Cauldron-Born [SHERLOCK FANFIC]

The Inside-Out Face

Straightening himself in his seat and tugging at his collar, John whispered, “Right. Then, I suppose that’s the news she wanted to tell me. Oh God, I don’t know what to do.”

“Pretend you didn’t hear it from me. She would hate both of us if she knew I knew before she had a chance to tell you.” Sherlock exhaled and looked at his watch. “We’re here.” The cab came to a stop, sending Sherlock out the back and immediately onto the street.

John followed, though his mind had taken to another world, and his steps resulted from that.

“This way, John,” Sherlock directed, pulling blogged up beside him. “This shouldn’t take long. All I need is her face.”

“Her face?”

“Yes. It’s the most important anatomy part at the moment. Don’t really care for the rest of it.” Sherlock ducked under the yellow tape – much to the yelling of Donovan — and joined Lestrade beside the body. Whipping out his magnifying glass, Sherlock knelt down and pulled the sheet off the corpse. The limbs were twisted and broken, the face was a bloody mess, and the hair was sprinkled in plaster.

“Her license told us she’s twenty—,” Lestrade began before Sherlock rudely interrupted.

“Three, no, one. Yes, a woman with her skin, hand cream, fashion, and perfume easily pinpoints her to be a twenty-one year old.” Sherlock’s eyes trailed to the soles of her flat shoes. “Looks like she walked from the university, through the park—they recently put fertilizer on grounds, that’d explain these dirt squashes— and she walked on the pavement for awhile and then was…” Sherlock looked closer, bringing his rump in the air and his elbows underneath his chest. “And then she was chased. Interesting. Why did he chase her and no one else?”

“What?” Lestrade asked with his usual perplexed expression. He looked at John for explanation, but the doctor only answered in a shrug.

Standing up, Sherlock crouched by her face. “Well, there were enough people around to notice the pair; so, this person must’ve looked like an ordinary person until he got a fetish for flesh. But why her?” Sherlock reached up and snatched the license from Lestrade’s hands. “She’s not too pretty, but she’s small, five feet and two inches. Seems as though this human eater likes short people—well, I assume he does.” At that, he looked up at John with a mischievous wiggle of an eyebrow.

John rolled his head back, his body following until he had made a circle. “Right, short jokes. Very funny.”

“I’d need the head, and just the head,” Sherlock demanded.

Lestrade’s jaw dropped. “Sherlock! You can’t just take a head of a deceased person. The family members probably don’t know this! What are we supposed to say to her parents? Sorry, your daughter’s face was eaten by a lunatic and then removed by an investigator? Do you want us to be sacked?”

In an arguing whine, Sherlock retorted, “Well, what am I supposed to do with the rest of the body? I don’t want the rest of the body. The face will tell me everything I know!”

John intervened, holding Sherlock back at arm’s length. “How about this, Sherlock, we’ll just take the whole body to the lab and you can work on her face there why we deliver this horrid news to the parents or whoever she knows—knew, I mean. Bless her.”

Narrowing his eyes at Lestrade, Sherlock agreed. “Fine. Anything else, Lestrade?”

“No, that’s it, thank you, Sherlock. John.” Lestrade nodded to the two men before parting to his officers.

Sherlock sunk down to his haunches and studied the mutilated body. John squatted beside him. “If I can study the saliva, I can easily pin point the problem in the biter’s saliva. Either the attacker has a horrible case of cannibalism, or he, or she, was poisoned by someone else? There was that whole bath salt incident in America and Australia. This could be one of those.”

“Would we be able to catch this man-eater?” John asked, looking at the hollowed head in disgust.

“We might. I could always bait him. I’ll follow the tracks, he obviously made some with a blood trail—disappeared down that alley and down to the tube. But bait…I’d need someone—,” Sherlock paused and looked straight at John, who was also thinking about what to use as bait.

“How about we use,” John began before catching Sherlock’s decided eyes. “Me? You want to use me? Sherlock, are you mad?”

“You already know the answer. And you’re the perfect height and the only person available at the moment. Around two o’clock this afternoon we’ll slip out to the alley.”

“And what if he completely misses me? What if he goes for someone else?”

Sherlock clapped John on the back and headed to the street to hail another cab. “He won’t. I’ll make sure of it.”