0Title: The White Horse (16/18)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy
Summary: Jim Kirk was a strange man. A silent man. No one knew much about him or, if they did, were not willing to say what they did know, especially to the town’s newest magical occupant. Not that Leonard McCoy cared. He had an old curse to track down and unravel by the year’s end. Meanwhile a killer was tracking him. AU.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
or at AO3
“Oh fuck,” said Leonard, “I’m dead.”
“And this worries you?”
Turning around—if turning around was what ghosts did in a non-corporeal state—Leonard found himself face-to-face with someone he would rather have avoided in the afterlife. But oddly enough it seemed like they had met before.
“So I’m dead and stuck with you. This is great, just great.”
The man merely looked at him.
“Not that I mean that sarcastically,” Leonard added, feeling somewhat sheepish under Sarek’s unrelenting stare.
“Of course you do. However, you should be relieved to know that you are in fact not dead.”
Leonard couldn’t help sounding hopeful. “I’m not?”
“I believe you are almost dead.”
Like that’s better. “So why are you here since you are dead?”
“It is easiest to communicate with a person who is dying.” For a moment, Sarek paused. “How goes the search?”
Leonard gaped at him.
“And my son,” Sarek pressed. “Tell me of my son.”
Snapping his mouth shut, Leonard took a long step backwards (which didn’t seem to carry him anywhere) and observed Sarek with all the seriousness of a betrayed individual. “Spock,” he nearly spit, “is a self-righteous, psychotic bastard. He’s the reason I’m like this!”
Sarek hardly reacted. “I am fairly certain he was not the cause of your accident.”
“IT’S HIS FAULT!” Leonard roared. “He had my friend, and I wouldn’t have had to get Kirk if Spock hadn’t demanded…”
The words trailed off at the thought of Jim. Leonard spun around, searching for him.
“He is not here,” Sarek said. “He is too strong to be killed in such a way.”
Leonard remembered the flash of mismatched eyes and the strength of Jim’s hand, suffocating him while the car weaved on the road. “I don’t,” he began, then swallowed hard. “What is he?”
“A better question, perhaps: where is he?”
Startled, Leonard turned his gaze back to Sarek. “Where?” He looked around. “He’s not here so he’s not dead. Or dying, I hope?”
“You misunderstand the question, Leonard. I meant where is James Kirk when he is not himself?”
Leonard drew his eyebrows together and oddly that caused a flash of pain through his head. “You know,” he guessed. “You know what Jim is.”
“I saw it,” Sarek answered rather simply, “before it killed me. Green—”
“—eyes,” he finished. Leonard tried to move towards Sarek, feeling a sense of urgency without knowing why. “I saw it too. What is it?”
Sarek said nothing else.
“Why that thing?” he persisted. “I don’t understand why—how it’s related to my family curse.”
“A curse,” murmured the dead man. “Was it truly powerful enough to be a curse?”
“Please,” he begged Sarek, that increasing sense of urgency creating a tingling like pins-and-needles in his limbs, “tell me!”
“You are fading, Leonard. No, do not be alarmed. That is good. It means you will live.”
Leonard flung out an arm, but Sarek was far away now and moving farther. He cried, “No! Sarek, tell me before it’s too late!”
“I will say one thing to you, Mr. McCoy, if you can promise me another.”
Leonard had to know. He had to know the connection or he was doomed to fail. Didn’t Sarek realize that? “Anything!”
“Very well.” Sarek’s voice was faint now, and Leonard could no longer see him. “Think on this: what is the difference between a curse and a wish?“
What did that matter? Leonard didn’t understand.
“The curse-maker was not strong once,” Leonard heard, not in his ears, in his head, “but eventually found Power, and Power consumed one, as it consumed another… and as it is now consuming the young man named Jim.“
He still didn’t understand, but he had no voice with which to protest. His mouth would not obey him. His eyes, somehow closed, would not open. But he knew Sarek would not leave him yet, not until a request of the living had been made.
A fuzzy-headed Leonard clung to the border between sleep and waking, dead and not dead, waiting for those final words, the promise Sarek needed of him.
At last it came. Leonard strained to hear it.
Once he did, his eyes flew open.
The return to reality was a jarring experience. It took a moment for Leonard to orient himself. He discovered his body was restrained, his mouth and nose covered; noises were raucous; everything rattled from some kind of turbulence. Leonard felt dirty, stiff, and there was pain, great amounts of pain, hovering just beyond his clouded focus.
He inhaled. Cold, thick oxygen slid like sludge down the back of his throat.
Someone moved near to adjust his breathing mask and tried to gain his attention with a question or two.
Leonard tried to answer back, saying the only thing which was permanently stuck in his head. He repeated it until the man leaned over to hear him. Then the guy glanced up at someone beyond Leonard’s peripheral vision, echoing it: “Let Spock destroy it? What does that mean?”
“Nothing. It’s shock,” the other person declared.
The man looked back down at him. “Sir? Sir, please try to remain still. You’re in an ambulance.”
Leonard absorbed that, thinking once more, oh fuck.
Ambulances meant hospitals, and hospitals meant tests—particularly unpleasant tests because there was no way they wouldn’t have checked for the Mark on him. It was protocol, after all. The Marked were off-loaded at an Emergency section especially designated for them, where the treatments were usually crappier and the hospital staff a lot less caring. Leonard knew with a cold certainty that once they figured out he was a wanted man, all he would get in the way of treatment would be a pair of handcuffs and maybe a painkiller.
He closed his eyes so no one would see his panic rising, although the spikes of the medical monitor next to him probably gave his reaction away. The pain loomed up to take control of his thoughts, and he told it to back off and contained it. Then he began the systematic cataloging of his injuries. The worst of them—arm, rib cage, and collarbone—his magic honed in on to try to heal as best as it could. By the time they reached the hospital, he figured he would be able-bodied enough to roll himself off the gurney and out of the ambulance. He would catch a cab, come hell or high water.
And wouldn’t that surprise everyone?
To the townspeople of Riverside, Pavel was a teenager who had dropped out of school and likely run away from home. In truth, he was nearly twenty-one. He had graduated high school at the age of fifteen, completed a college degree by his seventeenth year, and started on a doctorate. That was before the accident which revealed his gift and before the politsiya killed his family who tried to protect him from being taken.
Now he was in America with a new identity—still Russian in name since he could not disguise his accent. He knew the Russian government would never willingly ask the authorities of this country to look for a budding nuclear physicist with supernatural abilities. Pavel belonged to the Homeland, and they would never share him, even if they only intended to kill him rather than exploit what he could do.
He would make certain he stayed hidden so their spies could never find him. If he had to waste his youth in this factory town, then so be it. All that mattered was freedom. He would give it up to no one, and for no one.
Often Pavel wondered what his family would make of him now, to see that there existed such ruthless thoughts behind his boyish face. Then he reminded himself that they were dead and could not think of him at all—as he must never think of them.
It was with such a conviction that he set about cleaning his efficiency-sized apartment on his day off, so he could focus on nothing but the mundane part of living. He scoured his kitchen floor until his hands were an angry red; then he washed his work clothes and hung them up to dry. He took down, book by precious book, everything from the single shelf next to his small bed and dusted them and then the shelf itself. He was in the midst of replacing the items when someone knocked on his door.
For a moment, he stilled and simply listened, fingers automatically tightening on the thin paperback, creasing its worn cover. He soon let it go, knowing it would not make a sufficient weapon. Then, as a second knock came, he quietly rose from his floor and picked up the baseball bat he kept near his bed and carried it to the door.
“Hello?” he called, leaning against the door jamb. “Who is it?”
No one answered, but Pavel heard the sounds of breathing and the scuffling of shoes upon the iron-wrought landing of the building stairway.
He traced a finger across the surface of the door to remove an intangible barrier but left the chain lock in place, and carefully pulled back the door just enough to reveal the visitor’s face.
James Kirk stared back through the meager opening.
“Jim?” Pavel said the name with surprise. He shut the door and undid the physical locks.
Jim smiled crookedly at him before stepping across the threshold. There was something off about him, more so than usual. His clothes were too large for his frame as though they didn’t belong to him, and his face and hands bore bits of dirt and darker, dried spots which might have been congealed blood.
“Are you all right?” Pavel asked. “What are you doing here?”
He expected to see Jim take out his customary notepad and pen, but instead Jim shrugged carelessly and moved farther into the apartment.
Concerned yet also unnerved by this, Pavel lifted a hand and made a gesture he had seen his mother make many times against someone she considered plagued by restless energy. It had been one of the common superstitions shared by the people of the village where he was born.
He did not know why he made this sign now. Jim Kirk, though an unfortunate, often angry individual, was not someone Pavel feared. He would have dismissed the fancy altogether, for he was no believer in evil other than the actions committed by men, had Jim not turned to face him.
His eyes were lizard green.
“…Jim?”
“Pavel,” Jim replied.
“What happened to your eyes?”
Pavel’s friend smiled. “Is something wrong with them?”
It struck Pavel, then, what was truly unnatural about his guest, and he backed into the door with a gasp.
“Why are you afraid? I only talk to people I trust,” explained Jim before the young man could utter a word. He took a step in Pavel’s direction. “You are my friend. You came to my house. I remembered that. You were concerned for me.”
Pavel made the sign again, this time with more feeling.
Jim’s eyes dropped to Pavel’s hand. “Silly,” he murmured.
The face seemed guileless, yet it was not at all like the one he was used to. There was no anger; no hint of aggression which Jim often used to mask his shame.
“Who are you?”
“Jimmy. Jim Kirk.”
Pavel could recognize all kinds of invisible lifeforms, and sometimes he convinced them to reveal themselves. He had met Winona Kirk once on a moonless night he had wandered through one of the local graveyards. She had been barely an essence of herself in the way some of the dead find themselves lost and confused if they don’t move on. She had insisted on going to the home of her son. Pavel helped her out of respect (he always respected the wishes of the dead), and from then on Jim had become a person of interest to him rather than some reticent co-worker.
Pavel thought about all of this in a short span of time and came to a decision. “If you can speak, then you are a great liar,” he said. “This is not a compliment. It takes skill to tell a lie so that even the person who is telling the lie will believe it. The man I know has no such skill. You,” he concluded, “are not Jim Kirk.”
Jim tucked his hands into his pockets. “Pavel, that’s a rude thing to say to a good friend.”
“I do not care why you are here. You will leave immediately. Do not return.”
The man looked away and tsked under his breath. For the first time, Jim sounded strange when he spoke. “I knew you were too smart to be fooled. You’re right. I can’t speak.” Jim’s eyes glowed. “This is not my voice.”
“I want you to leave,” he insisted.
Jim seemed to consider this. “I don’t think so. You see, I need your help. Thank you, by the way, for letting me in.”
Pavel contemplated the baseball bat still clutched in his right hand. He did not think it would do any good but it was his only defense.
“Pavel,” Jim reminded him softly, “you are not paying attention. Help me.”
There was power in that voice.
Pavel felt the command tug at him and resisted. “I will not,” he said. “You are not Jim Kirk. I will not help you.”
“You have no choice.”
Jim reached for him, and Pavel lashed out. The man ducked the swing of the bat and pinned Pavel against the door with unnatural strength.
Pavel reverted to his native language, saying though shocked, “You cannot force me.“
Jim sank his fingers into Pavel’s short locks of hair and dragged back his head to whisper in his ear.
The words were almost sibilant. Pavel’s eyes closed of their own accord. He could smell the strangest combination of pond water and horse hair.
So strong, this enchantment, like the siren call of a rusalka who dragged men to their deaths in the river-bed; yet Pavel tried to fight it—had to fight because he had spent his life railing against forces which wanted nothing more than to own him.
In the end his mind saved him by blanking out.
Leonard got collared the moment he stepped onto the premises but to his surprise the man who collared him wasn’t Spock. Shaking off the hand fisted into the back of his shirt, Leonard eyed the fellow and remarked, “You must be the partner.”
“And you’re late.”
Leonard splayed his hands so the guy could get a good look at the dirt and blood on them. Not that the rest of him was in any better condition. He hadn’t managed to take care of all the bruises and scrapes because healing his broken bones had sapped most of his energy. He’d fallen asleep in the back of the taxi and had to be shaken awake by an irate driver, then had been summarily dumped on his ass (and spit on too) when he had said he couldn’t pay for the ride.
This man at his back didn’t seem to care about his appearance. He urged Leonard into motion with a shove of an object in his lower back which felt like the muzzle of a gun.
Leonard huffed out a breath and trod tiredly in the direction of a roof overhanging a porch, thinking about how great it would be to take a drag from a cigarette right then. If not a cigarette, it had to be something: a piece of food or a sip of water. His body was collapsing in on itself; he could feel it. Every step grew more difficult.
When Leonard stumbled at the top of the porch steps, he was hauled none-too-gently upright.
Of all the places the Feds could have picked for an exchange, he thought, it had to be the perfect setup for a horror movie: an abandoned, old house rotting into the ground, certain to host nature’s most unwelcome pests.
A flutter of darkness caught his eye. To his left, a figure stepped from an open doorway.
“You are late.”
“Jet Li over here already said that.”
The agent at Leonard’s side stirred. “He came alone, sir. Looks like you were wrong. Should I shoot him now?”
Spock came towards Leonard slowly with a glint in his eyes which Leonard failed to notice until it was too late. One moment they were studying each other, the next Spock’s hand was around his throat.
Leonard jerked backwards on instinct but Spock pulled him into place again. The agent’s grip was strong, though thankfully not tight enough to deny Leonard his supply of air. Nonetheless, dark spots began to float across his vision.
“Where is Kirk?”
Stomach turning, Leonard made a clumsy attempt to pry off Spock’s hand, but the hand only clutched at his throat tighter.
“Let me go.”
“Where is he?”
“Spock,” he insisted, “lemme go.”
“Mr. McCoy, you lied to me.”
“Didn’t.” Leonard closed his eyes as his stomach muscles contracted painfully. “Gonna throw up,” he warned and, seconds later, made good on his word.
Credit had to be given where credit was due. Spock dropped him pretty fast and leapt out of the way just in time to save his shoes. Federal Agent Number Two wasn’t so lucky.
After he stopped heaving, Leonard wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, spit the bitter taste out of his mouth, and leaned against the porch railing with a groan. He noticed the direction of Spock’s stare. “Normally I’d apologize for throwing up on a man, but I’m not feeling very sorry.”
The guy whose shoes he had ruined transferred a look of disgust to Leonard. “You son of a bitch!”
Leonard hmphed and wondered if they would force him to stand up again if he sat down. Suddenly a hand at his elbow tugged him away from the railing, and Leonard went reluctantly.
“Do you normally vomit blood?” Spock asked him, guiding him into the house and towards a wooden chair.
The place smelled of mold and animal droppings. Leonard was glad his stomach was already empty, because otherwise he would have thrown up again. “‘Course I don’t,” he grunted as he took a seat. “I also don’t nearly die in car crashes on a regular basis.”
“I see. And Mr. Kirk? Did he survive?”
“Unfortunately,” Leonard replied, looking up at Spock. “He’s the reason we crashed.”
“Explain.”
Leonard opened his mouth to do just that but remembered (God, how could he forget!) the reason he was there—and it wasn’t to play nice with Spock. “Scotty,” he said, and started to get up.
Spock pressed him back into the chair, glanced over his shoulder and ordered, “Bring him.”
The man wiping at his footwear in the doorway didn’t rush off to obey. In fact, as he straightened up and flung a now-soiled handkerchief off the porch, he gave them an indolent stare.
“Agent, I do not care to repeat myself.”
The man caught Leonard’s eyes, said slowly “Yes, sir” before walking away.
Leonard said, “Well, he’s not worth whatever you’re paying him,” and paused. “Think he’ll shoot me for puking on his shoes?”
“He may be contemplating it.”
Leonard slumped down and rubbed at the tense muscle between his shoulder and neck. “I’m fuckin’ pissed at you, Spock. You didn’t have to go as far as choking me to let me know you were upset.”
“I thought you had reneged on our deal.”
“Deal?” Leonard muttered, then laughed bitterly. “Some deal. You forced me into this, you bastard.” He lowered his tone, hoping to sound more menacing. “If I find out you’ve laid a hand on my friend…”
“Please,” interrupted the man, “threats are unnecessary. Also,” he added, eyeing Leonard’s pallor, “you do not seem to be in the proper condition to carry them out. I assume you avoided the hospital.”
“Yeah, I baled before EMTs could dope me up and roll me through the emergency doors.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Good news is I’m not dying—at the moment—so let’s discuss what’s more important here.”
“Jim.”
“Exactly, Jim,” Leonard stressed. “And mainly the fact that he isn’t Jim.”
“If he is not Jim Kirk, then who is he?”
“Oh, why didn’t they bloody ask that before?” was the loud complaint which preceded the man trudging up the porch steps.
Leonard abandoned his chair with a relieved cry. He didn’t make it to the door, though, because Spock caught his arm, stalling the reunion with Scotty. That was when Leonard remembered all over again why he had good reason not to trust Spock. He shook off the hand on his arm and gave the Fed his fiercest glare.
Scotty took one look at Leonard and said, “Whoa, what happened to you?”
“Car landed in a ditch.” Leonard started to say more but then he saw the way the shadow behind Scotty was listening with interest to their conversation, and caution silenced whatever else he might have said.
Scotty, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care about the listening ears. “I had a wee bit o’ an accident myself.” Then he twisted around, unmindful of his hands bound in front of him, to stare at his escort. “By the way, did you get her out of the bushes?”
“Her?”
“Zelda.” Scotty beamed. “My van.”
Leonard flushed with second-hand embarrassment. Finally it occurred to him what Scotty was actually saying. “So that means…” He resisted the urge to cut his eyes at either agent. “Zelda’s out of commission?”
Some of Scotty’s amusement fled. “Aye,” he agreed, “until we get her back.”
Damn, Leonard thought. They could have used Keenser. But the demon was no good to them wherever he currently was.
Leonard did look at Spock then, thinking that there was no way he could convince the man to take them back to Scotty’s van when an idea occurred to him. “If you want to know what Kirk is,” he said, “we have something we can show you.”
“Why can’t you just tell us?” cut in the other guy before Spock could open his mouth.
Leonard crossed his arms, shifting his attention. “I don’t think you’ve introduced me to your buddy yet, Spock. It seems at least proper to know the name of the a-hole pointing a gun at my head.”
The man wasn’t actually pointing his gun at Leonard but now he looked like he was considering it. “You’re pretty at ease insulting the authorities, aren’t you, McCoy?”
“See,” Leonard complained to Spock, “he knows my name!”
Spock moved to stand at equal distance between them. “Mr. McCoy, this is Agent Sulu. I would not recommend that you antagonize him further. He is one of the best precision shooters at our agency.”
“Lovely,” muttered McCoy. “So is this you backstabbing me, Spock? I can’t say I’m surprised, but I did hold out a little hope if I kept my end of the bargain, you’d keep yours.”
“And what of Mr. Scott?” countered Spock, his dark eyes pinning Leonard’s. “Am I to believe his presence here is happenstance?”
“Wait wait wait,” Scotty began at the same time Sulu declared smugly, “I knew it.”
Leonard winced, having forgotten to tread carefully where Scotty was concerned. And as he feared, his friend exploded:
“Have ye gone mad, Leonard? You’re working with a FED?”
“Scotty…”
“The same Fed, might I add, who wants to hang you until dead!”
“He said he didn’t want to kill me.”
“And you believed him?” Scotty made a disgusted noise and threw his cuffed hands into the air.
Leonard turned on Spock and demanded, “Give me the key.”
Spock blinked.
“The key to his handcuffs, you idiot!”
“No.”
“Yes,” he insisted. “You will because I’m not helping you catch Kirk otherwise, and that’s beside the fact that I can’t catch Kirk without Scotty.”
“I do not trust you.”
“What a shocker. I don’t trust you either.”
“Then explain to me what you believe we will gain from Mr. Kirk.”
“Your father’s killer,” Leonard answered promptly.
Spock started forward, and Leonard had immediate cause to regret his words when the man misunderstood and said, “James Kirk killed my father?”
“No!” Leonard denied at the same time Scotty piped up, “Probably.”
Spock stilled and looked between them, as if he could not decide which answer to believe.
“I mean,” Scotty went on to explain, “I’ve been thinking about it. It’s likely that the spirit is the reason Leonard is here, and Leonard’s here because your dad sent him—or would’ve, you know, if he hadn’t died. It adds up.”
There was an elusive memory Leonard couldn’t quite get a hold of but he recognized the certainty which accompanied it. “I think you’re right. Sarek was… Sarek was killed by that thing.” He bit into his bottom lip, recalling the color of one of Jim’s eyes.
“‘That thing’,” Spock echoed softly. “Are you saying that James Kirk is possessed by a supernatural?”
“Not exactly.”
“It’s complicated,” added Scotty, “but we’ve got a video that might help explain.”
“Where?”
“Where else?” responded Sulu, tone dry. “It would have to be in the van.” He held Spock’s gaze for a moment, until Spock nodded. Then Sulu tucked his gun out of sight, retrieved a key from the inner pocket of his suit jacket, and removed Scotty’s handcuffs.
Leonard went to his friend’s side and inspected his wrists for damage. “How badly did they hurt you?”
“I expected worse.” Scotty leaned in slightly, lowering his voice. “Are you really okay with this?”
By which he meant Spock, Leonard understood. “Do I have a choice?”
But Scotty said, to Leonard’s surprise, “Yes you do.” The message in his eyes read Just hold on ’til we get to the van.
Leonard nodded, released Scotty, and backed up. He felt eyes on his back but didn’t turn to meet them. “All right, first things first. There’s something you need to know: Kirk may be on the loose, but we won’t be the only ones looking for him.”
“Pike,” Spock guessed.
“Yeah, fucking Sheriff Pike.” Leonard glanced Spock’s way. “And don’t tell me you’ll ‘handle it’. I’m pretty certain when he thinks Kirk is in danger, he shoots first and asks questions later.” God knows why, he wondered. At one point the man had claimed Jim might be a murderer.
Unfortunately it looked like that guess was partly right.
Damn it, Jim,, Leonard thought. How are we going to save you?
Realizing belatedly that Spock had come to stand beside him, Leonard saw that there was something the man wanted to say and waited.
“Before we proceed, I have a question.”
“You want to know if I’m going to get in your way—if I’ll try to stop you from killing Kirk.”
“I would not ask a question when its answer is obvious. You will preserve life even if it poses a threat to your own. While your ethics may be commendable, I promise you it will not stop me.”
“Great. So what’s the question?”
“Do you believe James Kirk is aware of his actions?”
Leonard looked away. “Does it matter, when you intend to destroy him?”
There was a moment of silence between them.
Then Spock admitted, “You are correct. It will not matter.”
Uhura radioed in with news of the wreck and its missing victims. McCoy, they knew, was alive as he had been taken to the hospital by ambulance only to slip away at the last second; but the whereabouts of Jim Kirk remained unknown.
“What’s our next move, boss?” Nyota had asked.
Chris honestly did not know. He didn’t know why Leonard had seen fit to kidnap Kirk, and he didn’t know where they had been going. He also didn’t know what caused their accident. Other motorists reported that the car had been all over the road before it ended up sideways in a ditch. That seemed to imply the driver had lost control of the wheel… but why?
Ultimately Chris’s gut told him something he didn’t like, and so he felt he was at a crossroads: did he pursue Kirk in order to rescue him or did he have to stop him?
Regardless, he couldn’t sound the alarm on Jim—not yet. With their limited options, it seemed the best they could do was stake-out the one place Pike figured Jim would sooner or later have to return to.
So he told his deputy “Head to Kirk’s” and hoped he could trust her with his son’s life. Before he could join her, he first had to make a pit stop at the station to prepare for the worst.
Someone had stuck an orange cone near the back end of the van to warn sidewalk traffic to go around the obstruction. Leonard could imagine the owner of the bushes which the van had trashed was very pissed. He was surprised Zelda hadn’t been towed away.
“Think Keenser’s okay?” Scotty murmured for Leonard’s ears only as Sulu pulled to the street curb to park.
“He’s a demon, Scotty.”
“Oh, right.”
It didn’t shock Leonard in the least when Scotty still hopped out of the car before they had come to a complete stop.
“Is he running away?” Sulu asked almost idly, hands still on the steering wheel.
“No,” Leonard answered. “He’s just weird.”
Spock exited the front of the car without a word and opened Leonard’s door. Leonard doubted he did it out of politeness. They eyed each other warily before setting off towards the van with matching strides.
“Mr. Scott refused to explain why his vehicle propelled itself off the road.”
“Because it didn’t have GPS?”
“Your joke is inappropriate.”
Leonard muttered, “You think everything’s inappropriate.”
“I want an explanation.”
“And I want to kick you in the balls. I guess neither of us is going to get what we want today.”
Spock cut a glance at him that clearly said try me.
A whoop came from inside the van. Leonard pushed ahead.
“Hey, what’s—FUCK!” he shouted, just as he stepped up to the door that was ajar and it unexpectedly leapt forward to meet him.
“Oops,” his friend apologized, leaning in. “Didn’t see you.”
Leonard cursed and put a hand to the sore spot on his forehead.
“I meant to get the Fed,” Scotty stage-whispered.
Next to Leonard, Spock lifted an eyebrow. “Please move away from the doors before you cause another accident, Mr. Scott.”
Scotty scuttled to the other side of the van with a mutter and began digging through a tangle of cables.
Spock’s eyes had more of a frown than his mouth when Leonard removed his hand and there was still a red mark emblazoned upon his forehead.
“Don’t have the energy to expend to fix it right now,” he said with a shrug.
“That may prove troublesome for us later.”
“Why? Are you intending to hurt somebody you shouldn’t?”
But Spock didn’t respond to the sarcastic bite and instead lifted himself into the van. “Where is your evidence, Mr. Scott?”
“Hold on, hold on, it’s a bloody mess in here. I think someone tried to break in… stupid neighborhood punks… don’t they know this shit is expensive?”
“That’s why they’d want to steal it, Scotty.”
“Ha! Like they could, when I got me wee lad Ke—”
Leonard’s sudden loud coughing fit reminded his talkative friend to shut the hell up. Keenser was their way out of this mess in a pinch, but he couldn’t help them if Spock had an inkling of the demonic presence hiding in the van.
That reminded Leonard of something and he poked Spock in the side. “Hey, I just realized we don’t need a tow truck. Can’t you move us outta here?”
The glare Spock leveled at him should have been able to disintegrate flesh.
Scotty stopped rummaging through his belongings, curiosity piqued. “What does that mean?”
Leonard grinned. “Spock can—”
Spock clamped a hand around the back of his neck and warned him in a low hiss, “If you value your life, you will cease to speak.”
“Oh, I get it,” Scotty said, “he’s like his dad!”
Spock turned to stare at Scotty.
“Hey, I didn’t say a word,” Leonard pointed out. “He’s just really smart.”
“Very smart,” Scotty emphasized. To Leonard, he said, “Now I get why you’re confused.”
“Huh?”
“Why you’ve been acting friendly with a Fed.”
“We are not friends!” Leonard and Spock protested simultaneously.
“At first I thought your nob’s been fried,” the man went on to say, ignoring them, “but I guess you figure he’s got as much to lose as you do.”
“I doubt that,” Leonard said bitterly.
“Well think of it this way, Leonard: since his father’s dead, Mr. Spock here doesn’t have anything left to lose. That makes him pretty pitiful, actually.”
Leonard really hadn’t thought of Spock’s situation in quite that light. He had been too concerned with his own guilt over Sarek’s death. “…Yeah, that makes sense.”
“Aw, you bleeding heart you,” Scotty said fondly.
“That is enough,” Spock said in warning to the both of them.
A shadow spoke up from the doorway, where it had been quietly watching them the entire time. “Not that this heart-to-heart isn’t touching, but you should know we have company.”
Spock instantly fixated on that. “Who?” he demanded of Sulu.
“Your arresting officer.”
Spock made as if to leave.
“Wait,” Leonard stopped him, a hand to his arm. “Now’s not the time to have a pissing contest. More to the point,” he added in a softer tone, “if she sees you, then Pike will know we’re here. It’ll be a fight then.”
“I am not afraid of Christopher Pike.”
“I am,” he shot back, thinking of all that the sheriff could do to them. “Look, Spock… We want Kirk, and they want Kirk. The kid’s damned wily so let’s just see who gets him first.”
Sulu lent his support. “I hate to say it, but I’m with McCoy on this, sir. The cop’s staked out closer to the house. I doubt she spotted me.”
Spock finally seemed to relent, even though he said nothing about agreeing with them. His attention returned to Scotty who, just in the nick of time, lifted his laptop into the air for all to see.
“I promise you’re going to want to see this!” he swore to the agents, booting up his equipment.
“No sign of the eagle yet,” Nyota reported in, “but we’ve got a couple of lame ducks.”
Through the phone, her boss made a sputtering sound then swore sharply in several different languages, which actually wasn’t an unusual thing.
“Chris?”
“Damn you, Nyota, that cup of coffee was expensive and so were my pants!”
She resisted the urge to laugh. “Glad you appreciated my joke.”
“Remind me to put down my thoughts on your humor at your next performance evaluation. Which ducks?”
“I only saw one, but this particular breed travels in pairs.”
“Shit. McCoy could be with them.”
“And Kirk could be with McCoy?”
“No,” Pike replied after a moment. “I think you would know if he was.”
That piqued her curiosity. “How would I know?”
“Just… call me back if things get weird. And don’t under any circumstances put yourself in the middle of it. Is that clear, Uhura? You’re eyes and ears only.”
“What’s your ETA?”
“Twenty, twenty-five minutes. Now I said, is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pike hung up, and Nyota tucked her cell phone away, wondering exactly what kind of shitstorm the man was expecting to occur.
Scotty waved his hand in a smug manner at the laptop screen. “That, gentlemen, is James Tiberius Kirk.”
“It’s a blob,” Sulu said.
“It’s a white horse,” corrected Leonard.
“Fascinating.”
Sulu swapped his gun from hand to hand. “No. No fucking way is that a horse.”
Leonard nearly stomped on the exasperating man’s foot. “Would you stop arguing with me? Spock!”
“Fascinating,” Spock said again. “Though I must admit I see no resemblance to a horse.”
“Well you wouldn’t,” explained their most knowledgeable companion. “See, what Leonard means is that we have a prime example of a manifestation of a waterhorse—probably from England,” he tacked on.
Sulu’s look of disbelief didn’t budge. “I thought you said Kirk wasn’t possessed.”
“I said it’s complicated!” Scotty countered. “Possession is like… having a live-in roommate. A really bad one.”
“Oh god,” muttered Leonard, bracing his head in one hand. This was going to be fantastic.
“Manifestation is so much more. It’s when the entity, spirit, whatever, depends on its host for survival. It’s not just draining the host’s energy and manipulating his body, thereby in the process turning him into a person who spouts pea soup or chows down on five-inch nails, whom we’d just lock up in a padded room as a crazy lunatic.”
“Focus, Scotty,” Leonard urged him.
“Fine, fine. The creature—I like to use the term beastie, ’cause horse, you know—the beastie is literally transforming a human shell into a supernatural so it can survive. Here’s what I know about the process…” Scotty started sketching symbols in the air in his excitement. “There’s this world, and then there’s other worlds superimposed on ours. Or maybe the other way around. I’m not sure. Anyway the barrier between them is called, or I have heard called from a science-y buddy of mine who is a complete idiot by the way—the Veil. At some points on earth, the Veil is thin enough that it’s not as difficult to cross over… like moving through a really soupy fog instead of pushing through plasma.”
“Next you’ll be telling me about the Fairies.”
Spock and Leonard shushed Sulu.
Scotty said, “There might be Fairies, but now I won’t tell you about them because you obviously don’t deserve to know.”
“Tell them about the aliens,” Leonard said instead, amused.
“No,” Sulu said too quickly. “Table the aliens for tomorrow’s lecture. What were you saying about a veil?”
“Veil, capitalized,” sniffed the storyteller. “There are probably cases where people go over and don’t come back, but the ones who come to our side… well, we don’t have ghost stories for nothing, right?”
“To summarize, the beastie comes from the other side,” Leonard said.
Scotty nodded. “But this is Here and not There, so basically it’s a lot less powerful than it otherwise would be. It can use magic, sure, but not as easily as the humans who are born with the ability to harness the magic which exists on this side of the Veil.” Scotty paused and met Leonard’s eyes. “The exception to this being if it manifests.”
“I don’t really know as much as Scotty here, but I do know that there’s a give-and-take to it. This thing didn’t just show up in Iowa. Somebody brought it.” Leonard turned his gaze to Spock. “You said you traced the drownings back to the ’20s. We think we figured out whose responsible for that.”
“But she died in the 1940s,” Scotty added.
“Which means it had to change hosts at that point.”
Spock tilted his head in a thoughtful manner. “The drownings stopped after a period of time. If the same entity exists in Kirk, then it has been manifesting in him since the day he nearly drowned.”
“That’s the real question, isn’t it?” mused Leonard. “I don’t know why it would want to jump to a kid.”
“Perhaps it had no choice. Perhaps,” Spock continued to say, “someone offered to sacrifice a young boy to become its next host.”
Sulu muttered a word under his breath but Leonard didn’t catch what it was.
“But we’ve got a bigger problem,” Scotty interrupted. “Clearly said beastie has not been feeding. If there’s any reason it’s making a big fuss now, it’s because Kirk isn’t doing what it wants.”
“I don’t think Jim knows what he is or isn’t doing.”
“Which is worse,” Scotty agreed. “Will it eat Kirk up and start drowning kids again, or will it jump to a new host?”
Suddenly Leonard didn’t like this conversation at all. He sank back on his haunches and rubbed at his forehead, listening to Spock pick up the new direction of speculations and run with it.
Didn’t any of them realize if Jim was still alive, so to speak, that they had an obligation to help him?
He figured no one did, and began to wonder if he ought to change his own thinking.
Related Posts:
- The White Horse (18/18) – from May 12, 2014
- The White Horse (17/18) – from May 10, 2014
- The White Horse (15/16) – from April 4, 2014
- The White Horse (14/16) – from March 7, 2014
- The White Horse (13/16) – from February 3, 2014
