquakes. When she went back out in the lobby, it was full of boys, young boys who should have been in college.
"We can't find the hookers, Dr. Worth," said one of them. "Maybe we could make do with this one?"
"Excuse me," said Brenda, "but I'm a police officer."
"Might be trouble," Worth said.
"Is it going to matter?" another boy asked. "When you blackmail the world with the threat of earthquakes, the last thing they're going to worry about is what happened to one cop."
"Even if they ever find all the pieces of her," said another with a grin that Brenda didn't like at all. She reached for her weapon, but it was taken from her hand and tossed away. The six boys grasped her by her limbs, her clothing, even her hair, and when she screamed they held her mouth open and stuffed a washcloth in it, a washcloth that didn't taste too clean.
Brenda had never been so terrified in her life. The boys dragged her across the room and lifted her up on a pool table. The one with the nasty grin started cutting her clothes away with a very sharp knife while the others ran their hands over the most personal parts of her body.
She was almost completely naked when the shooting started. She heard Will's voice, then Sharon's, and then an utter hail of gunfire as one of the college boys pulled a piece. Then John Druitt's arms were around Brenda, and everything went pink. She blinked, and found herself in Fritz's office back at the Reagan building. Druitt walked across the room and set her in her husband's arms, then vanished in another blaze of rose. She clutched at Fritz, dug the washcloth out of her mouth and then hugged him some more.
"Brenda?" Fritz asked. "Is there some reason you're naked?"
"It's a really long story," she told him. "Could you just hold me for a minute?"
Sharon and John were back on the rock in the park, but this time the city beneath them was sparkling lights against black velvet.
"So she's all right," Sharon told him, "although she may never forgive Chief Pope for making her go through a rape kit. And my second-in-command has determined that killing six young men who were engaged in sexual assault on a police officer actually is within the bounds of justifiable homicide, 'barely,' as he puts it. Which is a comforting thought for every woman who wears a badge, I'm sure."
"I can imagine." She felt him shudder behind her.
"Also Chief Johnson gave Dr. Magnus a piece of her mind...."
"Ah, but I would have loved to have seen that!"
"...and Dr. Magnus obligingly produced an old man and a middle-aged woman who may or may not be Ann Pope and her father. She still claims Chief Pope misunderstands the situation. Anyway, they're running their DNA against his now. It seems the two of them were under the impression that the woman's mother and brother were killed in an automobile accident, and they've been living in Toronto all this time, or so they say."
"How's Will taking it?"
"He didn't believe a word of it, until the two of the walked into the room. Then he found out he can read this Ann person perfectly, and she can read him. He thinks she's the real deal, and Dr. Magnus is peeved because she thinks someone pulled the wool over her eyes about Pope and his mother."
"Do her good not to get her way for once."
"And your daughter's a uniformed officer in Long Beach."
"Ashley is... here?"
Sharon nodded.
"It's a big city, and she felt she could hide here. It may not have been entirely effective; Worth had her address. Anyway, she says she doesn't want to see you, or her mother. She says she wants to be away from 'all that.' She's somewhat disturbed that it seems she didn't run quite far enough. I told her if she ever changes her mind... but I don't think she will."
"I don't blame her. She didn't exactly see me at my best."
"I suppose not."
"So where does that leave us?" he asked.
"You told me you were dangerous," Sharon said.
"You said that wouldn't be a problem."
"Worth got away, you know."
"He would have had to do. He dies somewhere else."
"I don't know if I can be with a killer, John."
"Neither do I," he said, "but here we are. You just killed four potential rapists and may yet get credit for a fifth...."
"Chief Pope hit them, too."
"Yours were the kill shots. I'll wager they're not the first, either."
"You saw what they were doing to Brenda."
"I saw, and if you and Will hadn't been there I would have killed them myself. Is that what you wanted to hear? Because sometimes people just need to be dead, and those six fell into that category. Does that mean we cannot be together?"
"I feel like you and I are standing on the border of two totally different worlds, and where they touch we can touch each other, but what happens when they spin?"
"We hold on," he said. "We hold on, and when it's over, wherever we are, there we are."
"Will you stay here?" Sharon asked. "In Los Angeles?"
"Best not. It might be best if Helen didn't know where to find me, and... and if Ashley had some room. Does her mother know?"
Sharon shook her head.
"Chief Pope is enamored of this woman who may be his sister, but he still regards Dr. Magnus as a suspicious person. He didn't tell her anything."
"But Worth knows where to find Ashley?"
"I told her that. I impressed on her that he was a dangerous character."
"She knows. You'll keep an eye on her? You'll make sure she's safe?"
"She's a cop. Safety for us is a matter of statistics."
"But you'll keep track of her? And let me know if Worth reappears?"
"Will I know where to find you?" she asked him.
"Always," he said.
Part One | Master Post