Sanguine Dynasty: A Study in Blood

Chapter 8

Cerulean eyes flickered across the features of the flat. The strange patterns that climbed the walls; printed on the wallpaper, the carpets that spread sweepingly across the floors; hiding the groaning parquetry, and the underlying chemical scent that lingered in the air.

These were the first things that John had glimpsed upon his first embarkment on 221B Baker Street. They were the features that had lit a light in his brain, that had called so sweetly to his heart.

While the amalgamation of different features should never have fit together, for a lonely lycan in a sea of animosity, once broken and now healed from a war that was never his to fight, it was a symbol. Frankenstein's monster had stared John, in the face.

Those yellowing and rotten eyes, peaking out from sockets that were covered in a skin that had been sewn together so seamlessly. The marvel shouldn't have been possible, but there the flat stood all the same.

He'd spent less than a full day surrounded by the four walls and yet he'd never seemed to fit anywhere else so magnificently. There was a perfect John-sized hole in the centre of this new life, a smokey substrate that shone so brightly and sang to him like a siren to a sailor.

John's chest warmed with a buzzing heat that lit a surging fire deep beneath his sternum. While he'd never experienced the essence of 'family' before, the sight of what befell him now was the closest thing he could have to such a sensation - he realised.

"He's gone and buggered off again."

Donovan's voice cut through John's daydreaming thoughts as she stood in the archway that separated the living room from the kitchen, her hip cocked to the side and her arms wrapped around her chest impatiently. "Sir, he's a lunatic. Does any of this even matter?" She asked then as her hand swept before her in a gesture to the officers and flat alike.

John's pupils jumped from the woman and to Lestrade as he watched the DI's face shift before him. His lips pursed and the wrinkles that surrounded his eyes seemed to darken as he dipped his head in defeat and gave a shaking nod.

The lycan shifted his weight from foot to foot as he listened to the men and women slow their search and stand straighter as they awaited the next order that was sure to come. Greg's fingers reached up as he pinched the bridge of his nose with a withering sigh. "Alright, guys." He muttered then. "We're done 'ere." He called to the team, louder, this time.

Hands returned possessions to their original spots as a flutter of bodies shifted within the four walls, each person gathering in the sitting room and awaiting the opportunity to flee and escape the flat.

The air seemed to destabilise, then. Whispered gusts danced around the shifting bodies as they whisked an ever-so-gentle breeze through the rooms. To anyone else, the difference would have been undetectable, but to a lycan, the scent changed.

Underlying the individual smells that lingered across the officers' skin, an odour so pungent yet almost imperceptible fluttered about John as his nostrils dilated, taking in the familiar scent.

Each component that he caught in that smell seemed to bring forth a sense of piquant familiarity as John tensed, his shoulders bunching and his fists clenching beside him. He gave a deep huff through his nose and finally could pinpoint exactly what it was that had caught his attention.

The thick and viscous mechanical scent of engine oil, creamy and bitter cigarette smoke, and an elusively frazzled perfume undertoned the entire kaleidoscopic odour with something far more personal.

John's eyes widened to that of saucers as the deduction sparked in his mind. It was as if someone had plucked away his blindfold. Deep below his ribs, he sensed the beast within him howl a mournful cry as it moaned out the detriment that was his realisation. Sherlock Holmes was in danger.