by Janina Woods
Then I could also see clearly that it wasn’t my brother, after all.
I inched closer and pushed the hair out of the person’s face to discern just who was being kept here. To my slight surprise, it was no other than Elizabeth Moran, bleeding from a large number of cuts all over her body, blood smeared across her skin and what remained of her clothes. The only thing keeping her upright were the ropes binding her to the chair, and from the blood on top of them, I could conclude that she had been tied down, wounded and then simply left here. She was breathing shallowly and her skin had taken on a sickly white pallor. There was no way to know how much blood she had already lost - I could only tell that she was in fact, still alive.
The ropes were bound tightly, and while I could have cut them easily, I didn’t have the mind to do so. Here she was. The woman who had attempted to thwart me at every turn of our journey, finally at my mercy, all alone. Some part of me was absolutely satisfied by seeing her this way, and while I wouldn’t have done her any harm personally, I gathered that my inaction would lead possibly to the same end.
But it wasn’t my decision to make alone, as just then I heard the woman groan and move her head slightly upwards. The last thing I needed at the moment was a loud noise to alert anyone to my presence, so I put my hand over her mouth preemptively. While this only brought her to consciousness faster, at least I was able to contain her shouts, which emerged muffled through my fingers. Elizabeth’ eyes flew open, panicked and unfocused. She struggled in her restraints, clearly wanting to flee, but was effectively kept in place.
“Elizabeth, look at me,” I hissed. “I’m not one of them. Surely you remember me.”
She shook her head and strained against the ropes, continuing to utter unintelligible noises so loud I could barely stifle them. With my free hand I strongly grabbed her head of unruly hair and forced her to look at me. We stared into each other’s eyes for a while, until I saw the panic retreat and some sort of recognition arrive. Still, her muscles relaxed only by a fraction, as I wasn’t a cultist, but potentially just as frightening to her. She took a few big breaths, but never interrupted our shared gaze, with her big eyes full of tears, even as I let go of her.
“Mycroft Holmes,” she whispered, voice hoarse, the words barely rolling off her tongue. “Why?”
“You of all people should know why,” I said flatly.
She coughed as a shaky laugh rippled through her body. Her eyes were unfocused and her head swayed back and forth. I grabbed the lamp and held it up to her face to confirm my suspicion: Elizabeth was under the influence of some drug that dulled her senses... and her pain.
“Dear Sherlock...” she finally continued. “Go home. He is dead.”
“What?” I exclaimed, in that moment paying no mind to the loudness of my voice. I grabbed her arms and closed my finger around the cuts, eliciting a painful wince. “He cannot be dead. Tell me you’re lying!”
“What does it matter to me? He is dead. It’s the truth,” Elizabeth let her head slump back, looking to the ceiling of the tent. “Moriarty...”
A violent sobbing noise escaped her and even more tears rolled from her eyes. She started to breathe heavily, only to be constricted by the ropes, which ended in a coughing spell. I stepped over to the entrance of the tent, and quickly drew back the cloth to check our surroundings. But the few cultists I could see were still humming their strange chant and seemingly in a trance-like state, so I discarded them from my mind.
A dull thumping noise had me spin around, only to find that Elizabeth had managed to make her chair fall over in the few seconds I had my back turned. Now only a muffled sobbing was audible. I sighed. Maybe it was indeed time to take pity on her. In this state, she wouldn’t be able to even walk out of here. But not before I asked her some more questions - so I knelt down in front of her.
“Where is Sherlock?”
“Moriarty,” Elizabeth whispered. “He cut me. Those men, they touched me all over, squeezed my wounds to paint their faces with my blood...”
“You know you would have been better off if you had let me put you in a cell in Milan,” I answered, but if she heard my voice, she didn’t pay it any mind.
“He hates him, you know? It’s only the hate for Sherlock Holmes, which kept him going all these years. He has lost so much in the fall. He can’t think anymore. Gets headaches, has problems concentrating,” Elizabeth simply stared to the floor in front of her and made no more attempt at struggling. She talked slowly, as if the words had to filter through a haze. “He learned that Holmes was still alive - that he had escaped the fall with heavy injuries, but his mental faculties completely intact. That is when the Desert Wind found him. In his desperation, they convinced him that a proper sacrifice of Sherlock Holmes to the deity Seth would bring back his mind. Not just to kill him. No, he had to do it properly.”
“And he believed them.”
“Believed? He has made it his crusade...”
The tent started shaking violently just then, and I knew that the sandstorm had finally hit the camp with its full force. A voice rose above the roaring wind and shouted something in a language I couldn’t comprehend.
“Go home, Mycroft Holmes. Go home and leave me to die.”
I grabbed a bloodied knife from a nearby table. Elizabeth grew wide-eyed, her eyes betraying the shock she felt, but she kept quiet.
Then I raised the blade.
The cloth, which covered the entrance of the tent, was flapping in the wind. I slipped out into the storm and left Elizabeth alone with her own thoughts, now free of the ropes that bound her. With my body pressed closely to one tent after the other, I advanced into the direction of the centre. But visibility wasn’t my only problem. Even under my cloak, I was battered by the small particles, which hurt like pricks of a needle every time they hit my skin. Out of fear for the safety of my eyes, I couldn’t advance directly against the wind, but had to run from cover to cover, inching forward.
The central structure was barely visible now, as the sandstorm clouded everything and the night had well and truly arrived. Still, the cultists kept to their formation, eyes closed, serenely meditating. The unrelenting wind tore at their clothes and destroyed the feathers of the few headdresses that barely held on in the battering. Blood was running down their skin, and I couldn’t tell if it was Elizabeth’s or theirs.
As I got closer, I could finally make out more details. There were now several figures on the central pedestal, but from the distance I couldn’t make out who the shadows were. So I decided to circle around the tents to approach it from behind. The storm overpowered any noises, so I didn’t worry about my footsteps, and the cloak looked just like the tent fabrics, pushed around in the wind, so I felt adequately concealed. But it wasn’t my own safety I was worried about. I refused to believe Elizabeth’s claim about my brother’s death until I saw him with my own eyes. My only hope was that Victoria and Watson had reached him by now.
So it was with a shock that hit me like a dagger through the heart when I saw him, recognised him, as I circled around another tent: My dear brother Sherlock, bound to a wooden pole at one end of the structure, right above me. He hung limp, head only held up by a rope across his forehead. His body was being battered by the sand, which hit him without any barrier to protect him, as he was clad only in a pair of dilapidated, dusty trousers and showed bare flesh everywhere else.
Next to him were only two people: Another one of these damn cultists and James Moriarty himself. So my companions hadn’t found Sherlock in time. I took a deep breath and released the safety of my gun. I knew there must be stairs to reach the top, which lay more than two metres above my head. It was impossible to climb in the wind, which was still growing impossibly stronger and I couldn’t get a clear shot from my vantage point either. As I continued my way around, I temporarily lost sight of the trio, but redoubled my efforts to prevail against th
e wind.
Then a gunshot rang loud and clear, even over the noise of the storm.
I lost my footing as it startled me and my gun dropped to the ground, immediately carried away by a gust of the storm. I tried to jump after it, but lost track after only few seconds, as it disappeared between various other objects being blown about. There was no use searching for it, and I cursed under my breath.
“Don’t move, you fiend!” I heard Victoria’s voice then, bright, clear and full of wrath floating above my head in the storm. “Make one wrong move and the next shot will not miss!”
Victoria! She was up there, with Moriarty! I clambered to my feet as quickly as I could and scrambled to get around the base of the stone monument, almost falling several times due to the loose sand and resistance of the wind. Finally, I laid eyes on the stairs and climbed them using both hands and feet until I was on top and stood fully in the wind, eyes shielded.
Like this I could barely make out what was happening in front of me. The flames had been blown out almost entirely, leaving only embers to shed any light on the scene. Being robbed both of vision and freedom of movement by the sandstorm felt claustrophobic in a strange way I had never experienced before.
I reached out to the figure of Watson, only a few steps in front of me and grabbed his jacket. He jolted, but recognised me quickly. His arm was outstretched, gun pointed unwavering at Moriarty, no matter how much the gales tried to tug at the limb. Only a few steps in front of us, Victoria stood in the same position, weapon aimed at our nemesis.
Then I heard a laugh, chuckling and bubbling underneath the roar of the sandstorm, and it didn’t take me long to realise that it originated from the professor, holding a large knife to Sherlock’s throat, who was still bound and unconscious.
“There we are. Finally,” he shouted and grinned widely. “Thank you for coming all this way to witness our little show. I am now going to kill your precious detective and you will all watch me do it.”
“Put down the knife, or I will shoot you,” Victoria exclaimed loudly, above the roar of the storm.
“Oh no, my dear. You put down your gun, or I will kill him,” Moriarty responded.
“You will kill him anyway,” I said.
“Someone paid attention.”
“It appears we are at an impasse, Moriarty.”
“So it seems, Mr. Holmes, the elder. Tell me. How does it feel to see your precious younger brother in such a life-threatening situation?” Moriarty purred, which should have been impossible to hear above the noise surrounding us. He dragged the fingers of his free hand across Sherlock’s exposed skin. His digits collected the blood from countless small wounds, which stemmed from the onslaught of the sand in the air and drew little patterns on his stomach. “Are you mad? Angry? Desperate?”
“I refuse to give in to your taunts. Release him now!”
Moriarty laughed again, in his strange way. “Or what will you do? Shoot me? I am dead already!”
“Tell me something I don’t know, professor,” I said as a calculated response.
“Don’t call me that!” he hissed, face distorted with anger where just a second ago only amusement had shown. “Never call me that again!”
“Why not?” Watson asked, surprise obvious in his voice at the madman’s reaction. “Professor?”
“Stop it!” Moriarty screamed and pressed the knife to Sherlock’s throat so hard it drew blood and coaxed a reaction out of him. He squirmed uncomfortably and finally let out a strangled noise, which only made the knife press in further. “Ah, back with us, Sherlock?”
“Holmes!” Watson exclaimed, but didn’t dare move towards him yet. “Holmes, are you alright?”
“Dr. Watson, ever the faithful dog.”
“Shut your mouth!” Victoria stepped closer, weapon still raised. “Get away from him!”
“Victoria, get back!”
“Yes, listen to the smarter Holmes. Step away from me, Victoria.”
“Vic... toria?” the voice of my brother drifted shakily over on the wind, eyes still closed, but reacting to a familiar name. “Victoria? How...?”
“Now, now. I don’t want to interrupt the touching reunion, but if you don’t want to lose one of your family members, I would suggest you throw away the guns now,” Moriarty inclined his head slightly.
“But...” Victoria hesitated.
“Now!”
“Just do it, Victoria,” I said flatly. “We won’t get anywhere otherwise.”
“Very wise, Mycroft. Much wiser than your younger brother,” Moriarty smiled. “Now, throw them over the edge.”
Watson made the first move - his gun flew towards the lower ground in what would have been an elegant curve, if not caught by the storm and carried out of sight in an instant. The look that Victoria exchanged with us was fearful and angry at the same time, but even after sending a silent plea to me, I just shook my head, and her gun took the same journey as the doctor’s.
“Your turn, Holmes,” Moriarty ordered me as I didn’t move. “Your gun.”
“I lost it.”
“Nice try. You always carry a gun. Our friendly detective here told me. He told me everything. We had a very nice time, Sherlock and I, very nice, indeed...”
“I most certainly dropped it!” I shouted. “Down there. When I heard the shot earlier, I was surprised and stumbled. The wind... it carried it off.”
“And I am supposed to believe that?”
Victoria exchanged a questioning look with me, but I could just shake my head and patted down my pockets to signal that I really didn’t have any weapon on my person. I removed the cloak and my suit jacket, both of which were carried off by the wind immediately and turned around, so everyone could see my empty weapon belt.
“I’m telling the truth!”
There was a little pause in Moriarty’s movements, and he lowered the knife from Sherlock’s throat to his unprotected stomach. He could still hurt him fatally, but at least the blade wasn’t pressing into his throat anymore. While my brother seemed to be slowly regaining consciousness, he was still far from lucid. His body was constantly assaulted by the storm and he blinked as if he couldn’t see properly, which wasn’t surprising considering his state.
When Moriarty waved for me to get closer, I hesitated.
“Come on. Just a bit closer, so I can check if you are really unarmed,” he said with a voice coaxing and sweet, which then dropped to an authoritative tone within seconds. “And do it now.”
Watson looked at me with an unsure gaze and Victoria just shrugged. To get to Moriarty, I had to move against the wind, which made it hard to advance quickly. I was already tired from just standing in the storm, and now I raised my arms protectively in front of my head as I inched over to Moriarty’s position. Just as I was only two steps away, he pointed at a position right in front of him and I obediently followed his instructions for now.
The madman started to pat me down methodically, but then I saw something move quickly from the corner of my eye. Moriarty screamed and cursed. Then there was the metallic noise of the knife falling to the floor. Sherlock had regained enough of his faculties to be able to kick the blade out of the professor’s hands while taking advantage of the fact that Moriarty had no more vision in his right eye.
I jumped for the blade immediately, which was already being pushed away from us by the wind, but my antagonist was just as quick in his reaction. We fell to the floor and both struggled to reach the knife. Even though the man was kicked by Sherlock repeatedly, he managed to hit me squarely in the face and grab the knife before I could put my hands on it. I could barely hold onto his arms to prevent him from cutting me or anyone else.
“Mycroft!” I heard Victoria shout and run towards me, but then I saw a shadow jumping at her from the side, toppling her slender form to the ground in a heart
beat. The cultist, who had been up here before with Moriarty, had waited on the sidelines, hidden by the storm, for the right moment to strike. He was upon Victoria with a blade of his own.
Watson decided to fight off her attacker first, leaving me to deal with Moriarty alone. We scrambled for dominance over the knife, pushing it back and forth between us, rolling dangerously close to the edge of the stone structure in the process. Sherlock was out of our reach now, which was a blessing and a curse, as he was now fully awake and shouted his wrath over the storm with a voice hoarse from neglect, but powerful nevertheless. I was just glad we weren’t close enough to hurt him with the blade by accident.
“You are a dead man, Mycroft Holmes,” the professor hissed while he kicked me to loosen my grip on the weapon. “I will kill you and then I will slice up your precious Sherlock. Or I will make you watch.”
I concentrated all my strength on getting out alive, instead of wasting my breath on senseless taunts. From the corner of my eye I could see the acolytes beneath us, still all in trance, continuing to sing. It was then I first considered that they were in a drug-induced stupor. But it had been the wrong thing to contemplate at the wrong time. Moriarty had seen the moment in which I was distracted by my own brain, which could never be turned off, and ripped the knife from my hands.
He jumped up, placed a heavy, dirty boot squarely on my throat and the other on my right hand, then pointed the blade directly at my face. I could barely breathe and clawed at his leg with my remaining hand, but the pressure on my trachea was too much. Moriarty grinned at me triumphantly and lifted his boot slightly before pressing down in earnest. I didn’t lose consciousness completely, but blacked out long enough for Moriarty to think I was indeed incapacitated. I tried to grab him as he walked into Sherlock’s direction, but the only thing I managed to hold onto was thin air.
“Sherlock Holmes!” he screamed, positioning himself directly in front of my brother. “Now you will pay for what you did to me! For the glory of Seth I will end you!”