Chapter Text
John Watson only knows a few words of Pashto. He knows “my baby” because there was a woman in Jalalabad who screamed it for an hour while John tried to keep her intestines inside of her. She had been holding her son when an explosion blasted a chunk of wall through her midsection. What was left of the baby came back in two body bags. One time, after intubating a burn victim, he lifted his gloved hand away and took skin with it. There was another man who’d been partially trapped under a Humvee for days. What was left of his leg was black to the knee. On several occasions John arrived to scenes to find heads that had gone through windshields and forgotten their bodies. He had to hold a woman’s face together once, knowing that if he let go the two pieces of her jaw would flop out and the gaping maw that once been her chin and mouth and nose would open. All the eyes were probably the worst, hanging out on strings of tendons and nerves on tanned cheeks or nothing but bloody holes in the middles of faces.
He’s seen an IED shred his best friend into three pieces, seen a Taliban werewolf rip out half his shoulder, seen people going from brave, swaggering men to shivering boys crying for their mothers, and seen the woman who, ten hours previously, been on her knees in front of him swallowing his cock bleed out screaming.
All of this is to say that he has seen terrible things and come back physically and mentally whole. Changed, but whole, and positive that if Afghanistan couldn’t break him than England sure as hell won’t.
Then came Gwen Norton, the beautiful, fierce white wolf with eyes like fire, and the rest of Irene Adler’s pack. Then came the hounds of the Baskervilles.
---
It starts with a phone call.
John wakes from a nap just before sunset to Sherlock staring at him. This is not an unusual event, nor is the round of enthusiastic snogging and groping that follows. There is a bit of biting, barely enough to call for a plaster, and then Sherlock insists on a shower and John goes about making supper.
Throughout all of this, Sherlock’s phone rings six times.
On the seventh, John decides enough is enough. “You going to get that?” he asks across the table.
Sherlock, who is prodding at something meaty of questionable age with a pencil, shrugs. “It’s just Mycroft. He’ll stop eventually.”
His phone rings again.
“The question is,” says John around a mouthful of chicken marsala, “whether he stops calling before or after I stomp on your bloody phone.”
Sherlock says nothing. Something bursts on the meaty thing.
The phone rings again while John is doing the washing-up. John glances over. Sherlock is fully preoccupied with extracting fluid from his questionable meaty object. John slyly sets his plate down, wipes his hands on his dressing gown, and snatches the phone off the table.
“Good evening, Sherlock Holmes’s personal answering service,” John says cheerily.
“Ah, John. Glad to hear from you. Is my brother there?”
Sherlock is glaring daggers.
“He is, but he--er, can’t come to the phone. Can I put you on speaker?”
“By all means.”
He fumbles with the phone for a moment. “How the--okay, you’re on.”
“Excellent.”
Sherlock scowls.
“There is a woman coming over with a case.”
Sherlock makes a point of looking as if he’s not listening.
“She will want you to acquire something for her. That may be all she asks of you.”
Sherlock is still not listening.
“Whatever you do, no matter what she promises, do no more for this woman. I cannot elaborate further. You must believe me when I say that it is not in your best interests to involve yourself with her.”
Sherlock is listening. He straightens and gives the phone a mutinous look. “Is it?” he rumbles.
“Yes,” says Mycroft. “He’ll be there in approximately...seven minutes, I’d say. Good luck, John.” The line goes dead.
“‘Good luck John’?” Sherlock muses, narrowing critical eyes at the phone. “Come, John. We’ve a guest on the way.”
In precisely seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds, the doorbell rings. Sherlock grins.
The woman who enters the flat does so like a lot of sanguinarians do, with a sweeping air of superiority. She’s dressed somewhat anachronistically, in a green and white houndstooth dress, short white wool jacket, white pillbox hat, black pumps, black gloves and pantyhose. Her pale hair is in a well-controlled, curled bob around her face, dark eyes severe under short fringe. She’s taller than John, but not by much, and when she shrugs off her jacket her arms are wired with muscle.
“Caroline Baskerville,” she says, holding out a hand. “Sherlock Holmes, I presume.”
Sherlock ignores her hand and takes a seat in his chair, gesturing to the one across from him. “Please, take a seat. This is my friend John Watson; he is privy to all my affairs.”
John nods tightly.
Baskerville’s lips thin. “Yes, I’ve done my research.”
Sherlock’s eyes narrow. Ms. Baskerville sits down in John’s usual chair, crossing her legs neatly and settling her hands on her knee.
“Mr. Holmes, I’ve come to you with a problem.”
He sighs tragically. “Let me guess. You’re the last of the Baskerville vampires, and you’ve got a security leak. Possibly within your staff, but more likely your ex-lover. Perhaps even both; your family’s not known for its generosity nor its...‘people skills.’ You feel the danger has become imminent and require assistance in finding and eliminating this leak of yours.”
John is somewhat impressed that Ms. Baskerville’s mouth stays shut. She merely inclines her head.
“Impressive, Mr. Holmes.”
He shrugs. “You’re not the only one who does research.”
“Erm, hi,” says John. “Bit of exposition would be much appreciated, thanks.”
Sherlock steeples his fingers and keeps his eyes trained on Ms. Baskerville. “The Baskerville clan started as a noble family near Dartmoor. The seat of their holdings was what is today the village of Grimpen, at Baskerville Hall.”
“Creativity was never our strong suit,” Ms. Baskerville comments, inspecting her long scarlet fingernails.
“They were well-known for...keeping a well-stocked pantry, you might say.”
John’s stomach roils. Ms. Baskerville neither objects nor reacts.
“Naturally, the smallfolk of Grimpen objected to the treatment of their finest young women, but the Baskervilles were efficient landlords and kept them...in check.”
Ms. Baskerville shrugs. “Those were the times.”
“A few of the women in their...larder...were lycanthropes. As time went by the nature of their ailment began to change. It became controllable. And these changes were congenital. Children born to mothers who could control when they transformed and how they behaved when they did could do the same, and so on for generations.”
“Yeah, the Dartmoor strain,” says John. “That’s where it started? But I’ve never heard--”
“The surviving Baskervilles are well-connected,” says Sherlock, cocking his head. Ms. Baskerville smiles demurely.
“Surviving?”
“Yes. Although the Dartmoor strain is only symptomatic in women, it spread quickly. The Baskervilles were driven out of their holdings by 1617, and the descendants of the women they kept have a taste for vengeance.”
Ms. Baskerville sneers. “Those pitiful she-wolves. Four hundred years and they’re still bitter.” Her eyes flicker over to John. “You’re angry,” she says mildly.
He laughs. “Yeah, little bit. You are talking about locking people up and eating them bit by bit against their will.”
Ms. Baskerville tilts her head and smiles. “Oh, you sweet young thing. You cannot know what it was like in those days. There was no tepamine to slake our thirst. No one called us ‘sanguinarians’ and allowed us to drink from them of their own free will. We could hunt a meager diet from animals and hunger constantly for more, or else creep into homes and hunt in the shadows from the unsuspecting. We chose a different way. We took into our home young women who would otherwise live a life of poverty and hardship and gave them food and lodging. In return, we asked only to feed from them once a fortnight or so. We were not cruel. We did not beat them. We allowed them to see their families, their lovers, their children. It was the kinder way.”
John grants her a sarcastic smile. “You’ll forgive me if I disagree with you on that point.”
Sherlock waves a hand. “Your ex-lover. What does he have on you?”
“She has acquired the security codes to Baskerville Hall.”
“You can’t just change it?” says John.
Ms. Baskerville grimaces. “Not without the override key, which she is also in possession of.”
Sherlock winces melodramatically. “Surely you’ve additional measures?”
“Of course. Nevertheless, you can imagine my...general discomfort with the situation.”
Sherlock nods. “Name?”
Ms. Baskerville’s lips thin. “Irene Adler.”
Sherlock’s face lights up. “I know the name. She’s in my files. Born in Austria in the early sixteenth century, brought up in the court of King Francis I, sent to Lord Hugo Baskerville to be wed and met a different sort of eternal fate.”
“She never had much of a taste for the countryside,” says Ms. Baskerville, eyes glazing over. “She left for London when she was little more than a newborn.”
“Moved around Europe every few years until the twenties, when she left for America and made her way as a nightclub singer.” Sherlock folds his fingers together and scowls. “Nothing on her after 1993.”
Ms. Baskerville smiles, showing teeth.
“Ah. Very well-connected, then.”
“She contacted me, let me know that now we were living in the open, she was coming back to England. When she arrived, I offered her a place in my home. My London home, of course, not Baskerville Hall. I prefer not to stay there unless necessary; it’s...shall we say, bad publicity.”
Sherlock quirks up an eyebrow but says nothing.
“I am ashamed to say I did not realize she had been contacted by the she-wolves. A month ago, my chief of security, Mr. Barrymore, raised concerns that Miss Adler might be in contact with...undesirables. Upon learning of our suspicions, she stole the security codes to Baskerville Hall and fled. Our efforts to retrieve them have been unsuccessful. It appears Miss Adler has garnered quite a loyal following from the bitches. No offense meant to you, of course,” she adds smoothly to John.
“Oh, really? Was that what you meant?”
Ms. Baskerville shifts her attentions back to Sherlock. “She is currently staying at her old place from Victoria’s rule, on Wilton Crescent. I trust you can find it?”
Sherlock raises an eyebrow.
“Excellent. Then I shall make my leave. You may contact me at this number.” She extends a business card, which Sherlock tucks into his jacket pocket.
“John will show you out,” he says, already on his feet and halfway down the hall to his room.
John would rather not.
“You find me distasteful,” Ms. Baskerville remarks as she steps through the door.
“I find plenty of people distasteful,” he says. “We’ll call you with news.”
When the door shuts, John is tremendously pleased.
---
The taxi ride to Belgravia is not a pleasant one.
“I don’t like this,” John says as soon as the cab pulls away from the curb. “Working for this Baskerville woman.”
“The Baskervilles were hardly the most morally repugnant of our kind. The Florentine families were known to keep humans like cattle, complete with breeding programs. There were Portuguese slave traders who made their fortunes kidnapping African natives, sailing to European ports and selling the run of the ship to the highest bidders. Settlers in the New World wiped out entire tribes. Hell, some went over with the Spanish conquistadors, passed themselves off as gods and demanded regular human sacrifices as tribute. What would you have proposed the Baskervilles do?”
John’s mouth works for a moment, then snaps shut. “I--right. I don’t actually think I can argue this with you.”
John knows Sherlock’s past, and he knows Sherlock’s got a body count. He’s never asked for many details, and had never before really thought about it too hard. He knows quite a lot of people who’ve killed and wished they hadn’t, or killed people they shouldn’t have. His hands aren’t clean. But just now, he’d wouldn’t mind knowing a little more. Just to be sure. There’s killing a man in self-defense, and killing a man in cold blood, and then there’s industrialized, institutional murder.
Sherlock sighs tragically. “No.”
John raises his eyebrows.
“I never did. Ms. Baskerville mentioned the hunters in the shadows. I was one of those, although I favored mind games as a weapon over brute force.”
John frowns. “That’s...actually good to hear. So you never...” He squints out the window at the busy London night. “I don’t know...clubbed somebody over the head and sucked them dry?”
Sherlock snorts. “Dull.”
John rolls his eyes. “Ah, yes. Of course. Can always rely on you to do the right thing, so long as it’s the easiest thing.”
When he looks back, Sherlock is staring out the window and will not meet his eyes.
---
When the cab pulls up in front of 21 Wilton Crescent, it is just shy of midnight. It’s quiet on this street, and to the naked eye, abandoned.
Upstairs, someone is watching.
“Gwen, darling? We’ve visitors.”