London. Midnight. On the Hunt.

[winchester_lost]

Dean shut and locked the doors to his Impala, and then was following after Sherlock without a word. It was an easy rhythm they were starting to fall into, strangely comfortable, despite the friction, hints of challenge. Normal people usually had to be taken by the hand, but Sherlock almost seemed to know the steps as if he lived them as well. It

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[winchester_lost]

Dean had been perfectly content with the validity of their plan. As far as he could tell, based on the coroner's reports, the day was either tomorrow or the day after. He'd been amusing himself vaguely annoying the other man, just enough to not enough to warrant having the man bring up the issue, which suited Dean just fine. He could see the tension, the way Sherlock leaned against the car door, the line of the other man's shoulders. And then those strong, slender fingers were grasping at his shoulder, those words in the air heavy with threat and thrill. The date of death had been wrong. It was tonight, not tomorrow. Couldn't coroners even do their god-damn job right?

Dean stopped the car, tires squealing as he spun the car around toward the couple, headlights illuminating the pair, bright yellow light glinting off the heavy wet hems of her clothes, the man pulling away from the kiss to stare at the car. Adrenaline was thrumming through Dean's veins, hot high of exhilaration, of the hunt and the inevitably wonderful part of trying to save someone and chase off a killer creature. Dean opened his door and jumped out, gun in his fingers as he fired three rounds of pure iron into the woman's torso.

She didn't seem particularly bothered by this, however. Her gaze swinging to Dean with a hiss, her appearance changing subtly. Dean swore vehemently under his breath, only the briefest of hesitation as he grabbed the keys to the Impala and tossed them to Sherlock.

"In the trunk, left side, there's a black case. Gun with silver bullets. I'll keep her distracted."

And then Dean was rushing toward her, the gunshots seeming to have little affect, if any, aside from pissing her off. He hadn't mentioned to Sherlock that the silver bullets were a prayer. She snarled, lips pulling away from her teeth which all of a sudden looked like a shark or a piranha, and less like the very human set that had been involved when she'd been kissing her soon-to-be victim. The man in question had dropped to the ground at the gunshots, he was on his back, using his hands to scramble away, staring at Dean with pure terror before getting up to his feet and bolting.

"It's what makes this job worth doing. The appreciation you get!"

The sarcasm dripped from his words, and then she lunged for him, Dean side-stepped, putting a bullet between her eyes just as ineffectively. He was moving away from her, but ended up backing away toward the Thames, taking shots at her out of reflex and desperation as he ducked and back-stepped to avoid her now long and razor-sharp claws and the threat of her teeth. There were very logical reasons he'd decided to play bait. There were also darker, less logical reasons, as well.

Dean couldn't help the guilt that dragged him down, couldn't help the almost fascination with things dark and smarter than he was. He was ankle-deep in the water when his gun clicked empty. Oh. Lovely.

[sherlock_please]

Catching the keys, Sherlock hesitated only long enough to see her bare her teeth. He'd been right. The wet hems, the luring of someone to their death... it was true, she was a Nix. Sherlock was not hit with a wall of disbelief as some might have been, did not need to stand by and freak out over what he'd just seen. He had been harboring a healthy, logical disbelief since he'd first read the page, but she was proof enough that it was real, and that was all he needed.

He rushed to the trunk, unlocking it - and not missing the symbol drawn onto the top of it, a pentagram - and went for the black case to the left side. He wondered why Dean was sending him for this, the page had said nothing about the effectiveness of silver. He had passed over a page regarding werewolves, and silver was effective there. Did Dean know something that wasn't written in the journal or was he hoping that this might work as a long shot? As he clicked it open, he looked back in the direction of the one-sided, ineffective gun fight, seeing Dean shoot her between the eyes as he backed for the Thames.

Managing to get the case open, he pulled the gun out and checked to see if it was loaded, and then took up the bullets from the case and loaded them into the cylinder before clicking it back into place. He was familiar enough with guns to know how this one worked and to fire it, but not so familiar with them as to be an accurate shot even with a gun he was very familiar with.

As he pulled back the hammer and shut the trunk back down, he saw that Dean was standing in the Thames and the woman - or perhaps more accurately, the creature - was approaching him with less hesitation. It was then that Sherlock realized Dean had stopped shooting. He'd run out of bullets, probably.

The likelihood of the gun working was about that of Sherlock being able to guess the creature's name, but Dean was being edged ever deeper into the water and Sherlock had to try. He didn't want to think about all of the why, the fact that maybe he was getting attached to him. Maybe he was breaking his own rule of focusing solely on the work and not letting distractions in. But the truth of the matter was that as Dean narrowly escaped swipes of her claws or lunges forward where she tried to go for him with her teeth, Sherlock felt a kind of twisting terror he couldn't quite explain.

He was approaching them fast, and fired a bullet into her torso, accurate enough to go through her body but not so that it hit anything vital. Regardless, if she were human, there would have been some affect, but as it was she seemed annoyed, if anything.

"The book didn't say anything about silver," Sherlock called to a knees-deep Dean as he fired off another bullet, this time succeeding in attracting her attention. "This won't work," he mumbled to himself, and shot again when she bared her teeth in his direction.

He didn't imagine she would have a normal, common name, but there was no harm in trying, he supposed. Perhaps, at the very least, it would afford Dean time to get out of the water. She still hadn't moved away from him, her body oriented towards him as though she might at any moment lunge for him, only her head turned towards Sherlock.

"We're on to you, Olivia... we know what you are," he tried, eyes scanning over her as though expecting some change, expecting her to shrivel and die. He wasn't surprised when the name had no affect. "It's only a matter of time until we know your name... what about Ruby?" he tried, and fired another shot, the fourth, this one going through her shoulder and earning Sherlock a snarl. He glanced to Dean, trying to give him a meaningful look, trying to tell him to run without attracting the creature's attention back to him.