Games of Grief

by C. J. Strange

  Superb.

  “Who’s your friend, love?” Kay barks curtly.

  “Chap by the name of James?” she says, and my heart stops dead.

  James? Not like as in Professor James Moriarty, right?

  Kay’s cold fingers are only loosely locked around my own by now. The instant this strange female stranger does something—anything—I want to construe as a distraction, I’m going for it. The best plan I’ve got right now is to hope and pray this gal is on my side.

  “Bring her over here,” grunts Kay, but as his partner moves in on the woman, she finally lets whatever reflex has been coiled up tight beneath the surface kick in in full-gear.

  “I don’t think so, darling—”

  A blur of action plays out like a static telly in the darkness, kicking up a thick cloud of dust and moving far too fast for me to make out. One of her legs flashes up and around, but it’s her fist that jabs out sharply and catches him—not once, but twice.

  I decide to take it as my cue.

  I kick both legs up, eager to use my pent up rage and adrenaline to use this bloody god-given gift of an opportunity to escape that seems like something out of a movie. My boots lock around the back of Kay’s neck and I whip him clean over my head, wrenching both hands forward and free at the same time.

  Get out, get out, get out—!

  I don’t care if she has other plans. Far as I know, she’s a civilian, and I’m a police constable. I snatch my badge up off the ground and seize her arm in my other hand, bolting out through the hole in the wall I originally entered through.

  We both know what to do. We don’t have to say it.

  We run.

  This is going… considerably more superb than before.

  It’s a good four or five minutes (and we’ve been pounding the open street for at least three of those) before we finally feel safe enough to slow to a jog. And I’m finally able to fully take all of her in.

  My jaw drops.

  I can’t say she’s not what I was expecting, because in all honesty I don’t remember what I was expecting. All pre-conceived notions of the woman who possibly just saved my life are gone the instant I’m able to take in the truth.

  White-blonde curls frame a strangely-pretty, porcelain face, the inky-black of her hat, coat, and eye-shadow a stark contrast to her otherwise delicate features. She’s barely above five feet in height, and barely one-forty soaking wet. But judging from the way I watched her move down there, she’s sporting well-honed muscles beneath that expensive trench.

  She turns to me as we drag ourselves to a stop, a giggle on her lips and a sparkle of mischief in her eyes.

  “I don’t know a James,” she blurts out, a sudden confession out of the blue, and then she’s gone again, leaving me as confused as I was the first time she alluded to us possibly sharing an informant.

  “It’s weird you’d say James,” I admit, following her down a side street as I try to get my bearings and figure out where we are. “‘Cause the bloke what sent me this way?”

  The small, strange blonde bites her lip. “Oh, bugger. He’s a James, too? Bugger fuck. I hope I didn’t accidentally narc on your narc, love. Though, I suppose in a way, you also just narc’ed on your own narc.” She sighs heavily, and I wonder if that was as difficult to say as it was to follow. “Is your James at least a wanker?”

  “He’s—he’s a bit of a wanker, I guess,” “But don’t tell him I said that.”

  “Well, I don’t mind so much narc’ing on a wanker,” she says thoughtfully, with a bluntness I can’t help but admire. She pauses and looks around, then nods. I follow her line of sight to an iron fire escape attached to the side of the building to our left.

  “Let’s do up. I love up. Do you enjoy up?” she’s babbling, even as she leads me toward the fire escape. I heft myself upward and catch the bottom of the ladder, dragging it down toward us.

  “I could be a fan of up,” I say, with as much geniality as possible. I’m becoming more and more intrigued by her as the minutes pass. Maybe it’s the detective in me, sensing a case. Or maybe it’s the male of the species in me, sensing… er, something else.

  We ascend to the rooftop, five stories higher than the street and with much better vantage points. She’s already checked all four points of the building by the time I do the same and, content we aren’t being followed, we both relax a bit.

  “So,” she says brightly, adjusting her coat. “Are you really a police officer, or did you just fancy some?”

  I growl, but decide not to comment on it.

  “Constable Gavin Lestrade,” I say, “of New Sovereign Yard.”

  “Ah, yes, I worked a case with them once,” the beautiful blonde muses, and when she does I grow even more interested. If that’s possible at this point. “Oh! But, we don’t mention it. Or at least, you shouldn’t. I do what I want. You do what they tell you.”

  I frown at her, eyebrows furrowing in bemusement. Who in Britain could she be, for NSY to not want folk discussing their involvement with her?

  “You an ex-con?”

  She scoffs. “Bloody hell, no. I’m a consulting detective.”

  I tilt my head. “I don’t see why the precinct wouldn’t wanna—”

  “I specialize in the paranormal,” she adds, with a disgusting amount of charm, and I suddenly understand her completely.

  The wind has changed directions, wafting toward me the scent of sweet vanilla and orange notes that have to be coming from her. I do my best to ignore them as she leans in and offered me a small, gloved hand.

  “Sherlock Holmes. Esquire,” she tacks on the end, pointedly, and then grins broadly at the way I recoil in shock. “I know, how terribly improper for a lady of the landed gentry to take a man’s title. But considering my father gave me a man’s name, I figured, why the ruddy hell not, eh?”

  Before I can comment, or ask any questions, she’s speaking again.

  “Look, I’ll be brief, son, I only really asked you on this moonlit rooftop outing to get the lowdown on everything you know.” She puts her weight on one leg, locking her hips, and stares down at me despite being a full foot shorter.

  “I know the Old Bill doesn’t particularly relish working with those in the paranormal field,” Sherlock says idly, a smirk on her pretty face. “But then again, with all information available on the KING-controlled Net inspected with a fine-toothed comb for anything they deem ‘detrimental to society’, your sources are somewhat limited these days, aren’t they, darling?”

  My cheeks redden, and I’m not sure if it’s due to being called out for my law-abiding nature, or because she called me ‘darling’.

  “So, what’s it going to be, Lestrade?” she asks, as bold, bright, and enthusiastic as the very first time I ever heard her speak.

  Seconds before she saved me from a fate my own mind won’t even allow me to imagine.

  “Shall we compare notes?”

  9 Holmes' Dark Fate

  Public Sovereign Library, University College London

  November 6, 1:13pm

  I must say, I have a strong dislike for libraries named after a government that customarily rejects the idea of its people reading. Or having free access to books. Or knowledge, in almost any shape or form.

  But who am I to comment? I was unfortunately never consulted when this particular library was rebuilt, repurposed, and reopened. I’m only perusing the shelves, waiting for my gut to stir and kick in at the opportune moment to most effectively further my investigation.

  This ‘Professor James Moriarty’ the young constable mentioned in exchange for some drivel about the Traugr should be easy to pluck out of a crowd, especially the crowds that typically gather in a university library.

  And if not, mathematics and engineering students can be just as effortless to pinpoint. I should be able to garner a great deal of information on this paranormally-involved professor via those who spend time with him.

  Remarkably, I needn’t go to the trouble.

&
nbsp; I’ve barely scanned the first shelf of mathematics textbooks and theorums when I turn and bump into the broad, black cotton-clad chest of the very man I’m looking to research, and ultimately collide with.

  I never imagined doing so quite this literally.

  “I beg your pardon,” I say politely, flashing a smile.

  However, as I move to side-step him, his hand snaps out and ensnares my wrist.

  “You,” he breathes, looming almost a foot-and-a-half over me as he all but backs me against the stack of shelves. “You—”

  “Me,” is my chipper (albeit slightly uncomfortable) response.

  The clean-cut, sculpted hulk of a man I’m reasonably sure is James Moriarty whips his head back and forth, checking over both shoulders and toward each of the entrances in turn.

  “My office,” he demands, a gruff tone that brooks no argument even from the most seasoned of rebels. “Now.”

  “Yes, professor,” I answer with as much dry zest as I’m able to mete out. He hasn’t yet released my wrist—which, if this were our third date and I were considering getting serious with him, would be setting off a whole host of alarm bells in my brain—and he’s using it to discreetly frog-march me across the library, through one of the side exits, and down a placidly-colored hallway.

  The journey to his office is a trifle longer than I might’ve liked. Despite several attempts to spark conversation, my incarcerator seems more keen on maintaining an uncomfortable silence than socializing with me.

  “And it truly is such a shame,” I’m lamenting in far too dramatic a tone, as we belatedly reach a door marked MATHEMATICS—J.M. and come to a sudden stop. “Because I do imagine we would make such fine adversaries, if one could remove the stick from up one’s behind long enough to notice—”

  He releases my arm with a slight shove, cutting me off. He fishes a set of keys from his pocket and stares at me while he unlocks the door, before pushing it open and stepping aside.

  “My utmost apologies for the curtness of my manner,” he says, his deep voice barely above the rasp of a whisper, “but I am sure you know as well as I do what your coming here must mean.”

  I blink at him, undecided between bolting and venturing further down this rabbit hole.

  “Whilst I do genuinely appreciate the fervor and enthusiasm with which you have greeted me,” I state rakishly. “Questionable domestic violence aside, I’m afraid I have absolutely no clue what the devil you are talking about.”

  “The devil is what I am talking about,” is his dark response, and while the weight and the gravity it carries should be enough to warn me away, it’s all I can do not to be consumed by this sudden overwhelming rush of my own insatiable curiosity. “The details are yet to be ironed out.”

  Again, he motions to the door.

  “Ladies first.”

  I tip my chin up, studying him for a solid moment or two. A professor of mathematics he may be, but there is so much more to him than that—buried beneath a surface he may have constructed specifically to keep it all out of sight. The angle at which he bent my arm was military or at least law enforcement, as is the standard-issue WebbTech Viper s10 ‘cop-watch’ as it’s commonly called, well-worn about his right wrist. Several scars mar an otherwise flawless complexion, the angle and shape of which resemble knife wounds.

  Perhaps Constable ‘Junior’ Lestrade wasn’t completely up-front with me about all aspects of his academic contact.

  Against my better judgment, I consent to enter the office of Professor James Moriarty.

  I immediately wish that I hadn’t.

  An involuntary whimper slips past my lips as a draining nausea collides with my mind like a tidal wave, plunging down into the depths of my stomach in a way that’s somehow simultaneously physical and metaphysical. My knees lock and my eyes attempt to roll up into my skull, and my survivalist instincts snap into full effect as I catch myself before I can pass out.

  “… I strongly suggest that you open a window, air it out in here a tad.”

  Professor Moriarty is against my back in a heartbeat. Those huge, powerful hands drop to locate my hips beneath my soft leather breeches, tugging until my shoulder-blades press tighter to his chest.

  I freeze, as my eyes fall upon the office’s other current occupants.

  I wonder, for no more than a second or two, if he is even aware of their presence.

  “Pay no heed to my harem,” he whispers gruffly, answering my internal musings, and while I understand there may have been some intent to inject humor into it, any and all efforts made were apparently unsuccessful.

  I count four spectres in the office, spirits of the dead who have yet to pass over—via their own choice, or the choice of some otherworldly entity I don’t pretend to fully understand. All are women, white, fair-haired, and around my age, in various periods of dress from what I estimate to be early 2000s to current.

  It doesn’t escape me that all four of them look drastically similar to me.

  “I must say,” I admit, with absolutely no suggestion of any quiver to my voice whatsoever, “I’m finding it rather difficult to do exactly that.”

  I insist upon myself, that it’s the power of sheer unbridled curiosity keeping me rooted to that spot in the very center of his office. Nothing more. Nothing but the knowledge of an upcoming double-date with both discovery and destiny. An infactuation with exposé, with intrigue—with consensual and occasionally non-consensual intrusiveness.

  An addiction to the total enchantment of the mind. The most thrilling kind of addiction.

  It’s both bewitching and bewildering, and it has me fully enraptured in its clutches.

  “This truly feels like a dream, my perfect nightmare,” Professor Moriarty murmurs into the tresses of my hair, keeping me clutched tight against him. My mind races, presuming multiple worse case scenarios of mistaken identity leading to multiple young blondes meeting their end at the hands of a serial killer ex-soldier.

  He’s clearly mistaken me for somebody else. Perhaps she, another young English blonde under five-five, would understand why the professor is currently breathing into the top of my head. The thought of him inhaling my scent causes me to shudder.

  On second thought, perhaps it’s best I play along for the time being.

  “What a coincidence, I had a similar nightmare the other night,” I say off-handedly, doing my best to ignore what’s going on at the small of my back. Every voice screams at me to run. But that single whisper in the dark I daren’t allow myself to ever obey croons for me to stay.

  And, for once, I listen to it.

  Moriarty chuckles against the top of my head, rocking my hips in time with his own. A slow and lazy rhythm.

  “Ah, but you see, you’ve never had a nightmare quite like me before,” he whispers, and with that he grabs my hips and yanks me backward, and all of a sudden I’m falling through the thick, inky blackness of a limitless abyss—

  I’m suspended before I can hit the ground. The office has dissolved into darkness around me, leaving me alone in the middle of a cold, stark wasteland. A cruel, overdue scent that can only ever be described as the smell of death fills my nostrils, and I take a controlled, cleansing breath to acclimatize.

  Where the bloody hell am I?

  A sudden whoosh of air, like the sound of a sigh leaving a person’s lungs, rushes by me from behind. I spin around, unable to establish my bearings in the vast nothingness. There’s no point of reference, no center of gravity—everything is a complete shambles of mish-mash logic and painfully incorrect physics.

  Which, one could say, would qualify rather well for my ‘worst’ kind of nightmare.

  Another sad, heaving whoosh of air startles me. Not a second later, I’m being thrown violently backward again, back into the cold, cluttered office—and clutches—of Professor Moriarty.

  I stumble away from him, my boots having at long last unanchored themselves from the hardwood. His dark, narrowed eyes pierce the dim candlelight to scorch and
scald my own, and I return his icy-hot stare with a venomous one of my own.

  “Pardon me,” I exhale, all of my joints seizing up as the heavy atmosphere of the office hits me all over again. “I have a terrible feeling you and I may be here under entirely different aspirations.”

  Moriarty straightens up to his full six-four or six-five, which I imagine would be an impassive stance to bear the brunt of regardless of one’s own height. My own, of course, being no exemption.

  “Quite,” is the single-syllable response, diamond-hard and dusted with chips of ice. “Notwithstanding, we are both here to the same end.”

  “You know,” I react, determined to quickly redirect his attention. “Whilst I would generally always hesitate to disagree with the esoteric validity of any randomly-generated series of coincidental happenstances—”

  “There is nothing coincidential about your being here, Lady Holmes,” he interjects, advancing on me a single, predatory step. The sudden threat of my name on his lips jerks me into the fatal reality of the situation at hand, and I counter with my own firm step forward—figuratively stepping up to the plate, if you will.

  “It’s a right pet peeve of mine when blokes cut me off,” I snarl, peering down my nose at him despite how our vast height difference does not play out in my favor.

  Before he can decide how to respond, I’ve spun on the heel of my boots and wrenched the door to his office open, slipping through it.

  I doubt very much he has the stones to persue me.

  I am seldom incorrect. For my own sake, I hope this is not one of those times.

  10 Watson's Deduction

  221b Baker Street, Old London Town

  November 6, 8:38pm

  “The cult of the Abyssal SIN?”

  I chuckle as I stir a carefully-measured half-teaspoonful of sugar into my earl grey, whisking it in with a practiced hand.

  “Can’t say I’ve heard of it, to be fair. But then again, I don’t always work the night shifts.”