Blood Will Out
Title: Blood Will Out
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: R
Word Count: 2000
Warnings: Character death, slight gore
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: The house smells like a gunfight, blood and burning air.
AN: Story for the challenge I'm doing with goldenusagi to write a story every month where Sherlock isn't human. For something with the same theme you could try Caution (Into the Wind).
John gets the emergency call at three in the afternoon. He doesn't normally make house calls, and he's not that happy about being dragged out into the middle of nowhere, but the voice on the other end of the phone had been very insistent. Some reclusive government official wanted a doctor, and John was the closest one with military clearance. The fuss makes more sense when he shows up at the address and it's a country house four stories tall. Money can buy you a lot of attention after all.
He likes the whole thing even less when he sees the police cars parked near the double doors that lead into the foyer. One of the doors has been wrenched from its frame and left to fall. The other has a red smear on its edge, as if a hand had wrapped round it and been forcibly pulled away.
John heads into the house at a quick walk, not entirely sure if he's arrived at the end of a situation or half way through it.
"Hello?" He stops at the bottom of a staircase, but doesn't call out again. He's barely inside but the house already smells like a gunfight, blood and burning air.
He sees chunks of wood, and the broken pieces of what looks like a statue's arm. Further in there are patches on the carpet, thick and dark, and still wet. There are two security men in the foyer, one of them is impaled through the chest on the broken edge of the staircase, one leg missing, eyes staring upwards, where the stairs disappear to the next floor. The other man is sprawled on the carpet, as if he'd been flung there. John doesn't need to check the man's pulse, the head is a foot away from the body. It's messy, misshapen by force.
He sets his bag down, goes forward in a crouch. He takes the dead man's gun from his shoulder holster and checks the magazine. It's mostly empty. He moves to the man on the stairs, who turns out to have a full one. He has no hesitation at all about arming himself. Explanations can come later if need be.
The next thing he does is pull his mobile out and place a call. He sets the phone down while the voice on the other end is still talking, still telling him to wait where he is. He can hear sounds further in. The brief, soft sounds of feet moving on carpet. The creak of wood - that could be natural, but he's taking no chances. The foyer leads into several hallways, some doors open, some shut, light streams through in random patterns.
There are more bodies, left carelessly - in poses that make it seem more like they were thrown than fell, though there's no explosive damage. The broken wood is too neat, too clean, the pieces too large. No smells except the wet insides of dead men. John stops, crouches again to feel the necks of two men who could still be alive, though he finds nothing, feels nothing but the thud of his own pulse and the gentle scrape of his feet.
The destruction seems to swell out from a set of double doors, far into the hall. Double doors that lead into a carpeted office that John enters very carefully.
The office is filled with bodies. In the dark, sensible and basic suits of security services, sprawled still armed against the furniture, crumpled into the walls, bodies at angles that human beings were never meant to survive. Almost a dozen men, no bullet wounds, no explosives, just bloody violence - tears, breaks, puncture wounds. There's no sign of whatever - whoever - they were fighting. It shouldn't be possible.
At the desk is an expensively dressed man with thinning hair, he's slumped against the surface. The body is pale and empty, blood pooling on the wood from a ragged tear in his throat.
Mycroft Holmes, John presumes.
His fingers are broken, they settle crookedly over the shaky scratching of some strange symbol, that writhes and shakes, twists in a way that seems to want to open, before it snaps and sinks into the wood, forced still again. It looks half-finished - some impossible thing which shouldn't exist. And suddenly John has questions he never thought he'd need the answers to, uncertainties where there'd never been any before. He looks away, has to look away from that shuddering thing. For all that John's body remembers how to react to situations like this, for all that he's been trained for this - it all feels wrong. The world is too tense, too heavy, and the smells in the air don't fit the scene, they're sharp and acidic, burnt hair and incense and something he can't put a name to.
There's a thick chain bolted to the wall behind the desk, screwed in deep to the brickwork. John follows it past a tilted bookshelf - made to fit snug to the wall, a room that's not supposed to be seen - and finds himself in a large, inner office.
The floors and walls are painted, in shades of red, purple and black, symbols overlaid with symbols. They writhe like the one on the desk, optical illusions that make John's eyes unsure where the walls begin and where they end. He shakes his head and looks away from them, looks towards the back of the room.
The chain ends around the bare ankle of a tall man - prisoner? - pale and dark-haired. He doesn't look affected by the slaughter, shock maybe? John lowers the gun slightly, moves forward a step. He forces himself to swallow the smell of blood and make his voice as calm as he can.
"I'm Doctor Watson, I was called to see Mr. Mycroft Holmes. Do you know what happened here?"
The man tips his head sideways, as if considering him - weighing him? It's unsettling. The chain clinks where it drags on the floor when he moves to one side, past the small desk and the bookshelf behind him.
"I would imagine the trail of death should speak for itself." The man's voice is slow and deep, and it doesn't sound distressed at all. "Mycroft is dead."
The last part isn't a question. But the man seems more irritated than upset when John nods in answer.
Anyone else John would step forward, would have done that before now. He would make sure the man wasn't injured, would try and reassure him, question him further. Or try and cut him free at least. But instead he's just standing there, gun still held loosely but at a not quite downwards angle.
It comes to John slowly, that he doesn't want to touch him. He doesn't want to move towards him, or be near him. Some instinct he didn't know he had is warning him not to. This man is the only survivor, unarmed, relaxed, slender in a way that doesn't look as if it holds muscle, non-threatening. Yet some part of John, some part of him wants to recoil at the thought of stepping past the desk, reaching out and touching him.
"Are you being kept here against your will?" John asks. He clenches and unclenches his free hand, not ready to chase away a feeling that he suspects has never done anything but try and save him in the past.
The tall man tips his head down, mouth stretching oddly.
"In a manner of speaking, though that's not the important part."
John looks down, has to look down, the man is chained after all. But there's no blood, the man isn't bleeding at all. The metal is bored right through the bone of his ankle, across the centre of the manacle. The skin looks burned, the metal is etched with tiny, intricate characters. He should render some sort of medical assistance. He's a Doctor, it's his responsibility to help people. But instead he's standing perfectly still, gun half raised.
What are you?
The chain clinks again when the man takes one step forward. John doesn't flinch, but he can feel the tension of not doing so all the way down his spine.
The pale hands fold in front of him, then spread open.
"I find myself with little time, so I shall make this brief. There is a mirror behind you that allows you to see things as they really are. Please look into it." There's a gesture, slow but pointed, towards the wall behind him,
John stands to the side so he can catch any movement the other man makes and glances back. He staggers instantly, because the man chained at the ankle is not a man. He fills the whole room. He pushes at the walls and ceiling, crawls across every symbol carved and painted there. There's just a black-red twist of inky darkness, veins and flesh, and it's burning from the inside out. Air writhing around it. John suddenly feels brittle, and weightless, and terrified in a way he's never had to feel before.
For a sickening moment he has no idea how to cope with it, how to live with it.
He jerks back to face the man, finds a man, finds not-a-man, unassuming, piercing eyes. Horrors underneath the skin. He didn't even realise he'd raised the gun until he finds himself looking over it. It's a struggle not to pull the trigger.
"What the hell are you?" John chokes out.
"Very perceptive." He seems amused. "Do you need to look again?"
"No!" There's a buzz in John's head. Something that will overwhelm him if he's not careful. He doesn't want to look again. He straightens, points the gun at the stranger's head, because it seems the most sensible fucking option.
The man who isn't a man seems impressed.
"You're more formidable than I first gave you credit. Most people don't take it half as well on their first look." The pale hands raise and clap, slowly, not quite mocking, there's something oddly genuine about it. Which somehow makes it worse.
"What did you do here?" John says slowly. His voice sounds thick to his own ears, sounds weak, confusion more than question, but he's making sense, he'll take that.
"Oh, the decoration wasn't my work. That should be obvious for anyone with the patience to look. Though don't misunderstand me, I am more than capable of equalling and surpassing this level of violence and destruction. But Mycroft was still useful to me, and entertaining, his death was...premature. I did warn him. He wanted more, the very young ones are more mobile but they're also impatient, unpredictable."
The bare foot taps on the carpet.
"I find myself requiring your assistance, Sergeant, Doctor and Mr. Watson." There's a smirk there, and John doesn't like the suggestion that comes with it. "The name I will give you is Sherlock, which is the one I gave Mycroft, the only one Mycroft acquired from me. I was tethered to this household, and this bloodline, which is no more, and I will shortly be dragged back somewhere I am currently disinclined to go."
John has no trouble believing that, the patterns on the floor are writhing in a way that he can't look at without a stab of nausea.
"You are equally troubled. There is a demon in London, young and impetuous and more than capable of burning your city to the ground. I expect a slow but inexorable climb in the death toll. It is not in our nature to be sated. He will ravage your city, and then he will move on to the next, and the next, and the next..." Sherlock stretches his hand, rotates it slowly in a way that seems to indicate the sentence could go on indefinitely.
"And my assistance?" John asks quietly.
"I will rend him into pieces for you, if you accept my service, if you allow me to...remain here." For a second there's something like hunger in that flat expression. "I do not wish to leave. I find you fascinating, in so many ways. You will not find my services wanting."
"Funny." John's voice is no longer quite as unsteady. "You don't seem the sort who serves."
There's a smile that's too sharp-edged to look real.
"Undoubtedly. I am a force to be reckoned with, ancient and terrible and not to be trusted. You are incapable of outsmarting me, or destroying me, and you lack the magical knowledge to control me."
"You make my choice pretty clear then, don't you?" John says carefully.
Sherlock stares at him. He has the pale eyes of a dead man.
"You would think, wouldn't you?"
There's a heavy, tense moment of utter stillness, and then John very slowly lowers the gun.
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: R
Word Count: 2000
Warnings: Character death, slight gore
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: The house smells like a gunfight, blood and burning air.
AN: Story for the challenge I'm doing with goldenusagi to write a story every month where Sherlock isn't human. For something with the same theme you could try Caution (Into the Wind).
John gets the emergency call at three in the afternoon. He doesn't normally make house calls, and he's not that happy about being dragged out into the middle of nowhere, but the voice on the other end of the phone had been very insistent. Some reclusive government official wanted a doctor, and John was the closest one with military clearance. The fuss makes more sense when he shows up at the address and it's a country house four stories tall. Money can buy you a lot of attention after all.
He likes the whole thing even less when he sees the police cars parked near the double doors that lead into the foyer. One of the doors has been wrenched from its frame and left to fall. The other has a red smear on its edge, as if a hand had wrapped round it and been forcibly pulled away.
John heads into the house at a quick walk, not entirely sure if he's arrived at the end of a situation or half way through it.
"Hello?" He stops at the bottom of a staircase, but doesn't call out again. He's barely inside but the house already smells like a gunfight, blood and burning air.
He sees chunks of wood, and the broken pieces of what looks like a statue's arm. Further in there are patches on the carpet, thick and dark, and still wet. There are two security men in the foyer, one of them is impaled through the chest on the broken edge of the staircase, one leg missing, eyes staring upwards, where the stairs disappear to the next floor. The other man is sprawled on the carpet, as if he'd been flung there. John doesn't need to check the man's pulse, the head is a foot away from the body. It's messy, misshapen by force.
He sets his bag down, goes forward in a crouch. He takes the dead man's gun from his shoulder holster and checks the magazine. It's mostly empty. He moves to the man on the stairs, who turns out to have a full one. He has no hesitation at all about arming himself. Explanations can come later if need be.
The next thing he does is pull his mobile out and place a call. He sets the phone down while the voice on the other end is still talking, still telling him to wait where he is. He can hear sounds further in. The brief, soft sounds of feet moving on carpet. The creak of wood - that could be natural, but he's taking no chances. The foyer leads into several hallways, some doors open, some shut, light streams through in random patterns.
There are more bodies, left carelessly - in poses that make it seem more like they were thrown than fell, though there's no explosive damage. The broken wood is too neat, too clean, the pieces too large. No smells except the wet insides of dead men. John stops, crouches again to feel the necks of two men who could still be alive, though he finds nothing, feels nothing but the thud of his own pulse and the gentle scrape of his feet.
The destruction seems to swell out from a set of double doors, far into the hall. Double doors that lead into a carpeted office that John enters very carefully.
The office is filled with bodies. In the dark, sensible and basic suits of security services, sprawled still armed against the furniture, crumpled into the walls, bodies at angles that human beings were never meant to survive. Almost a dozen men, no bullet wounds, no explosives, just bloody violence - tears, breaks, puncture wounds. There's no sign of whatever - whoever - they were fighting. It shouldn't be possible.
At the desk is an expensively dressed man with thinning hair, he's slumped against the surface. The body is pale and empty, blood pooling on the wood from a ragged tear in his throat.
Mycroft Holmes, John presumes.
His fingers are broken, they settle crookedly over the shaky scratching of some strange symbol, that writhes and shakes, twists in a way that seems to want to open, before it snaps and sinks into the wood, forced still again. It looks half-finished - some impossible thing which shouldn't exist. And suddenly John has questions he never thought he'd need the answers to, uncertainties where there'd never been any before. He looks away, has to look away from that shuddering thing. For all that John's body remembers how to react to situations like this, for all that he's been trained for this - it all feels wrong. The world is too tense, too heavy, and the smells in the air don't fit the scene, they're sharp and acidic, burnt hair and incense and something he can't put a name to.
There's a thick chain bolted to the wall behind the desk, screwed in deep to the brickwork. John follows it past a tilted bookshelf - made to fit snug to the wall, a room that's not supposed to be seen - and finds himself in a large, inner office.
The floors and walls are painted, in shades of red, purple and black, symbols overlaid with symbols. They writhe like the one on the desk, optical illusions that make John's eyes unsure where the walls begin and where they end. He shakes his head and looks away from them, looks towards the back of the room.
The chain ends around the bare ankle of a tall man - prisoner? - pale and dark-haired. He doesn't look affected by the slaughter, shock maybe? John lowers the gun slightly, moves forward a step. He forces himself to swallow the smell of blood and make his voice as calm as he can.
"I'm Doctor Watson, I was called to see Mr. Mycroft Holmes. Do you know what happened here?"
The man tips his head sideways, as if considering him - weighing him? It's unsettling. The chain clinks where it drags on the floor when he moves to one side, past the small desk and the bookshelf behind him.
"I would imagine the trail of death should speak for itself." The man's voice is slow and deep, and it doesn't sound distressed at all. "Mycroft is dead."
The last part isn't a question. But the man seems more irritated than upset when John nods in answer.
Anyone else John would step forward, would have done that before now. He would make sure the man wasn't injured, would try and reassure him, question him further. Or try and cut him free at least. But instead he's just standing there, gun still held loosely but at a not quite downwards angle.
It comes to John slowly, that he doesn't want to touch him. He doesn't want to move towards him, or be near him. Some instinct he didn't know he had is warning him not to. This man is the only survivor, unarmed, relaxed, slender in a way that doesn't look as if it holds muscle, non-threatening. Yet some part of John, some part of him wants to recoil at the thought of stepping past the desk, reaching out and touching him.
"Are you being kept here against your will?" John asks. He clenches and unclenches his free hand, not ready to chase away a feeling that he suspects has never done anything but try and save him in the past.
The tall man tips his head down, mouth stretching oddly.
"In a manner of speaking, though that's not the important part."
John looks down, has to look down, the man is chained after all. But there's no blood, the man isn't bleeding at all. The metal is bored right through the bone of his ankle, across the centre of the manacle. The skin looks burned, the metal is etched with tiny, intricate characters. He should render some sort of medical assistance. He's a Doctor, it's his responsibility to help people. But instead he's standing perfectly still, gun half raised.
What are you?
The chain clinks again when the man takes one step forward. John doesn't flinch, but he can feel the tension of not doing so all the way down his spine.
The pale hands fold in front of him, then spread open.
"I find myself with little time, so I shall make this brief. There is a mirror behind you that allows you to see things as they really are. Please look into it." There's a gesture, slow but pointed, towards the wall behind him,
John stands to the side so he can catch any movement the other man makes and glances back. He staggers instantly, because the man chained at the ankle is not a man. He fills the whole room. He pushes at the walls and ceiling, crawls across every symbol carved and painted there. There's just a black-red twist of inky darkness, veins and flesh, and it's burning from the inside out. Air writhing around it. John suddenly feels brittle, and weightless, and terrified in a way he's never had to feel before.
For a sickening moment he has no idea how to cope with it, how to live with it.
He jerks back to face the man, finds a man, finds not-a-man, unassuming, piercing eyes. Horrors underneath the skin. He didn't even realise he'd raised the gun until he finds himself looking over it. It's a struggle not to pull the trigger.
"What the hell are you?" John chokes out.
"Very perceptive." He seems amused. "Do you need to look again?"
"No!" There's a buzz in John's head. Something that will overwhelm him if he's not careful. He doesn't want to look again. He straightens, points the gun at the stranger's head, because it seems the most sensible fucking option.
The man who isn't a man seems impressed.
"You're more formidable than I first gave you credit. Most people don't take it half as well on their first look." The pale hands raise and clap, slowly, not quite mocking, there's something oddly genuine about it. Which somehow makes it worse.
"What did you do here?" John says slowly. His voice sounds thick to his own ears, sounds weak, confusion more than question, but he's making sense, he'll take that.
"Oh, the decoration wasn't my work. That should be obvious for anyone with the patience to look. Though don't misunderstand me, I am more than capable of equalling and surpassing this level of violence and destruction. But Mycroft was still useful to me, and entertaining, his death was...premature. I did warn him. He wanted more, the very young ones are more mobile but they're also impatient, unpredictable."
The bare foot taps on the carpet.
"I find myself requiring your assistance, Sergeant, Doctor and Mr. Watson." There's a smirk there, and John doesn't like the suggestion that comes with it. "The name I will give you is Sherlock, which is the one I gave Mycroft, the only one Mycroft acquired from me. I was tethered to this household, and this bloodline, which is no more, and I will shortly be dragged back somewhere I am currently disinclined to go."
John has no trouble believing that, the patterns on the floor are writhing in a way that he can't look at without a stab of nausea.
"You are equally troubled. There is a demon in London, young and impetuous and more than capable of burning your city to the ground. I expect a slow but inexorable climb in the death toll. It is not in our nature to be sated. He will ravage your city, and then he will move on to the next, and the next, and the next..." Sherlock stretches his hand, rotates it slowly in a way that seems to indicate the sentence could go on indefinitely.
"And my assistance?" John asks quietly.
"I will rend him into pieces for you, if you accept my service, if you allow me to...remain here." For a second there's something like hunger in that flat expression. "I do not wish to leave. I find you fascinating, in so many ways. You will not find my services wanting."
"Funny." John's voice is no longer quite as unsteady. "You don't seem the sort who serves."
There's a smile that's too sharp-edged to look real.
"Undoubtedly. I am a force to be reckoned with, ancient and terrible and not to be trusted. You are incapable of outsmarting me, or destroying me, and you lack the magical knowledge to control me."
"You make my choice pretty clear then, don't you?" John says carefully.
Sherlock stares at him. He has the pale eyes of a dead man.
"You would think, wouldn't you?"
There's a heavy, tense moment of utter stillness, and then John very slowly lowers the gun.