A Study in Satin

by Tigger

 

Part III: Dum Vivimus Vivamus!

Chapter 14: The Calm

 

Neither Sherla nor Irene remembered much of that wild ride across the midnight-dark mountain trail towards Meringen. They had all piled into the sleigh as soon as Hans-Peter had brought it to an incredibly fast stop near the front gate of Moriarty's lair. The sound of a firearm being discharged had hurried them on their way without any consideration of comfort. However, they stopped to reseat everyone about a kilometer past the bend in the trail where they had waited in growing fear for Sherla's signal. Irene and Sherla had crowded into the front seat with Hans-Peter, so that the two physicians could see to the Katrina.

For Sherla, covering the four kilometers to Meringen seemed to take hours, when it had actually taken barely more than half an hour. Once inside the village, Sherla had directed Hans-Peter to the Englischer Hof. The innkeeper, Peter Steiler the Younger, was still awake and helped them convey the sick young woman to a bed where the doctors and the Mother could see to her needs.

Afterwards, although she was desperate to be with Katrina, it was Irene, as the apparent mother, who was expected to remain with Katrina as the doctors worked to save her young life. Thus, it was Sherla who was left to deal with the very curious Herr Steiler-the-Younger. "You are every bit as efficient and hospitable as my Uncle John said your father was," Sherla opened, trying to belay any questions she did not wish to answer. "He and his friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes stayed here some twenty years ago. You have kept it JUST as they described it." She tried to flirt, but was evidently too distracted to do a sufficiently proper job of it.

"What is wrong with the young Fraulein, if I might ask," Steiler asked, not wanting to face his gossip-loving wife in the morning without the entire story.

*Tis fortunate that we had not already arrived here with Katrina in her Karl guise when this happened. That would be just one more thing to have to explain when a lack of explanation is to everyone's advantage.* "She became ill while we were visiting a friend, and wandered off in her fever. By the time we found her, it was closer to bring her here than to return to our host. The doctors, who were kind enough to help with the search, thought it best we get her inside and into bed as quickly as possible."

"Will you require anything?" he asked, his hotelier's instincts overcoming his wife's interest in gossip. "Some hot tea perhaps, or some hot broth?"

"If it would not be too much trouble, that would be very nice. We missed the evening meal and have been out in the cold for ever so long." *And it will keep you busy while I go do what I must. After I tell Irene and the doctors what I have just told you.* "Now if you will excuse me, I want to go check on my sister, please."

~--------------~

"The doctors are hopeful she will survive." Irene told her as she sponged her adopted daughter's face with cool water. "The snow stopped the fever which is evidently what killed the monkey. They will stay with her and make sure she stays cool, but they believe she will awaken in the morning."

The doctors had gone off with Herr Steiler for something hot to eat and promised to be back very quickly. "As Katrina or as Karl? They said Moriarty thought that was the antidote to the gender changing side effect." Sherla had perched herself on the bed as close to her lover as she could manage.

"Will that make a difference to you, my dear?" Irene asked gently.

"I would like to say no, but it will be different. Inside she is still Katrina, and it is Katrina I love." Unable to keep from touching her love, Sherla gently held Katrina's limp hand in hers. "I just hope she . . .he will still love me."

"Stand by him or her, dear, and I think it will all work itself out." Irene told her as she withdrew the thermometer from Katrina's mouth. "Hmmmm. . . a touch below 38 degrees. The doctors said that any reading less than forty degrees is good news."

"But when will she wake up?" Sherla demanded.

"The doctors were very encouraged when she woke up a few moments before you came in. They indicated that was a very positive sign."

"But then she went back into the coma. Aren't all comas dangerous?"

"They think this is more natural sleep than anything."

"She doesn't look any more masculine to you, does she?"

Irene considered that and shook her head. "Not in her face, certainly, and she does not seem to be changing size. You did shrink a great deal when you changed, did you not?"

Sherla nodded. "Almost a foot." Just then, the doctors came back.

"If you will give us some room, ladies, we will examine the patient again. You just checked her temperature, Frau Adler? Ah yes, that is good. VERY good."

Sherla and Irene moved away from the bed. "What now?" Irene asked.

"I don't know," Sherla sighed. "I took steps to force a final confrontation with Moriarty, but I can't leave - not when. . not when I. ." suddenly, the strong will crumbled and Sherla found herself sobbing on Irene's shoulders, the older woman's arms strong and firm about her. "What am I going to do if she dies? What if I never again can tell her how much I love her??!?"

Before Irene could answer, a new voice, slurred. "What is happening? Who. . . who is crying?"

Irene and Sherla spun to see Doctor Buchner helping Katrina sit up in the bed. "KaTRINA!? You're awake!!"

"What has happened to me?" the girl asked.

"Katrina, what happened to your voice?" Sherla asked, then berated herself for a fool. It was obvious what had happened. Katrina's voice had changed from a clear, light soprano to a husky alto that seemed to belong in a bigger woman than the near-child laying in the bed.

"What? Oh, it does sound funny. Oh, dear, what has he done to me?"

"It doesn't matter, my love," Sherla said, bending low over the sick girl to place a soft kiss on her forehead. "As long as you will live, we can overcome any problem." Then she dropped her voice very low and whispered, "God, but I love you, Katrina. Please, don't ever, EVER leave me."

"Actually," Buchner interjected, "there shouldn't be any further problems. Once we beat the fever, I really never expected more than a bit of muscle development. We pointed to that change in Adolf, our little African monkey, as something that might be a precursor to a female to male transition. Professor Moriarty, on examining the monkey after its death, concluded that the observed changes fit nicely into a reverse of the transitional phases he had identified in the male to female transitions.

"So, in your opinion, Katrina is likely to remain female?" Irene asked.

"Even the voice change is somewhat of a surprise," Haber replied. "In all honesty, Frau Adler, the treatment we were forced to use on the Fraulein was not really a very promising line of inquiry, but of course we could not tell Moriarty that. We would have been killed. Or worse. In any event, now that it is clear she will survive the fever, I think you have little to worry about."

~--------------~

Irene watched anxiously as Sherla began to work. Still weak from her fevered ordeal, Katrina had soon fallen asleep, whereupon Sherla had slipped from the room, her face again set in grim determination.

She had found her other daughter-of-the-heart in the smallest of the bedrooms. Sherla had placed the now familiar carrying case upon the bed and begun extracting an all-black version of the white quilted ski clothing she still wore.

"What are you doing?" Irene asked sharply.

"I have to go back out there, Irene. My activities tonight have hurt Moriarty, perhaps mortally in the final analysis, but he is still alive. Like an injured beast, he is now even more dangerous. I have to finish this once and for all."

"You think to go back to the chalet?" Irene's voice betrayed her worry and concern.

"No," Sherla's voice was cold as she finished donning her new set of clothing and reached for her weapons harness. "I am going up to Reichenbach Falls."

"And you believe you will find him there? Why would he go there?"

"Because I left him a graven invitation - mano e femma - to the end."

"And you believe he will just go up there? Why wouldn't he simply flee back to South America where he was safe before? Where he could acquire more of those accursed herbs?"

"To what end? According to the doctors, I destroyed his records as well as his ready supplies. He could go back, but he'd be back where he began. Worse, actually, because thanks to the doctors, he would be following a dead end with that potion they used on Katrina. Eventually, he would either have to decide to die, or he would be forced to accept changing into a woman in order to gain the years he'd need to face me one more time. That is something someone with his 'natural-inferiority-of-women' mind set simply would never be able to accept doing to himself. Besides, he knows that I know where he got those herbs, and he knows that I will pursue him to the gates of Hell itself this time."

"He could come for you first."

"So he could, and that is why I told him where to find me. When you think about this metaphorically, this is what happened twenty years ago all over again. History repeats itself in that I have once again completely destroyed his power base. I expect he will react the same this time as he did then, particularly since I taunted him about that fact."

"Fraulein Watson?" a older, male voice called from the door.

Sherla turned her attention to him and replied, "Yes, Doctor Buchner?"

He held out a small metallic cylinder, perhaps a centimeter in diameter and three centimeters long. "Here is what you asked for."

"You were able to do it, then?" she asked, accepting the offering and putting into her pouch.

"Yes, but we do not know how effective it will be or how sterile it is."

"I see," Sherla replied. "In truth, it will only matter that he believes it will be effective. Thank you again, Doctor, I will be back in a few hours. Please take care of her."

Irene moved to block the door. "I am going with you."

"No, you are not. He might use you against me. This is between Moriarty and me, and will end that way as it always should have done." With a kiss for Irene, Sherla slipped from the house, and made her way to a trail she well remembered from an adventure of twenty years past. An adventure John Watson had written as the epitaph of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

~---------------~

Moriarty stood quietly staring at the dying embers of what had been, mere hours before, his laboratory. Now it, like his plans, had been reduced to so much ash.

His life's work - destroyed again. Someone was going to pay. Moriarty would make the person or persons responsible for this outrage pay the full measure for this if it took the remaining years of his life.

After his enraged attempt to shoot at the fleeing sleigh, Moriarty had made a futile search for his underlings. He had found his two house guards in front of the house dead - killed by what he recognized as a blowgun dart. *Very likely based on venomous skin excretions of the South American poison arrow frog.* he'd mused, for he had recognized the now-frozen death mask both corpses wore. Then, in his mad flight to his blazing lab, he had tripped over Carver's body and found that he had been dispatched by the same silently lethal weapon.

The lab was lost. Everything was lost. He had foolishly kept all of his records in that building as well, thinking his security more than adequate. Now, all he had left was the possibility of revenge. And for that, he would need to uncover the identity of whoever had done this to him.

Like the scientist he was, Moriarty began by searching for data - Holmes would have called it clues or evidence - but James Moriarty thought of it as data. On the far side of the house, he found the trail of whoever had breached his security. *Must have all but swum his way in from that small hill in the distance,* he thought, *keeping his head just high enough to breath, but letting the snow hide his body. Not very many tracks of my men making security walks over here as well. Whoever this is, picked the perfect vector for his attack and took good advantage of my stupid minions shoddy efforts.*

He followed the tracks and saw the attack in his mind. First the front guards and then Carver. *He didn't kill Carver with the dartgun,* he noted, seeing the impressions that indicated that Carver had rolled over in the snow after being taken down initially. *He was stabbed with that dart. Why? Ah, of course, Carver was the one he questioned after killing the first two. Most effective and well planned.*

He circled the soot blackened snow and found another set of tracks. These were not as careful or as stealthy as the ones his intruder had made on his initial approach, and they were matched by a second set of the same prints returning to the laboratory. Moriarty was certain where they led and what had happened, but he was too thorough, too good a scientist to make such an assumption.

The tracks led to the makeshift barracks that had housed his men. Inside, he found them all dead, each killed by one of the poisoned darts. *My foe is very skilled with that lethal little toy. I wonder who he is? Is it someone I met in South America for that is the only place I have ever encountered such weapons? Perhaps a relative or friend of one of the guides I killed during my sojourn with the women's tribe on the Amazon? That would mean he'd found them, too and learned what I had done there. It would also mean he has somehow followed my trail all the way here. Truly a remarkable man, in that event. Only one other in my experience might have had such skill and dogged determination.*

Moriarty turned to leave that scene of death when a flash of steel in the moonlight caught his eye. There was a knife stuck into the back of the door, and from it hung a piece of paper. Striding to the door, Moriarty pulled the blade free of the door, careful not to damage the paper. When he read it, his face went white and then bright red with rage, and the paper crumpled in his fist.

Storming outside, his anger burned white hot as he walked back to the dancing flames that greedily consumed his hopes and plans and future. Even a man of Moriarty's great powers required a few moments to control and subdue the fury that washed over him. When he had, however, he very carefully smoothed out the crushed ball of paper and began to reread the message.

Greetings Professor,

Now it is YOUR turn to find clever little notes such as the ones you left for me not more than two months ago in London.

Once again, old enemy, I have stopped you as I did twenty years ago when I destroyed your spider webs of crime in London and in Paris. Only this time, I have destroyed your hope of regaining your youth and vigor.

As I have regained mine.

Oh yes, Professor, I AM HOLMES!

You are through, Moriarty. All your men are dead; all your vile herbs and potions are destroyed. There is no place on earth you can run or hide where I will not find you. Thanks to your own efforts, I have the advantage of the years of new youth, and I shall use them until I find you or until you simply die of old age.

For you, it is all over. Finished. Destroyed.

However, Dear Professor, I am a generous woman. You have given me such a wondrous gift that I feel compelled to return the favor. Rather than watch as you die in ignominy, I offer you one, final chance at me - and me at you.

There has been a certain inevitability in this return to the site of our last great battle. I can almost believe that your Destiny has brought us back here to finish what we started those many years ago. I would say that things are even still rather fair, for while you are now a very old man, I am naught but a woman.

Yes, Moriarty, fully a woman as you no doubt planned, but as you can also see from the carnage I have wrought among your men, I am also a rather capable woman.

Come to the Falls, Moriarty, the Reichenbach Falls. Let us finish this thing there once and for all. This time, it shall be just you and me for I have no John Watson and you have no Sebastian Moran.

I shall await your pleasure at three a.m this morning, old enemy. Come prepared to die."

Sherla Holmes

 

"That bitch DARES to taunt me? After what she has done to ME?!!?!?"

The hissing orange roar of the inferno that was once his lab cast a scorching light upon the face of the enraged Moriarty. For once, his physical shell mirrored the dark core within. Veins throbbed at the surface of his temples, visibly echoing the manic thumping of his outraged heart. His heavy brows cast deep shadows upon the sockets of his eyes, from which his orbs seemed to burn with their own internal flame. His jowls were snarled in a lipless grimace of fury, and it seemed as though he had ripped out the throat of the world for his teeth were bloodied by the hue of the flames.

"HOLMES!" he screamed to the sky. "HOLMES!! I don't know how it could be you but it simply does not matter! AGAIN you meddle where you do not belong! It is YOU who are DEAD, Holmes, do you hear me? DEAD! It is YOU who cannot run! YOU who cannot hide! There is no place in the universe that is safe from my wrath! I would storm the very gates of Hell itself if only I can bring you down with me! Oh, I shall be there to answer your fooling challenge, Holmes, and this time, I . . SHALL . . . DESTROY . . . YOU! HOOOOLLLLLMMEEEEESSS!!!!"

His thunderous cry echoed off the surrounding peaks, the curious interaction of the mountains' slopes bringing his fury to the fleeing band below. Irene shuddered at the malice implicit in those cries upon the wind as she urgently caressed Katrina's burning forehead with a palm full of snow. Then her glance fell upon Sherla's face and she nearly gasped at the echo to Moriarty's hatred and fury that she saw there.

Moriarty continued to fume as he stalked back to his own quarters, his mind alive with the vision of the humiliations he would visit upon his transformed foe before he finally granted her death. However, by the time he'd reached his rooms and began to dress, his mind was once again in control, and he was once again the cold, rational genius who had calmly waited while Holmes had written what should have been his last words to that fool Watson.

He needed a plan of his own because it was patently clear that his adversary had one. The attack on his base had been superbly planned and executed. Whoever was working with Holmes, for there HAD to be someone working with that bitch - no mere woman could have caused such damage or wreaked such destruction - was a worthy opponent. He would have to be prepared. It was too bad that Holmes had such an ally and he did not, but that could not be helped.

*Ally! Moran! That is it!* Moriarty exulted, jumping to his feet. "NOW, I have you, Holmes, and whoever your ally is, I have him as well. I hope the Devil has a particularly warm welcome planned for you this night, for you have surely earned your eternity of torment."

With that, the Professor selected his weapons, and left the room. He would need a horse for it was already moving towards one in the morning. He needed to be in place well before that foolishly honorable Holmes arrived for their epic final battle.

"Too bad there is no one to write of this adventure of yours, Holmes, for I would very much enjoy seeing your ignominious demise as well publicized as were your so-vaunted and over-aggrandized meddling in the affairs of your betters. Perhaps, in my declining years, I shall have to write my own memoirs if only to showcase tonight, my greatest and sweetest triumph."

 

 

 

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