Wilde Storm
Page 23
I also immersed myself in the fictional accounts of Moriarty, comparing them to the real accounts my father had of him. As disturbing as I found it, Sherlock and Moriarty had more in common than was comforting. I’d seen softness in my father. Comfort and love. But I’d also seen him place the needs of many above the safety of a few, a difficult decision for most people to make. He would stop at nothing to gain knowledge, but I knew in my heart there was a capacity in him for great love.
Moriarty was a sadist. In one of my father’s many noted experiences with him, he’d taken care to write painstakingly detailed accounts, and in one case, had written in the sidebar, “Possesses little moral fiber. Brilliant. Sadistic. Will go to the ends of the earth to meet a goal and will kill people he loves if they stand in his way. Avoid at all costs.”
Both men were brilliant, both had a sadistic streak, and both men…appeared to love my mother.
In several grainy images I discovered tucked into a locked book, were my mother and Moriarty having coffee at a shop somewhere in Europe. Moriarty’s head was thrown back into a laugh and my mother stared at him intently.
I may not have been raised to know I was a Holmes, I may not have known about my immortality, and I may never have stretched my intellect to the capacity it was capable of, but there was no time like the present. After all, I was going to be around for a very long time. Probably. As long as I scaled down the amount of insanity I got involved in. Easier said than done with the current life I was living.
In the nights that followed since the explosion in the lab, I had plenty of lonely evenings to think about all the things that occurred. I still hadn’t gone through my mother’s file I’d found in Irene Adler’s office. I wasn’t ready to. I’d faced lies and betrayal and hurt from those I’d loved the most and I wasn’t ready to accept anymore yet. But as time passed, I began to maybe not fully understand why they’d made the decisions they made, but the circumstances surrounding them. I was something different now. And even though my mother and father were not the people I’d thought them to be, it didn’t mean I didn’t love them.
And it didn’t mean I wouldn’t go to the ends of the earth to save them.
In the very fiber of my being, I knew things with them weren’t as cut and dry as they appeared to be.
I was a Holmes by virtue of my blood and my altered DNA, and I would get to the bottom of this and bring them home.
Even if it killed me.
A Quick Thank You!
Thanks so much to everyone still hanging out with Penelope & Crew. If you’re interested, I write two other mixed urban fantasy series under S.E. Babin. Please check out The Fairytale League Series & The Goddess Chronicles.
More Penelope will come in 2017!