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The Prey	By : amandalee Category: S through Z > Sherlock (BBC) > Sherlock (BBC) Views: 3756 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: The authors do not claim ownership to Sherlock or any of its characters, and we make no money from writing this.

Chapter List
- 14
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- 16
A/N: Thank you for the reviews!
Silver: Oohh, I'm so pleased someone recognized (and appreciates!) the cross-over theme! Thanks a lot for telling me. :)
VincentMeoblinn: John's decision is unfortunately not that simple, because Sherlock is not an easy person to live with, let alone be in an intimate relationship. John loves him, but he's not sure if Sherlock can reciprocate.

Chapter 15

They left Avalon with only a few words uttered between them. The sun was quickly descending into the west, and John estimated they had less than two hours of daylight left. He hardly dared to consider the options if they came up with nothing on this excursion.

Was a person required to have been missing for twenty-four hours before the police would officially file a missing persons report? If Sherlock's suspicions turned out true, Mary did not have twenty-four hours. In fact, she might not even be alive anymore.

John quenched the painful thought and tried to banish it from his mind, but it kept returning like a stubborn fly drawn to a sugary substance. If their motive for abducting Mary was truly what he feared, John saw no reason why they would keep her alive for any period at all, as opposed to slaying her on sight.

The doctor felt like slapping himself for having such thoughts. Really; a clan of cannibalistic mountain men living off of unsuspecting townsfolk and tourists? The rational part of his brain refused to acknowledge that such a notion could even be possible in a civilized country in the 21st century. Although, he then thought, anything resembling 'civilization' seemed even more remote in these parts than the idea of murderous hillbillies.

John knew that he had created a rift between himself and Sherlock with his unthinking words about Sherlock being the cause of their troubles. The detective could not have foreseen these events anymore than John himself, and did not deserve the blame for something he had no influence over. John wondered if he should try to apologize, but at the same time, he did not want to disrupt Sherlock's concentration.

The detective was closely scrutinizing the ground, looking for tire tracks that would help determine the route Mary had taken previously that day. John wished there was something - anything - he could do to help, but for someone without Sherlock's astute powers of observation, looking for tire tracks was a lost cause.

The clues were clear that Mary had lost her way when trying to find the main road leading to the dollar store. In some paths of the road, she had doubled back and driven through multiple times, suggesting she had not noticed in some moment of lost nerve. John looked around at the trees, noting they all started looking the same after a while. Someone would have to pay very close attention to details to keep track of where they were.

Like Sherlock.

"John!" the younger man called out, causing John to flinch. He hurried over to where his partner stood and his blood ran cold at the sight.

The copious presence of thick, deep mud likely obscured other clues, but the most telling were also the most frightening to John. Fragments of broken glass from a vehicle, deep tire tracks from said vehicle, likely stuck in the thick muck... and a trail of blood leading away from the scene.

"This is recent, of course," Sherlock noted aloud, "based on the blood alone."

He looked up at John, silently noting the sudden lack of color in his assistant's face, and though John's blame of their current situation still stung, he felt a need to provide some measure of comfort. However, comfort would wait. The kidnapped still needed to be found and their abductors sought out.

"We'll find her," he said, taking a step toward John.

The doctor seemed in a daze, but he swallowed, his throat feeling so dry, and then nodded. "Shall we go back to the trail we found earlier?" he asked, steeling his mind and desperate to stamp out his faint feeling.

"No, we've already examined it, and it's a dead end," the detective murmured, his brow furrowed deep in concentration. "We should follow these tracks instead."

Sherlock pointed, and though John obediently followed his direction, there was nothing the doctor could deduce from the mishmash of tracks in the gravel.

"Our car, with Mary probably still in it, was towed by a second vehicle," Sherlock explained, unusually patient with John's lack of understanding. "You can see the presence of a second vehicle, and judging from what I can see here, it's a pickup truck that has not had a tire-change in at least twenty years. The imprints in the rubber have almost completely worn off."

John found it difficult to look at the trail of blood, knowing whom it came from. What had the animals done to Mary to cause such bloodshed? Was there a chance that she was still alive in the first place?

"John? John!" Sherlock's voice broke through the doctor's dark thoughts and momentarily drew him back to their present location. The younger man's smooth, cool hands enveloped John's flushed, sweating face and turned his head up toward Sherlock's own. The detective's pale blue eyes held John's firmly.

"She could still be alive, John," Sherlock said slowly, but the tone of his voice revealed that he found it unlikely. "The amount of blood found here is not conclusive with a lethal injury. Alright? We have to keep looking."

John nodded, but his behaviour left Sherlock unconvinced that he was up for the task. The doctor was practically shell-shocked, the look in his eyes distant, as if he had mentally left this horrible scene far behind.

"I need you with me, John. I cannot do this without you," the detective tried, his voice an octave higher than normal, and he shook his assistant, first very gently and then harder, in his attempts to reach through to him.

John took a deep breath and closed his eyes for five solid seconds before he looked at Sherlock.

"Yes, of course," he muttered half-heartedly, but then cleared his throat. "Yes. We have to see this through."

His voice had steeled and he gave his partner and friend an expectant glance which asked him to lead the way. Sherlock nodded and together the two men walked the road, following the tire tracks. Though neither spoke, both were hoping they could reach the destination of the criminals before nightfall. Thank goodness for summer hours.

Sherlock ploughed on and only stopped when John insisted he rehydrate, and even then John nearly had to shove the bottle of water into the consulting detective's mouth. The second time he offered his water, Sherlock refused, but only because he saw something further down the road, and he bolted onward, wordless in his expectation of his assistant to follow. Chasing after him, the source of Sherlock's interest soon became clear to John. In the distance were the familiar colors and shapes of cars.

Heart pounding from the apprehension and sudden dash towards the vehicles, John lost sight of Sherlock once they made it to the clearing, which was much larger than had been anticipated. John wandered to the center, estimating around thirty or more cars. Nearly all of them showed the obvious signs of forced entry or a collision of some form, clear indications that those unfortunate victims within were taken from their transports against their will.

Varied possessions - camping equipment, travel-sized games for children, sports gear - had been left haphazardly about the site, deemed useless by the criminals. Much of the blood stains he saw had gone brown with age, and John wondered just how long these bastards had been committing their acts of cruelty. According to the news articles, the stories went as far back as the fifties, but had this group - no doubt several generations of a family - been preying on the innocent even longer?

He started when he saw movement to the left of him, but when he realized it was only Sherlock, he hurried toward him.

Sherlock gestured at John to be quiet and follow him, and together they hurried along the edges of the field, the detective clearly intent on showing something to his partner. Though Sherlock's stony mask of a face did not reveal anything, his near-spasmodic grip on John's wrist suggested he had made an unpleasant discovery.

"Sherlock!" John whispered after nearly tripping in his attempts to keep up with his long-legged partner's strides. "You're hurting me."

"I'm sorry." Sherlock loosened his hold but did not let go entirely. His clammy fingers pressed against the pulse point in John's wrist, and the doctor wondered if he was doing it on purpose, perhaps to check John's stress levels.

"Sherlock, what's wrong?" John tried again, but before he could make any further inquiries, the detective suddenly halted, causing John to collide with his back. The doctor had an annoyed reprimand on his tongue, but the sight before them, no doubt what Sherlock had discovered in the short time they were separated, made John's throat constrict painfully, allowing no sound to pass.

It was their rental car, dumped on this field amongst dozens of other confiscated vehicles left to corrode and deteriorate, their owners abducted, sometimes killed or severely wounded on location if the blood stains were anything to go on.

John only received a brief visual of the red stains dotting the driver's side door before he was crying out.

"MARY!" he shouted, about to dart past the car and search anew when skinny white fingers grabbed him by the shoulder and clamped over his mouth.

"You idiot," Sherlock hissed, pulling them down behind the rental so roughly that both would have bruises. "You'll alert them to our presence!"

John was listening, though he did not appear to be. Eyes squeezed shut to block the tears from their release, he breathed slowly, trembling. Sherlock took a cautious, quick look past their impromptu hiding place, and ducked back again to find John muttering some unintelligible chant under his breath. He listened closer, wondering if his assistant had inconveniently checked out emotionally, and realized what he was hearing:

"Hamate, capitate, trapezoid, trapezium, scaphoid..."

"What are you doing that for?" Sherlock asked, though he knew the answer. The mantra reminded him of something from a program he saw late on television as a child, of a boy reciting the names of birds to ward of some nightmarish thing.

"Thinking up every bone in the body was something I did during my service in Afghanistan. It helped bring me back down."

"Is it working now?" Sherlock said, a doubtful eyebrow lifting.

"It has to," John said, fighting back the dread of the situation. "All of the things we've done, the times I've hallucinated some hellhound, thought I was about to be blown up... I've never been so afraid... when someone I care about is hurt..."

"Use it, as always," his friend said. "Think of it as the same scenario as all others. Mary won't be found without us."

John wanted to ask Sherlock if he believed there to be anything left of Mary to be found, but he was afraid to hear the answer, as Sherlock never skirted around the truth.

"John? Are you with me?" the detective asked, having noticed his assistant was zoning out once more. "Are you up to this? Tell me the truth."

Sherlock very much wanted to continue the search, but unless John managed to contain his emotions, he would be of no use, perhaps even a danger to them both. Though the abductors hardly possessed the intellect of a criminal mastermind, they were undoubtedly dangerous folk, and if the clan truly had managed to evade capture for the past sixty years or more, they were a force to be reckoned with.

"What are we supposed to do now?" John asked, feeling helpless. "It's getting dark, and we still have no idea where they've taken her. We can't just keep going on random. We'll never find her in time!"

Sherlock nodded gravely; he agreed wholeheartedly that their time was scarce. If Mary was still alive, she would not be for much longer.

"They either drove the cars here, or had them towed," the detective whispered. "There's a clue."

"What?"

"There must be another road leading to this place, probably from their 'nest'. They would not want to stash their spoils too far from where they live. Which suggests their home is within a mile of this place, probably less. We can find it, John. It must be accessible by car."

"Hopefully it's far enough away that they didn't hear me," John reflected with regret.

Sherlock said nothing, once again cautiously looking around before standing upright. He glanced through the shattered front passenger door. As he suspected, Mary's purse and other belongings were still within, of no interest to her captors. When carefully lifting the purse open, he noted her money was still present as well. Of course, the group of criminals had no use for money if they were simply living in the middle of the woods like wild animals, likely not having access to electricity or plumbing either.

"No wallet," he noted aloud. John stood and joined his side, looking with a blank expression at the evidence.

"They took her identification," he observed. "Somehow I didn't expect them to be so clever."

"They've been getting away with this for decades," Sherlock replied. "Either they've picked up a few hints on how not to get caught over the years... or out of pure coincidence they've made a very good choice on their trophies."

Sherlock lightly grasped John's wrist for just a second and walked off in search of where their culprits could have gone. Not five minutes later, he spotted a clear path where the familiar worn-down tire tracks led away from the field.

Daylight was rapidly becoming increasingly scarce, and John cursed himself for omitting to bring a flashlight. Sherlock often forgot even the most essential equipment; it was John's job to plan ahead, be responsible, and make sure the detective did not simply throw himself headfirst into dangerous business. Could he blame his lack of preparation on the fact that Mary's disappearance had made him, as Sherlock would say, 'emotionally compromised'?

Damn it, he had even forgotten to bring his Swiss army knife. The astoundingly clever piece of equipment lay unused in his suitcase; his original reason for bringing it having been a desire to impress Mary by showing her how good he was with tools, but it was useful for a lot more things than he had anticipated. Like picking a lock. John doubted Sherlock had brought his lock picking kit, useful though it might be.

They followed the path for about half a mile, an oppressive silence heavy between them. Sherlock had done a better job than John keeping his emotions reined in, but the way he clenched his jaw suggested that the detective was either very nervous or upset; probably a mixture of both. John couldn't help feeling like a liability that had done nothing except inconvenience Sherlock the whole time, and there was no doubt the younger man still held a grudge toward John for his earlier words.

Though tempted to bring the subject to light of only to simply apologize, John decided against it. For all he knew, he had alerted the criminals to their presence from screaming like an idiot for Mary. If so, had his crying of her name cause them to panic and thus kill her? His brain was traveling in loops upon retread thoughts and worries, and it was doing neither him or his partner any good. Instead, he kept his eyes wandering as they traveled the road, following the tire tracks.

"This place looks familiar," Sherlock said, his voice very low as he came to a complete stop.

John glanced at him, then back at their surroundings, but could not find himself in agreement. Even though he had attempted to memorize small details like his friend had, the trees still all looked the same to him.

Then it occurred to him.

"From one of the photographs?" he tried. Sherlock looked at him with a tiny, triumphant smile and turned on the camera. At least they had thought to bring that with them... And charged it.

"If it's the one I'm thinking of," Sherlock said, going through the images, "then we are very, very close." He paused on a photo, looking down at John in both trepidation and the excitement of finding their target.

"If we were standing right here," he remarked, then pointing to the left of himself and John, "and our family of hunters were using their chimney... there would be a trail of smoke right over there."

They both looked in the direction of Sherlock's finger, but not even the slightest trail of smoke could be seen. The angle was right, and even John had to admit he recognized the environment from the photograph; it all matched up. Only the smoke was absent.

Relief flooded through John, quenching any disappointment he might have felt over not being on the right track. All his instincts told him that something was horribly wrong, to flee, not to keep pushing their luck by pursuing the culprits in a dense, dark forest mostly unknown to them. John was painfully aware that lives were at stake, but he had also learned to trust his instinct, as it had saved him from getting shot or blown up numerous times during his service abroad. Oh, well… if one discounted that one time he had taken a bullet to his shoulder.

"Maybe there's no cabin," John said. "What we saw in the photo could've been just a bonfire. This is a police matter now, anyway. We should leave this to them."

Sherlock looked at his flatmate as if John had suddenly grown a second head - or lost his mind.

"The cabin is there," the detective insisted. "Behind that hilltop. I've never been more sure of anything in my life."

"Sherlock…" John stood before his friend, faced with the mammoth task of trying to talk him out of going, based on a hunch alone. Sherlock sneered derisively at 'hunches' not substantiated by hard-boiled, empirical data. And still, John's gut told him that they were both in grave danger, and if he could not convince Sherlock to abandon the search, he could at least say he tried.

"We shouldn't go there alone," he said. "These guys are crazy! You've seen what they've done. They're fucking serial killers. And we're not even armed."

"They've got your girlfriend," the detective replied. "I thought you were interested in rescuing her?"

"I am!" John shouted, realized his error, and quickly lowered his voice. "Listen, Sherlock… If we hurry back to Avalon and call the police on their landline, they could be here within one hour. They'll believe us if we tell them about the cars. They'll have to! And--"

"It could be too late," Sherlock broke in. "They probably already suspect that we're on their tail, and by the time we've managed to convince the incompetent fools with the so-called local police force that there are murderous mountain men roaming the woods, they'll be long gone. And Mary will be dead."

Breathing deep and slow, John considered their options. Sherlock was a stubborn bastard, and in a situation such as this, the doctor could not simply leave without him; it was too dangerous. Frankly, John wondered just how his partner had managed on his own before the two of them met. Did Mycroft have to plant hidden cameras every two feet and employ spies in every public place Sherlock frequented?

The detective did have a point. They could be wasting valuable time. Wordless in their decision, they continued onward.

"I don't suppose there would be a point to improvising some weapons out of branches...?" John said, half in jest.

"I'm sure we'll find something to use when we get there," Sherlock said. "Also, they are probably quite used to victims that cannot fight back. We may be able to surprise them yet."

"I hope so."

TBC...
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The Prey