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"Wait. I've got it. Quickly, John, quickly… use your phone. Google Lycanthropy."
"You think the perpetrator, this Rudolph Rawls, might be a werewolf?"
"It is unlikely, but given the clues, I think we need to entertain the possibility that the Rawls might be or at least believe himself to be a werewolf."
"So he's a nutter?"
"The clues indicate that the man we're looking for is acting as a wolf."
"On purpose?"
"Either in some elaborate fantasy cosplay, or as a legitimate delusion, I do not know. I confess I know little about werewolves. Hence my request that you research them!"
"Research?" John grumbled. "You can't research something that isn't real, Sherlock." But he dutifully typed. "Clinical lycanthropy is the diagnosis of people who have delusions of being a werewolf."
"And?"
"And what?"
"What else about werewolves, John?
"They aren't real." John protested.
"Something that might be useful."
"How can anything be useful about werewolves. They are myths. You get bit by one you become one. You have a parent who is one, you become one. You munch on some wolfsbane in the moonlight… and as a physician I cannot recommend it… You might, maybe, possibly become a werewolf." John gaped.
"Who writes these websites? Wolfsbane is a poison. What if somebody tried that because they wanted to look like that guy teen girls from that movie teen girls like? Kids could die, Sherlock."
"Children die every day, John. But in our line of work I've never been called on a case where a teenager was trying to turn themself into a supernatural being. So maybe young people aren't quite as impressionable as the media makes them out to be." Sherlock forced a smile. "What else?"
"Wait, hold the presses, this might be the most ridiculous thing I've read, yet. Apparently if you drink rainwater out of the paw print of a werewolf you will become a werewolf. And I guess I'd prefer that to being bitten by a werewolf. But how does that even happen? Can you honestly tell me you've had occasion to drink rainwater out of any kind of animal's paw print?"
"Sounds like a scouting nightmare waiting to happen." Sherlock smirked. "Can you imagine? How do you identify a werewolf?"
"They become a wolf on a full moon?"
"And when the moon isn't full?"
"You don't identify them because they are FICTIONAL!!!!"
"You aren't helping, John." Sherlock took John's phone and began reading. "Seems like people develop wolf like physical features even in human form. They grow a lot of hair. They have a widows peak..."
"My mother had a widow's peak. I don't think she was a werewolf."
"A pronounced unibrow"
"My aunt Gertrude and Frida Kahlo."
They eat their meat rare… raw"
"Also like my aunt Gertrude."
"They have an aversion to salt"
John furrowed his brow, "my aunt Gertrude… again…"
"This is harder to tell just by looking, but this source things werewolves might have fur inside their skin. Any chance your Aunt Gertrude…. " Sherlock
"I'm afraid I never subjected her to decortication."
"A pity."
"Not for her. She is a terrible cook, she has a bit of excess body hair, but I swear to you that she isn't a werewolf!" John grabbed the phone back, angrily.
"And how would we neutralize dear Aunt Gertrude?"
"They don't like salt. There is a school of belief that a bath in salt water can cure a werewolf. Obviously, that theory is untested. As is the theory that it is exposure to mercury and not an actual silver bullet that can kill them. And me without my trusty glass thermometer." John shook his head.
"Maybe the mercury thermometer ban was thought up by a coalition of wolves secretly in the government…" Sherlock offered.
"Maybe, if there was such a thing as a werewolf to begin with. Also you can try exorcism, conversion to christianity, and our old friend wolfsbane. A poison that both causes and cures werewolfism. Now that's some trick."
"So if you were Rawls and you were worried you might have turned. Where would you go?"
"To a psychiatrist for psychotropic drugs!"
Maybe… A church? A Gardens? A salt water pool?" Sherlock grabbed the phone back and googled Hoar Cross Hall. He put the phone to his face. "Hello, this is his personal assistant. has Mr. Rawls checked in yet? No, no message. Thank you."
They arrived in East Staffordshire village just as dusk was just beginning to fall. "Sherlock…" John protested. "Really, this is…" What could he add to the protests he'd already lodged? Sherlock wasn't listening, never listened when he got something in his head.
"The church first? Then the gardens of the estate?"
"It is a hotel now, Sherlock…."
"A hotel with extensive gardens and a saltwater pool. A hotel where Rudolph Rawls is registered."
John threw his hands up in defeat and followed his partner. They went all through the village. They interviewed the vicar. He wasn't terribly encouraging when Sherlock asked after recent requests for exorcism. Vicars so rarely were.
They got to the hotel just as the sun set in glorious oranges and reds. "Shall we check…." John stopped short when he heard a high pitched howl. "No."
Sherlock immediately sprinted towards the sound. John followed.
Sherlock quickened his pace.
John struggled to keep up. He hit a rut in the ground and went sprawling into the mud.
"I'm fine." John called, ego bruised more than his body. He wiped the mud from his cheek as Sherlock doubled back and reached out his hand to help John up. John slowly righted himself. Sherlock studied the ground where John fell..
"John wait…" Sherlock said. "I think...
John wiped some mud from his brow. A droplet dripped from the tip of his nose onto his lower lip. John licked dry the earthy sweetness away.
"Are you alright?" Sherlock studied John carefully.
"Never better." John sprang to his feet in a single fluid movement.
Sherlock stared.
"Rawls…" John reminded him.
"John, where you fell… there were paw prints."
The hairs on John's neck bristled. There was something in the air, a familiar musk. He lifted his head to the sky and let out a loud, primal, primitive howl.
A deep baying answered them and john set off in the lead. He sensed something strange and familiar in the air. A musky wild scent that reminded him of childhood, that reminded him the dawn of time. He moved towards that scent. Faster. As fast as his legs could carry him. It wasn't fast enough. He needed to go faster. He needed to be free.
He looked down at his body, at the cloth that surrounded it, trapped it. He tore at it desperate to be free, snapped at it, bit at it. He growled in frustration at the bonds that entrapped him. The growl ignited some long forgotten sense in him and his whole body tensed and flexed at once, expanding upward and outward. He stretched and his clothes ripped away. Free. Cold. Another growl escaped his throat, he pawed at the ground, clawed at the ground. He shivered, the hair came up on his pale white skin. Not enough. He shook violently like a dog just out of the bath and the hairs kept coming, a few strands, a few patches, and finally thick golden fur.
Warm, lythe, free of pain, and suddenly ravenously hungry. John sniffed the air and turned towards the nearest meat.
Sherlock swallowed hard as he stared into the lupine eyes of his former friend. They were different, deadly. "John. Please…" He searched for any bit of the man he knew. "John. It is me. It is Sherlock."
John bared his teeth,
Sherlock backed slowly away. "John. It is me. Sherlock. Your friend. You are a man. You are a doctor. You are not an animal. You can control this."
John cocked his head to one side.
Sherlock stepped closer.
John snarled.
Sherlock stepped backwards. A deadly dance.
Sherlock slowly reached into his jacket pocket. "It's okay. It is going to be okay." He tried to sound soothing.
He pulled out a gun and aimed it at his furry, frightening friend. "It's going to be just fine."
Sherlock lunged forward.
John lept.
Sherlock's shot landed right in the chest.
Claws connected with Sherlock's shoulder.
Pain ripped through him. He fired again.
The dog stilled. Sherlock collapsed.
John woke to the sound of water and an eerie blue light. "Sherlock?" he called, trying to get his bearings. "Sherlock are you here?" He blinked hard trying to adjust to the light. His vision felt blurry and he was overwhelmed by an unpleasant aroma he couldn't place. He tried to move away from hit but his body wouldn't respond. "Sherlock, please. Something is wrong. I'm naked. I'm cold. And I can't move."
"I'm here." Sherlock surfaced from the pool. "I'm right here. You're fine. We're at the hotel. Do you remember?"
John picked up the scent of iron now His stomach growled. He saw the wound on Sherlock's shoulder and licked his lips, hungry, starving.
"Stay calm, John." Sherlock said just a hint of fear in his voice.
John liked it. He wanted more. He growled.
"Easy." Sherlock stepped out of the pool. "You must be starving. And we can have some meat. I ordered steaks from room service. But first i think we should maybe have a bath."
"No!" John felt repulsed by just the thought of it. The water was not clean. "NO!."
"It will relax you." Sherlock assured him. "Salt water will heal your wounds." Sherlock sat beside John and placed a hand on the bruised patch of John's skin right above his heart where the first shot hit.
John wanted to be way from the salt… needed to be nearer to sherlock. He whimpered.
"Do you remember what happened last night? The hotel. Mr. Rawls? The…"
"Wolf." John took a deep breath. The iron in Sherlock's blood intoxicated him, the salt repulsed him. "I…."
Sherlock took John's hand and traced the outline of his nail beds. They were red and raw where the thicker claws had pushed through. "You…"
"I am a wolf?"
Sherlock nodded and kissed, licked the sore area. "Yes."
John moaned. The licking. Dear God, the roughness of Sherlock's tongue… "I can't move."
"A tranquilizer."
"You shout me."
"Not to kill. I promise you. To keep you from killing. But never to kill you."
John wanted to protest that he never would have killed, but he knows it is a lie. He hates himself and he hungers for it. The human and the wolf pulling him in opposite directions. Everything hurts. "You want to kill me now… in that bath."
"Cure you." SHerlock protested.
"To cure me is to kill me. It is a part of me. I like it. I want it. I need it. I think I've always... my aunt... maybe... "
You're a wolf. I"m a man. We can't be together unless..."
"I let you kill the wolf…"
Sherlock worried the skin between John's neck and shoulder, "Or I let him turn me. Your choice."