Work Text:
Joan Watson's breath smoked in the morning air as she approached the rooftop hives enwrapped in quilted covers to confirm that the bees were settling in. It was cold and brisk but dry; no snow yet and no rain predicted for the day. She and Sherlock ought to move the hives indoors soon, if not today.
When she'd finished with the Mellifera boxes, she turned to the last one, smiling. This one contained the accidental hybrid Sherlock was now breeding; her namesakes, bound to her by more than name. Her welcoming pheromone signature carried her conversation with the queen bee. Another cold day, girls. We'll get you to a warm place in no time.
A humming behind her, a loud humming, like a fleet of motorcycles. But she was on the roof, that shouldn't…
Shadow blocked the rising sun just as she registered fear and rage from within the heavily-quilted box. One voice stood out – the queen's.
Joanie! They're back, the bastards are back! Fly!
"The bastards"?
Oh god, that time when–
Joan Watson turned and looked straight into the black cloud just as it swept upon her – a cloud made of yellow and black bodies, a humming made by millions of beating wings.
Hornets.
She reached for her phone but agonizing stings on her wrist made her yell and smack her own hand and drop the phone. She kept yelling. It was hot and prickly, like she was wrapped in a blanket made of sun-heated cactus-skin. Oh god she was going to be stung to death by –
But she was not stung, after that first jab at her phone hand. The prickly hot bumpy blanket simply rose up. Enwrapped in the hornets, Joan rose with them; they lifted her up and off the roof floor. The cold outside air swirled together with the heat of the countless small bodies pressed around her and beating their wings in near-unison.
They kept going up, and now sideways, toward, oh god, over the edge. She was in the air four stories up, and held up only at the whim of a rogue swarm that was carrying her away. She couldn't see beyond the black-yellow humming cloud around her.
As they moved away from the brownstone at a steady clip, Watson heard one last cry from the frantic queen in the enclosed hive-box that cut through the humming all around her:
Stay afraid, Joanie! STAY AFRAID!
That was not an order she'd needed to hear to obey.
***
"Stop that!" snapped the One, and the workers halted their frantic hurling at the screened air-holes atop the hive-box. "What kind of stupid pendejas are you? All you're gonna get is drop-dead."
"Those bastards got Ms. J, boss!" one of the battered workers cried.
"Someone sting her." A yelp. "I was there, idiot, I smelled it."
"They'll kill her," a young worker whimpered. "They'll drop her, or sting her to death."
"No. No they won't." The Queen rested her forefeet on the dark glass, drumming her antennae on the slick surface like impatient fingers. "Those were the honeyless SOBs that belong to that bad queen, the human one. The one Joanie's big dumb drone likes."
The workers mulled, buzzing a little. "The bad queen wants him back," an older nursemaid worker said. "So they'll take Ms. Watson to her, and those two will fight till one's dead."
"Humans," a young worker said in disgust. "All this for one lousy drone? If she wants him so bad she can make him prove he's faster and smarter than the others." Others present – including the drones, who'd come barreling out of their quarters at the abduction – agreed indignantly.
The One tipped her head sideways, the way humans would shrug. "The bad queen wants this one, go figure humans. Joanie's made him smarter – if she's dead he goes back to being a dumbass and that bitch gets him back. So she sent her mooks to get Joanie; she'll want to do the killing herself and won't let her girls do the job for her." One leg tapped on the glass. "That means we have to find Joanie before the bad queen kills her. We'll deal with those bastards while Joanie gets free and puts the bad queen back in her cage. It's gonna be deadly, maybe kill a whole bunch of us – even most of us."
One of the Queen's groomswomen stroked her charge's priceless egg-laying abdomen. "Your Solitude, they're bigger than us. They might outnumber us. They can sting over and over. And they eat us. We can sting once each and then die, and the drones can't even do that. The last time we engaged them in combat we lost a third of our number. This could destroy the hive."
"But it won't. Because we're not doing this alone." One royal antenna whirled, encompassing a large knot of the workers present. "You. Go feed the drones. We're bringing the hornet-eater with us."
The workers vanished into the cells or turned to start feeding honey to the large stingless members of the hive that were present, who fanned their wings in preparation.
Another antenna-twirl from The One encompassed a small cluster of the nursemaids. "You. Give the good stuff to the kids. If I get the sting this place will keep going." The nursemaids bowed and headed off to the cells. "The rest of you feed and get ready. When I tell you–"
"There's only one little problem, queen – we're still stuck in here," a young drone interrupted, speaking as if The One was a newly-hatched grub. Heedless of the others backing away from him, the pompous youngster continued dronesplaining. "We can't communicate with Joan's drone to make him let us out – we can't even see outside right now. So you won't be able to do anything, and it's a lot of wasted effort. Unfortunately this is more proof that ovipositors hinder rational thought and it's time for the matriarchy to reconsider–"
The queen curled one antenna in a circle; at the signal a cluster of workers engulfed the drone and vibrated, hard. The male uttered one tiny sound and then was still. When the worker-ball broke up he was a curled corpse, having been deliberately overheated to death; other workers carried the drone's body to the bottom of the hive.
The Queen had not so much as turned to face the insolent youth. "Any of you other rational thinkers got something fucking disrespectful to say to me?"
"No, Your Solitude." The other drones crouched, heads and antennae down.
"All right. All right, those mooks want war, they got a war. Joanie's leaving us a trail to follow, so we got that covered. Everybody comes on this one."
The other bees, workers and drones, fanned their wings in grim unison.
"Joanie's drone will come looking for her. He knows we're smart. Remember what those big yellow bastards look like."
***
So when a quietly frantic Sherlock appeared on the brownstone roof fifteen minutes later and found no sign of his partner save Watson's dropped phone beside the squashed body of a large wasp, a repeated thump from the covered hive got his attention – and when he uncovered the box, the workers that had been slamming against the glass in unison to make the thumping sound immediately moved around to form the same shape that appeared on the thorax of the dead insect: A large capital M.
"Ballocks," the human snarled, and snatched up his own phone.
"That's it," the Queen said. "We got us a war party."
"But how do we tell him, Your Solitude?" a young worker asked. "He's not smart like Ms. Watson, he can't talk to us."
The One folded her wings back. "The hornet-eater and the other queen will help."
The drones agreed.
***
Sherlock Holmes might not be bee-smart the way Joan Watson was – he did not have the same rapport with the E. watsonia species – but he understood how connections worked. He called his housekeeper first, and then Detective Bell. Within the half-hour he had three people at the brownstone (for Alfredo Llamosa was a friend of Watson's and had accompanied his lover), explaining what he knew so far. Watson was missing, and both Moriarty and hornets were involved.
"Oh my god." Ms. Hudson covered her mouth with her hands.
Holmes produced the hornet's corpse for the others to peruse. "Moriarty sent an army of these to attack our hives not long ago. This, at least, shows that she is well aware of how important my beekeeping hobby is to both of us, and that she has spent some time on this project. It might even be a copycat maneuver in response to Watson's interest in this work."
"Personalized wasps?" Detective Bell turned the tweezers this way and that, looking at the thumb-sized dead insect – which had a thorax marking in the shape of a black M on the yellow body.
"Yes. Hornets, specifically." Ms. Hudson looked over Bell's shoulder at the specimen.
"Hornets are wasps? I didn't know that." Alfredo looked like he hadn't needed to know that either.
From his nearby aquarium Clyde looked at everyone, his beaked mouth opening and closing to make a grunting sound. Ms. Hudson turned toward the glass tank, making the same grunting noise in her throat. More grunting from the tortoise, and Clyde walked back into his half-log shelter. Marthe Hudson turned back to find the other humans staring at her. "I'm sorry. I was letting Clyde know the situation, and why I couldn't feed him this hornet."
More silence.
"What?"
Alfredo looked at her. " Marthe. You…can talk to turtles?"
Marthe frowned. "What, like it's hard? Tortugese isn't nearly as difficult as ancient Greek, reptiles have a basic set of stimuli and vocabulary to match. Clyde's very upset right now. He likes Joan."
A scraping, scratching sound from the tank. All the humans looked.
Clyde backed out of his half-log lair. He was dragging out a gondola, the little airship he used to accompany Joan and Sherlock on some of their cases, the one pulled through the air by 500 …
Drones. Clyde can communicate with the drones, Marthe can talk to Clyde–
"Rosetta!"
Sherlock's shout made everyone jump.
Sherlock was too caught up in the solution falling into place to notice. "Marcus, Alfredo. Can you please help me carry a beehive downstairs and inside from the roof?"
***
Everyone felt the big thump and wrench as the hive was lifted up. The One preened her forelegs. "Good, the big drone got a clue." None of her workers responded – they filled the hive with the rasping sound of thousands of stingers being sharpened against the glass.
***
Joan Watson took inventory.
Yes, it was terrifying to be buoyed up over the chilly winter city, a sudden drop away from death. It was also oddly exhilarating to fly this way, and it produced much of the same adrenaline rush in this very literal fight-or-flight situation. She knew Jamie wouldn't kill her, and no doubt these myrmidons of hers knew what would happen if they let her go. She did not fear a Pinochet-style execution but rather an accidental slip.
Her attempt at talking to her captors had gotten no further than "Where are--?" before one swift sting to her upper lip gave her the painful hint; she kept her mouth closed after that. The only conversation she could discern among them was The Queen, the Queen, the Queen in a brainless litany – and Joan knew it was not the hornet queen to whom they referred.
All she could see was black and yellow bodies all around her. But she was a consulting detective who had trained with the best in the business. So. …The sun was cold, but what little light came through now and then was at her back, so she was going west rather than east. Air no longer smelled faintly of the Hudson, so not toward the city but into the suburbs, inland. She wouldn't be surprised if Jamie Moriarty owned one of the impossibly expensive homes in this area.
Joan wasn't sure how far they went – being in the middle of a shock to the system tended to mess with one's senses of time and distance – so it could have been an hour or ten minutes that felt like an hour, fifty miles or five miles that felt like fifty. She could hear Sherlock in her mind: Watson, you must work on looking past such a shock to the system to think rationally. Yes, being abducted by freakishly-large hornets is surprising but no excuse for not concentrating on one's work.
Finally she felt them descend, the cold-hot air still swirling around her. Branches rustled and rattled; they were going through a clump of winter-bare trees. And finally, blessedly, the ground.
The entire mob of hornets simply parted like Blue Angels splitting away from each other, and Joan sat down hard on the cold brown grass and dirt of a lawn before an unprepossessing suburban home. It looked much the same as the others beyond the bare trees. Well, except for the two black-clad women standing on the lawn facing Joan; both were armed but neither drew her weapon. "Come with us, please," one said.
Joan pulled herself to her feet, her eyes trying to take in what she could of her surroundings. Motion-detector lights at the roof corners, probably not for scaring away raccoons; off-color patches in the lawn that might hide surveillance or defense equipment. Big gray bulges along the length of the eaves, like unattractive paper festival lanterns; the hornet nests. She rubbed her stung upper lip and right wrist, and walked into the house flanked by the bodyguards.
***
The beehive had needed three men to carry it – it was heavier than it looked. Marthe got off the phone and headed to Clyde's aquarium to pick up the tortoise.
Sherlock stood at the hive. "Marthe. Please tell Clyde to tell the queen bee that we need to speak to her."
Marthe grunted to Clyde, who opened and closed his beaked mouth in a nearly-soundless hum.
***
YOUR SOLITUDE COME PLEASE.
"Finally." Flanked by one worker and one drone, the Queen headed to the screened opening atop the hive.
"When it opens up we go after those bastards, right?" one of the workers in the back said. Another yelp.
"We talk to the hornet-eater and the big drone. Then we go after them. Aha."
Human smell and body heat approached them, and the screen came off. The others smelled the honey outside and beat their wings in approval. "Good, they're gonna feed us first," said the One. "They know their manners." She climbed out onto the warm smooth-skinned surface.
***
Out of the air-hole at the top of the hive-box came a Euglassia watsonia bee twice the size of the two others that emerged. Sherlock reached his hand out and the bees climbed onto his fingers. He carried them to the kitchen table, Ms. Hudson following with Clyde.
Marcus Bell stared at all of this. "We're in a Doctor Doolittle movie."
Alfredo Llamosa smiled despite the gravity of the situation. "Gotta love this city."
After a hasty meal all around (butter lettuce for the reptile, honey for the insects, Thai takeout for the mammals) the war council commenced.
The chain-translation worked surprisingly well – Marthe and Clyde had hammered out the details a while back when they'd had to talk the Queen into letting her drones pilot Clyde's little airship. The conversation swapped from English to Tortuguese to Watsonian and back in reverse order, while Sherlock wrote on the whiteboard. Bell and Llamosa mostly watched the bizarre game of Telephone and traded cartons of silver noodle salad and tom yum soup.
SHERLOCK: WHAT HAPPENED TO JOAN WATSON.
THE ONE: SHE UNCOVERED US. WE WARNED HER. THE HORNETS CAME. A DARK CLOUD. THEY COVERED HER.
(Alfredo blanched and Det. Bell winced. Sherlock's knuckles whitened on the dry-erase pen he was using on the whiteboard, and forced himself to continue the questioning.)
SHERLOCK: DID THEY KILL HER.
THE ONE: THEY CARRIED HER AWAY. SHE WAS IN THE CLOUD.
Marcus stared at the big wasp on the table. "These things just…picked her up and carried her off?"
Alfredo shook his head. "Like mosquitoes in a Texas tall tale. This is some bizarre shit."
Kidnapped, not killed. That sounded like Moriarty's M.O. where either of them was concerned.
HUDSON: HORNETS WITH THIS MARK. Marthe positioned the dead M-marked hornet before the queen.
YES. THE BAD QUEEN'S HORNETS. "'Bad queen'. Good name for her," Llamosa muttered when The One's reply was translated.
Jamie had been breeding hornets as he'd been breeding the Euglassia – stouter and bigger than regular hornets. Very likely exponentially stronger, if a swarm was able to carry off a human being. Sherlock wondered if that first attack on the E. watsonia hive had merely been a test run of the creatures.
SHERLOCK: WHERE DID THEY GO.
The queen bee and the worker faced the same direction – magnetic North – and began wiggling their abdomens, moving forward and then to the left. "Northwest of here," Sherlock murmured, drawing the bee-dance precisely on the whiteboard complete with compass directions.
WE CAN FOLLOW HER SCENT RIGHT NOW. LET US FIND HER YOU BIG DUMB DRONE.
Sherlock blinked. All the men in the room stared at the translator.
"Er…sorry," Marthe said a moment later. "Those are her exact words, according to Clyde."
With a firm buzz the queen bee leaped into the air and headed directly for Sherlock. She landed on the bridge of his nose, antennae and front pair of legs moving rapidly, her stingered abdomen tapping on his nose-end like drumming fingers.
Sherlock did not need the translation conduit to interpret the queen's body language. "I deduce that Her Solitude has had quite enough talking." ("Her Solitude?" Det. Bell murmured. "I think that's the bee version of 'Her Majesty'," Llamosa whispered.)
DRONE: WE WILL CARRY THE HORNET-EATER.
WORKER: WE WILL FIGHT.
THE ONE: HOW WILL YOU HELP US.
Sherlock smiled. EAT WHAT I GIVE YOU BEFORE YOU GO. "Marthe, tell Clyde we will indeed need his gondola." Still bearing the queen bee on his nose, he went upstairs; when he returned from Watson's room, Sherlock had a small jar full of a clear liquid which he drizzled into a pot of honey and mixed. Not bothering with a saucer or plate, he poured the honey in a thick stripe along the length of the kitchen table. THIS HONEY WILL HELP ME FOLLOW YOU.
The queen and the other two delegates flew down and buried their tongues in the offering.
While Ms. Hudson took up the neat little craft in Clyde's aquarium – a simple hull with Χελώνα (Tortoise) painted in white on the side and the gunwales covered in coils of black silk thread – the drone from the queen's retinue flew back to the hive; moments later out came a stream of drones, heading straight to the table to feed in a long double-row like troops in an army mess. Only then did the large stingless males head over to the little turtle-craft, to be noosed around the thorax by one of the humans or even to wriggle into the loops of silk thread themselves. One by one, the drones rose in the air as they were tethered to the little airship, slow and impressive as watching a hot-air balloon inflate. "I can cross this off some kind of bucket list," Alfredo said as he settled a silk thread around a large bee's thorax.
As the drones took up the gondola, the workers flew out of the hive and headed to the honey stream. While they dined, Sherlock took up his phone and pushed a few buttons. All three of the other humans in the room heard their own phones go off; when they clicked on the button that appeared they beheld a map of the local area.
Sherlock looked at everyone assembled: the tortoise at the helm of his drone-powered airship (Clyde looking very fetching in the tiny aviator's cap and goggles Marthe had made for him), the feeding throngs of bees; the sober companion, the police detective and the housekeeper. "Who wishes to come with me to attempt to retrieve Watson?"
Detective Bell looked again at the corpse of the enormous hornet, so big its stinger was nearly a quarter-inch – and at all this humming, buzzing bee activity in the enclosed room around them. "You got anything to deal with these?"
Sherlock smiled. "Enough bee-smokers for us all."
"Then let's get her back," Llamosa said simply. Unanimous agreement.
"My thoughts exactly, Alfredo. Land or air, Detective?"
Bell stared. "I beg your pardon?"
"How do you want to follow?" Marthe asked. "That chopper pilot's coming, Sherlock, he should be here in 20 minutes."
"Or you could travel in style," Alfredo gestured toward the outside. "I'm test-driving one of Tesla's latest models."
"Then I'll take land. Hey!" Bell looked at his phone. Llamosa and Hudson did so too.
"Excellent." Sherlock nodded when he took up his own phone and also saw the image of a cluster of tiny red specks clustered in one spot on the map – directly over the locale of the brownstone. "It's time to send the bloodhounds after their mistress." He walked to the nearest window.
The other three humans backed away from the suddenly-louder buzzing and humming of wings.
***
"You ready, boys?" the One hollered.
"Ma'am, yes ma'am!" the drones roared back from above the war-ship they towed. They couldn't sting but they were big and strong, could follow scents, and carried a tortoise.
Clyde snapped his jaws in agreement.
"Girls?"
A chorus of humming wings was the only reply of the workers, all heads down like hive-guards confronting an intruder.
"Nurses?"
A dozen older workers stood atop the hive, their wings still. "We'll stay and tend the grubs, Your Solitude!" the oldest called.
"Damn right. You're queen till I get back or one of the royal brats can lay eggs. The rest of you! On this charge!"
The big human drone flung open the window, and all the scents of the outside world rushed to greet them.
"For the Sun! For honey! For Brooklyn! And for Joan!"
The bees streamed out, Queen and workers first and Clyde's drone-gondola behind. The air was very cold and dry but they were full of honey. The One led everyone back up to the rooftop.
From where the hive stood the workers spread out, circling the roof in a great spiral, fanning through the hundred scents of a winter day in this locale. When the workers in one locale made a staccato buzzing, the One headed there, and she too caught the pheromone trail of fear left by Joan Watson. She led the way, her army behind her.
***
"Holy…" Bell saw the red speckles on the map change from a vague spot into a trailing line moving away…in a northwesterly direction from their site.
Alfredo looked too, his head shaking just a little in wonder. "Those are the bees, aren't they?"
"This isn't the first time Joanie's used this isotope to follow the bees' activity." Ms. Hudson smiled at her own map. "But this is the first time we've used it to find her."
"Now we suit up." Sherlock held up a Kevlar vest.
Bell stared. "Are these hornets that dangerous?"
Sherlock arched an eyebrow. "Moriarty also has conventionally-armed bodyguards, Detective. You've dealt with those stingers too."
Marcus reflexively opened and closed his right hand, and nodded before taking the vest handed him.
***
"You really need to learn to use your words," Watson stared into her tea rather than at her host.
"My dear Joan, you have ignored every one of my attempts to do so for years." Jamie Moriarty was as amiable as a lioness chatting with a rabbit under her paw, face pleasant and eyes like glass. Her expression was not softened by the black and yellow cluster of hornets round her head like a tiara. "There's an old saying among parents disciplining their children – 'if you won't hear, you must feel.'"
Joan ignored the coy phrase that justified child abuse, shook her head at the cluster of hovering hornets offering her the sugar bowl, and stirred her tea again as they set it down on the table and flew back to Moriarty. "What is this all about?"
Jamie smiled; again, the expression never reached her glittering eyes. "I was intrigued by how you and Sherlock created a small army at your command. I merely improved upon the original concept. This locale is where I've been running this particular experiment. The hornets are bigger, stronger and more aggressive than nearly all species of bees – and these are utterly loyal to me." An upward glance encompassed the ominously buzzing cluster of giant insects around her head, their behavior less that of the fierce loyalty Joan's bees showed her and more that of the slavish devotion to the queen.
"The M is an artistic touch, I'll give you that." Watson raised her cup to her lips and tipped it long enough for a good swallow. "But I was referring to why you kidnapped me."
"You are extraordinary, my dear Joan. You have managed to effect a profound change on Sherlock in less than a year, and it has only escalated since. His intelligence is par excellence, but your own contribution has made him wiser. I decided that I too wished to acquire whatever it is that you provide to Sherlock."
A voice of dissent, a mind that thought differently, a stabilizing influence on a chaotic mind – none of which Jamie Moriarty would tolerate for a second. Watson said nothing as she raised her teacup again. There was a time and a place to contradict a single-minded psychopath.
Jamie smiled; her hornet coronet buzzed ominously. "You will be my guest; perhaps involuntarily at first, but eventually you will choose to remain with me. We may have to move at moments' notice but you will soon become accustomed to travelling in a style you cannot currently imagine. In time, you will realise what an improvement this is. An extraordinary woman should not lead an ordinary life."
"Cannot currently imagine," oh, Joan could imagine all right. Private jets, an entire flotilla of ocean vessels, express trains, cars, more wealth than a dozen countries put together – all of which still meant living on the run with a criminal holding her captive as a glorified pet or the mascot she'd originally taken her for. Joan set down her empty cup. "I don't think so."
Moriarty's face did not change expression. "Show Ms. Watson to her quarters," she told the guards in the same pleasant tone. "She's had an enervating experience."
Watson stood and followed her escort (the two humans and a cluster of buzzing hornets), past the well-watered potted plant that had received all her tea via sleight-of-hand. The suite of rooms in which they locked her was certainly the nicest cell she'd ever been in. She looked everywhere as she walked in, noting the obvious cameras and the potential hiding places for less-obvious ones. The big hornets flew in and out of the room, entering and exiting via the vent.
All right. Moriarty's MO these days was smash and grab, as she was still a fugitive. The most likely additive Watson had avoided ingesting in her tea was a sleeping draught, so that when Joan awoke she would be in another hideout that could be anywhere else in the world – likely flying out from a small airfield in this affluent suburban area normally used by upper-class commuters and golfers. If she made Moriarty think she was insensate, Watson might be able to get a sense of their destined relocation while they moved her, and find a way to relay that back to Sherlock.
She made herself finish examining the whole site as if trying to find an escape route, mentally calculating the time in which a sleeping drug would begin to affect her, and began hanging her head and slumping as if she'd just come off an intern shift, too tired to hold her head up any more. She poured onto the bed fully clothed – it was a very comfortable bed – and stretched out, closing her eyes.
Within minutes she heard the approaching buzzing. You're drugged. Don't flinch. Fortunately her time with the watsonias had prepared her for dealing with stinging creatures walking on her flesh (including her face) without shuddering, so she stayed in her pretend stupor while several hornets crossed her upper lip and nose and forehead.
She Sleep. Ah, there was more to their vocabulary after all. The commenter was the big hornet standing on her nose.
Sleep. A different cadence but also a hornet, walking toward the other.
Now We Kill.
No Kill. The Queen.
This Bad Queen. We Kill Bad Queen.
If they started stinging her all bets were goddamn off, she would squash as many as she could before they took her down–
A scuffle, then silence. She felt one body slump on the bridge of her nose.
We No Kill Bad Queen. Queen Kill Bad Queen. The objector had dealt with a near-mutiny as ruthlessly as The One did.
When Queen Kill Bad Queen. A different tone from the other two – this one on her forehead.
Queen Knows. Sounded like the hornet version of a shrug.
Joan thought some more while the insects moved about on her (by the shifting bodies and changing weight she felt them haul the dead hornet off her nose). So Moriarty was their queen. This meant that Jamie must have squashed the actual hornet queen to transfer the insects' imprinted blind obedience upon herself. No doubt she'd consider that an improvement over Joan's own rapport with the E. watsonia species – they were fiercely loyal to Joan, but their first allegiance was to the One. Watson had no desire to supplant what natural instincts her namesakes retained. You didn't backtalk the Queen, nor question her demands; so if "Queen" wanted to hold on to "Bad Queen" until she was good and ready to kill, that was "Queen's" business.
Joan wondered if the dynamics worked like pro wrestling, where any intruding queen was Bad Queen unless she defeated and killed the current nest's monarch, and then because she was the victor became Good Queen or just Queen. That was worth keeping in mind…
A tread of human footsteps approached the room; she reminded herself that she was in a drugged sleep. When a hand grabbed her shoulder and shook she moaned a little and mumbled as if deep under. "Out cold," the guardswoman said to the other.
"Yep. She's ready, ma'am."
"I'll call the pilot and meet you out there," Jamie's voice came in from a headset.
Two sets of strong hands hoisted Watson at shoulder and hip.
No time wasted. Sometimes Joan hated being right.
***
Maika had to raise her voice to be heard over the beat of the rotors. "I was attacked by a swarm in Afghanistan–"
"Northwest," Sherlock did not look up from his phone map.
The pilot banked and throttled down, and the Bell 429 curved in a steady arc as densely-packed cityscape gave way to trees and houses. "I was picking up wounded near a poppy field and there were bees everywhere. Stung the hell out of me, almost got my eye." She headed in her new course. "Some things never change."
"Can you land this on a suburban street?"
The black woman snorted. "Holmes, I can set this down on a flat roof. So we're not headed straight for Gemsbok, eh?"
Gemsbok. Sherlock's brain whipped through NYC place-names and had it seconds faster than if he'd asked the pilot or searched on the map. An airfield.
He widened the bee-map, searching.
Gemsbok Airfield, adjacent to a golf course. Not two miles from the suburban mansions where the red line of bees was headed.
***
It was good that humans couldn't fly and were constantly afraid of falling when they were in the air; Joan had left a pheromone trail a grub could follow. The air was cold but still dry; the Sun overhead was helping them in the chase today.
Above the One and the workers, Clyde hunkered on the deck with everything pulled in to conserve his warmth in the cold air. He was hungry, very hungry, in the cold.
***
"Turn left here." Det. Bell gestured, eyes on the bee-map. "Oh, that's smooth," he added as Llamosa glided soundlessly into the left lane. "How much are these things again?"
"A year's salary for a police captain." Alfredo smiled and let the wheel spin in his hands to return to straight driving. "If you get on the waiting list now, you can pick it up by the time you make captain. Got everything you need back there, hon?"
Marthe reported back. "Cooler full of ice, metal straight-edge, Epi-pens, baking soda, ibuprofen. I'm ready for the casualties."
Bell swiped the phone map to expand the size of the area, eyes intent, speaking out loud to himself. "They're in this area, residences. She won't stay, not her M.O. She'd head for…" Without lifting his head Marcus tapped the phone to access the phone. "Sherlock. The airport."
Sherlock's voice was nearly drowned by the sound of the chopper he was in. "I was about to call and ask you to head directly there, Detective. Alfredo?"
"On it." Llamosa switched to his regular GPS and headed for Gemsbok.
***
She couldn't open her eyes to see what the vehicle looked like. She kept her ears open, trying to learn anything, anything at all that she could use, a hint of a safehouse location, a latitude bearing. But the human bodyguards were silent, and all the buzzing insects said was The Queen, The Queen, The Queen. The heavy sound of the doors they opened meant it was a van or SUV, likely an inconspicuous color like white or gray. The women buckled the limp Watson into her seat like a dozing child – the large seat and type of belt again hinted at a van – before getting in themselves, one in the driver's seat just ahead of Watson. Buzzing of a handful of hornets in the vehicle itself, the few near her changing the refrain just a bit: Bad Queen, Bad Queen, Bad Queen. The sound of the hornets' flight also indicated a large interior, and that both front windows were open to let them in and out.
Shotgun seat door clunk – that was Moriarty getting in. Click – that was the seat belt. Click – oh that was not. Again that convivial tone. "Joanie dear, you're not unconscious. If you don't respond to me in 2 seconds I'll shoot the driver. One–"
"What!" That was the driver.
"Two–"
"Don't shoot her," Watson said wearily, straightening in her seat. Well, it had been worth a gamble. And even then, some small corner of her consulting-detective mind was pleased that she'd accurately deduced that this was a van.
Moriarty nodded to the other bodyguard, completely ignoring the terrified glare by her driver. The black-clad woman beside Joan pulled out a pair of handcuffs and looked at Watson, who nodded in defeat and put her hands behind her back. Clink.
The hornets nearby continued the monotonous chant. Bad Queen, Bad Queen, Bad Queen–
Being found out, and having another person's life threatened because of her, was the last straw on Joan's temper. Her anger and fear shouted from every gland –
I AM NOT A BAD QUEEN!
All the hornets in the car flew to her for a moment, some landing on her. She Talk. Bad Queen Talk. Just for a second. Then they went back to their figure-8 buzzing round her and Jamie: The Queen. Bad Queen. The Queen. Bad Queen. The Queen. Bad Queen.
But they'd listened to her. This wasn't them hearing Joan's human speech (which they'd silenced en route with the lip-sting) but reacting to her pheromones.
"The needle after all." Jamie sounded like a disappointed parent; she'd clearly thought drugged tea was a friendlier, more civilized way to knock out a captive. And she might have noticed Joan wasn't drugged – but she'd completely missed that momentary exchange by her own hornets. That she didn't communicate with them other than to enthrall them and give orders did not surprise Watson at all.
Joan stretched the time out a little more. "I suppose it wouldn't do me any good to ask where we're going."
A smile that never reached Jamie's blue eyes. "Don't want to spoil the surprise."
***
Joan's fear-anger shout was heard by more than the hornets in the car, it echoed across the sky to the approaching armada.
The One shouted back. "That hive! Cover that hive!"
The bees tore after the One.
***
Joan's seatmate drew out a medical kit, but she also gave Moriarty a long look before turning to Watson. Joan refrained from shaking her head in disgust at the henchwoman. You cling to a sociopath's coattails precisely because of this amoral behavior – then you're always so surprised when the sociopath turns on you too if it suits her purpose.
"Don't wait for it to kick in," Jamie said. "We might as well go to the airport and wait on the runway for this to take effect. Perhaps Watson will be able to deduce our final destination from the outside of a Gulfstream." The forward-staring driver nodded.
Joan centered herself, thinking of how she presented to the swarming hornets in this van. I am the Queen, I am the Queen, I am their Queen–
The henchwoman took hold of Joan's shoulder, hypodermic aimed at her neck. "You're gonna feel a little sting."
No, YOU are!
Joan hurled her righteous rage outward. STING! STING! STING!
And the hornets, blindly obedient, attacked this threat to a monarch.
The henchwoman yelled in pain and dropped the syringe while the driver yelled and swatted around her as collateral damage.
Now, during the confusion. See if she could… Joan groped with her cuffed hands, stretched out, found the syringe, dragged it over by one finger. The needle after all.
Moriarty stared at Watson, wide-eyed. Joan glared at her captor – still handcuffed, still belted into the seat – as the yelling, swatting bodyguards yanked open their doors and tumbled out, shouting as even more hornets joined the fray. Neither she nor Joan had been touched. Moriarty's voice had a low edge that sent ice up Watson's spine. "I don't know how you did that. But I will find out."
Everything darkened. The windshield and all the windows were covered. And bees streamed into the open doors.
Watson's delight radiated from her to mix with her monarchical temper-push. Girls! Your Solitude!
Joanie! The One's cry carried that same joyful rage.
Unlike the hornets, the Euglassia had absolutely no qualms about attacking and stinging Jamie Moriarty, who went in seconds from aloof villain to yelling picnic-goer as she cried out in pain and groped for her own door-handle, tumbling out of the van too.
Clink-clink, and the syringe needle did the job; Watson's cuffs were off. She unbuckled her seat, and came out in a swirl of small yellow furry bodies.
The One took her spot by Joan's ear. That dumb drone of yours ain't so bad after all, Joanie! He's coming here too.
A new fear filled Joan, the fear of a commander. Your Solitude, these hornets are monsters. Thank you for finding me. Now get everybody as far away as you can, fly as fast as–
Oh God.
A glaring Moriarty stood ten feet in the air – buoyed up by a dense cloud of hornets like a goddess from some insane pantheon. The rest of the hornet swarm whirled behind her. Hornets, twice their size, twice their number, bee-killers. The Queen, The Queen, The Queen, beating like a war-drum.
Joan glared back. The van windows were both still open, no way she could close them both and get in with the majority of her swarm without the hornets coming too. Open air then, and flight.
YEE HAWWW!
The hornet-cloud split in two as a squad of drones towing a gondola plowed through them from behind.
Jamie Moriarty wobbled and fell from her living throne.
Clyde stood at the prow snapping left and right, hornet bodies falling to the ground from his mouth.
Enraged, temporarily queenless, the hornets dashed at Watson. Bad Queen! Bad Queen! Bad Queen!
The One left Joan's ear. Girls!
Horror from Watson. No, One! Get away, get away!
You're not the fuckin' queen, Joanie! GO GIRLS GO!
Obeying their queen, the Euglassia watsonia charged into the fray, along with Clyde's gondola.
Joan charged forward also, feeling the same battle rage. End this, once and for all.
Forward, where a dazed Moriarty had pulled herself to her hands and knees. A sideswipe with one ankle knocked out one forearm support and she was down again – and seconds later Watson locked her own handcuffs on the criminal mastermind.
Immediately Joan Watson stood up again, one foot on Moriarty's back, radiating triumph and scorn at the oncoming hornets dashing at them both, the defeated Jamie and the triumphant Joan.
The squad of vicious giant wasps – parted and swept past Joan Watson, not touching her at all.
Both bodyguards, further down the road away from the stinging insects, drew their weapons to take down their captive – and the entire swarm of hornets beset them. Yelling, the two women stumbled to the van, rolling up the windows as they screeched off, leaving Moriarty behind and shedding insects as they tore around the intersection.
The large insects returned to the woman they had abducted that morning. Now they whirled around Joan Watson in a flurry, and their drum-beat had changed:
The Queen! The Queen! The Queen!
The entire battle had taken twenty seconds.
***
"The boss will contact us when she's in lockup." The bodyguard turned the van into the airfield despite her swelling, throbbing knuckles "We'll follow her instructions and free her."
"That bitch," snarled the other one, who'd been the original driver.
"That 'bitch' pays us seven figures to deal with this shit, suck it up. There's sting-stuff in the cockpit. You want to be pilot or co-pilot?"
They dashed across the runway to the small jet waiting for them, raced up the gangplank and slammed the door.
Neither got to be pilot or copilot. "Sorry, this plane only makes direct flights to the nearest prison," one black man said as the other showed his badge and his weapon.
"In the meantime, you'll need ice on those stings," a white woman said, coming out of the passenger area. "I'll take care of that once Detective Bell finishes."
***
Go Home. Go Home. Go Home.
Obeying the new queen, the hornets peeled away and flew back to the grey papery nests in the patio eaves. Soon Watson was surrounded only by a small cloud of her own bees; she couldn't yet bring herself to look at all the little bodies strewn around the pavement, mixed with a good number of hornets.
Watson's doctor instincts dropped her to her haunches beside the cuffed and prone Moriarty. "Do you have antihistamines inside?" Joan tilted Jamie's head, looking at the mottled stings that were already swelling her face and jaw. "Are you allergic?"
"I don't want anything from you," Moriarty snapped, yanking her head away from Joan's hands. "Of course I'm not allergic."
"Want us to jab her again, Ms. J?" one of the workers asked.
"No." Joan quickly masked her spoken response to the worker by addressing Jamie. "No, you wouldn't be to do this."
A heavy beat of rotors announced the arrival of a helicopter. By the time the chopper landed on the street before the house and Sherlock had emerged, Joan had Jamie's ankles bound as well.
After a cursory glance at his partner top to toe (and noting the lip and wrist stings that were Joan's only casualties), Sherlock said "I don't know why I ever entertained the notion that you needed rescuing, Watson." But relief shone from his eyes. He did not look directly at Moriarty.
"The help was appreciated," Watson replied in the same tone. The Euglassia workers remained in a whirling pattern above Joan's head.
A Tesla purred up to them not long after, accompanied by a few squad cars. While the police began to search the premises and Detective Bell took Jamie into custody, Alfredo and Marthe walked gingerly through the strewn carcasses of bees and hornets to greet Joan with relief, and to bring the news that Jamie's suburban accomplices were also under lock and key.
Once everyone had been caught up, Marthe pulled out two of the smokers from the car and held one out to Sherlock as Alfredo took out the third. "We can fumigate the hornets' nests." The detectives nodded as Sherlock took the smoker; the same smoke which calmed bees for a beekeeper's work killed hornets.
The gondola, now barely hanging in the air now that a good number of the drones had been killed and dangled from their harnesses, drifted toward them, its deck littered with bisected hornets and Clyde munching through them.
Sherlock's face contorted in sorrow. Watson took a closer look and cried out.
The hornet-strewn deck had a little spot cleared around the helm, where one body lay curled and untouched by Clyde. Joan reached one finger and stroked the fuzzy thorax of the One, blinking back the sting of tears.
"The Queen lives." Several workers had settled onto Watson's head and shoulders. The remaining gondola drones picked up the chant that echoed through the workers as well. "The Queen lives. The Queen lives."
"The Queen lives," Joan said softly, and took up a smoker to eradicate a hornet nest.
***
As she had flown quite enough for one day, Watson opted for the Tesla back to the brownstone with Alfredo and Marthe; Bell would take a cab back after ensuring that the right people handled Moriarty's booking. Maika choppered Sherlock and Clyde (in his unhitched gondola). Upon returning home Joan ate what Sherlock put in front of her, hit the shower and fell into bed. By the end of the next day, the last of the Euglassia watsonia bees returned to their hive box that still stood near the table, buzzing in through the cracked-open window.
Weeks passed; ordinary weeks with ordinary work, case files, sobriety meetings, helping Sherlock and Alfredo move the remaining hives indoors for the winter, watching the depleted workers and drones move about the hive.
Two days before the first day of winter, Sherlock was in Joan's room when she awoke that morning. "Watson, I think you need to see this." Though his face was as calm as usual, the tone of his voice had hope rise in her blood. She arose and reached for her robe.
When she came downstairs she approached the hive box, and at Sherlock's direction looked through the magnifier.
New bees were emerging from the wax cells tended by a few old nurses. One of them was larger than the others and had several attendees to assist her out.
Joan Watson smiled.
You! That was a new voice, sounding not unlike a snotty teenager. The large young bee stared through the glass directly at her. You're Joanie, ain'tcha? Heard about you from the nurses.
Joan looked at the large young bee. Yes. Yes, I'm Joan.
Hey, some damn respect! That's "Yes, Your Solitude."
Joan smiled as the One stood clear of the cell, her crumpled wings being straightened by her royal attendants. Yes, Your Solitude.
She did not look away from the birth scene even when her partner put a warm hand on her shoulder. "Our bees will be all right, Sherlock."
"They will indeed, Watson." Her partner's voice carried the same warmth. "The Queen lives."