"Dreams of Fair Horses" part 1 of 2

by Pellinor (Pellinor@astolat.demon.co.uk)

CLASSIFICATION: XA
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Why does a killer leave notes? As a serial killer toys 
with investigators like a cat with a mouse, Mulder and Scully find 
out what it is to predict a murder but to be powerless to prevent 
it.
___

DISCLAIMER: These people aren't mine and never will be. I do not 
use them for mean low-down mercenery reasons.
___

Mulder had been a revelation to her, then, before she'd known how 
it was to end - before the sheeting blood. 

One moment had caught her in particular, frozen while turning 
round from the cabinet, a file half-open in her hands. She stood 
like a spectator at a play - a work of brilliance, and sublime. 
His white sleeves were rolled up, his tie loosened. The desk light 
painted shining gleams in the hair which curled between his 
fingers as he leant forward, resting his forehead on his hand. His 
eyes half-shut, his lips were moving in silent thought.

Mulder. She lowered the file, gently, knowing that any sound could 
break the spell. She lowered the file, and allowed herself to 
smile. 

"Yes." Only the hiss of the "s" was audible to her. He reached for 
a pen, his movements as sudden yet as fluid as a cat's, and wrote, 
paused, then wrote some more.

The smile bubbled inside her and threatened to become a laugh. A 
sheet of paper fell from the file, held slackly now, and floated 
silently to the floor.

She let her eyes embrace him, wishing to absorb every detail of 
this Mulder who was not the Mulder she knew. Intense, yes, and 
focused, but different - so different. His intensity had darkened 
over the years, and become the intensity of a drowning man, his 
focus forced by a pain that allowed no other. Yet he had laughed, 
once. He had shouted with joy in the rain in Iowa, and gazed on 
lights in the sky with child-like wonder.

"Scully." He raised his head, and his eyes were bright. Hair fell 
on his brow like the shape of his fingers. "It's a message, of 
course. A challenge." He moistened his lips, and she nearly smiled 
again, struck by the association. He was savouring this hunt - 
literally. "I want to solve it."

"You will." She crouched, bending her head to pick up the sheet of 
paper, and smiled in the safety of concealment. 

Did he know? She wondered if he felt the darkness lessen, and the 
burden of his days grow less. Two days ago, they had both expected 
another nightmare - yet another nightmare. It was a murder case, 
surrounded by the scorn-filled eyes of the agents in Violent 
Crimes. He had sighed when he had been told about it, the slump of 
his shoulders telling her as good as words: "I'm so tired, Scully. 
Will this never end?"

He had been all silent focus at the crime scene, his withdrawal 
almost tangible. Tentacles in the air, drawing back, wrapping 
tight around his body, protecting. She had tensed, of course, 
waiting. The gargoyle case would never leave her, she knew that, 
and every murder case would always show her his haunted eyes and 
the knowledge that what had happened once could happen again. So 
she had tensed, her hands balling into fists, drawing up the 
strength to bear the weight of two.

"This, Scully." She straightened up, and the two-day old memory 
faded. Mulder was holding a small plastic evidence bag in his 
fingers, waving it at her. "This is the key." And then, without a 
change of tone. "Why do killers leave notes, Scully?"

The memory of her smile warmed her, but she kept her voice level. 
"Many reasons. To tell us why the victim deserved it. To give us a 
clue that we can't use, so we don't doubt his...." A wry smile. 
"Ability. A signature, like an artist's. Because he sees his work 
as an artistry and doesn't want a death not credited to his 
repertoire."

"Credit." He repeated the word slowly, thoughtfully, and frowned. 
"Credit." Louder. "It all comes to credit, doesn't it? It all 
comes to us. He is making it personal - a duel. He's playing 
games. He's challenging us to find him."

She held the file tighter and refused to think of Modell.

He leant back in his chair with a soft sigh. "I read a novel, 
once. I was at Oxford. It was a detective who thought crimes were 
like crossword puzzles...." 

Silence. She flipped open the file, saw the autopsy picture, and 
closed it again. "Did you like crossword puzzles, Mulder?" she 
asked, at last.

He looked at her, and his laugh was the only answer she needed. He 
_did_ know.

******

Footsteps pounding in the rain. 

Mulder leant his head back and let the water sheet across his 
face. He had felt exhilaration in the rain, always, from splashing 
with Samantha in the puddles of an Atlantic winter, to seeing 
Scully open her mouth and laugh in a graveyard as the rain 
plastered her hair to her face.

Ideas writhed in his mind like snakes - half-formed ideas coming 
to the surface for a while, then slipping away again. They moved 
always, and he was alive - he felt alive.

The victim's face had been serene. As he let the pound, pound, 
pound of his feet lull him into the half trance-like state where 
he saw such things, he could see the religious care on the 
killer's face as he arranged the body, aligned it, placing its 
limbs as gently as a lover. 

But an enigma still.

His steps changed rhythm, and he pulled out of the trance that was 
only imagination, attacking from another angle.

It had been one of their own, the victim. A senior agent in 
Violent Crimes, stabbed with a long knife between his ribs, 
lovingly laid in across the doorway of a New Age book store, as 
his blood had trickled down the step and pooled on the sidewalk. 
Pinned to his shirt, missing his flesh, had been a note written in 
a fluid italic: "This is the first."

The first.... He turned a corner, and the dark trees of the park 
flanked him. He moved close to them, almost up against them. The 
rain had given him nothing, and now was the turn of shelter. The 
changing rhythms of his running always gave his thoughts their 
different moods and colours.

The first. And the second....?

A flash of light from a car, and he imagined a horse running free 
on the grass, its tail like a wave of whiteness. A white horse 
carved in the chalk, galloping across an entire hillside in 
England. This had been a torn picture from a book in the victim's 
breast pocket. A white horse, stylised.

The trees released him, and the rain hit him again with full 
force. There was no part of him that was dry now, and he felt a 
smile curl on his lips.

A challenge had been uttered, and he.... 

He threw back his head and laughed.

******

Dana Scully had grown to hate the word "truth." 

"I want the truth." 

She had smiled, then - the first time she had heard him utter 
those words. The truth about what, Mulder? Her eyebrows raised 
disbelievingly. The truth about what the secretaries whisper about 
you in the ladies' room? The truth about why birds fly south and 
why cats land on their feet? The truth about the name of your 
mysterious informant? What?

"I want the truth."

Slowly, she had realised that it was his grail, his happiness. It 
was a magic ingredient that would make the dissonant notes of his 
life blend into harmony. It was his sister returned, and his 
father's love restored. It was the crock of gold at the end of the 
rainbow - a dream.

"I want the truth."

But answers had brought nothing but pain. Small fragments of his 
"truth", gleaned at an incredible price, had brought nothing but a 
pain more than it had cost to win them. The rottenness at the core 
of his own family. Her cancer. His sister.... 

The truth was a poisoned chalice. 

Yet still he.... "I want the truth". God! Still he had travelled, 
like a ship in the night, buffeted by storms, guided only by the 
single beam of the false lighthouse that lured it to the 
treacherous rocks. She had watched impotently as his interests, 
his drive, had faded away. Cases that once would have had him 
alive with eagerness were cast aside with scarcely a look, or 
investigated on auto-pilot, lifeless. 

He had come alive only for those cases that were linked with his 
"truth," but it was a terrible sort of life. Dark-eyed, heading 
towards destruction, obsessed with something that could only hurt 
him. 

"I want the truth....."

"No." She opened her eyes, blinking back the tears that pricked at 
them. "No." 

The picture of the victim, hands folded gently on his chest, was 
held loosely between her fingers. She shut her eyes again, 
replacing that image with the image of Mulder, and smiled.

She would not question what had caused it. Some chance alignment 
of circumstances, unpredictable, had piqued Mulder's interest. He 
was ten years younger, a lifetime happier.

Unrepeatable, too? She dug her nails into her palms, and wondered 
whether to pray.

****** 

"The white horse, Scully." His voice was absent, not really 
directed at her at all. "The - white - horse...."

He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, weariness evident in 
his every movement. He blinked into the light over a pile of 
books. "Religion and Ritual in Iron-Age Britain" was one, and, 
beneath it, "Epona: the Horse Goddess."

"We don't even know that the killer put that picture there, 
Mulder." Her voice level and calm. She knew he relied on her for 
that, always. 

There was a shadow over him now, creeping and insidious. She could 
see it, hear it, feel it. Four days, it was now, and no leads. She 
had read his file, once, at the very start, and had been half-
awed, half-saddened by his record. He always doubted so much about 
himself, but never his intellect - his ability to grasp at tenuous 
connections no-one else would see.

Failure was wearing him down like sandstone pummelled by the sea.

"He did, Scully. He looked at her, and his tone sent icy fingers 
along her spine. "He did." Then he laughed, suddenly, and she 
wondered why she had felt like that at all. "You've heard what 
they say about the victim - about Agent Klein. Why would he be 
carrying something like that?"

She shook her head, slowly, ruefully - regretful, though she knew 
she shouldn't be. It was a clue. It was hope. It was.... She 
clenched her fists against the image of Mulder's apartment with a 
wallpaper of those strange unearthly horses, where she had once 
seen the harsh slash slash of gargoyles. 

"Why Agent Klein, Scully?"

She hesitated, wondering if he even expected an answer. She had 
been to Violent Crimes earlier in the day, and the fear had been 
as clear as words. Agents glancing over their shoulders at every 
sound, fingers stroking their guns, blood pounding in the rhythm 
of their fear. "Is it me next? Is it? Is it?"

She swallowed. "Could be an old grudge - someone he put away once, 
by himself or with others." She shrugged. "Or just to get 
attention by taking one of our own. It makes his achievement seem 
greater. It's a warning. It makes sure we're paying attention."

He nodded, his fingers steepled across his lips. "But for what, 
Scully?" His eyes were dark. "He _has_ our attention. What's he 
going to give us?" He breathed in deeply, then out again, but no 
relaxation of tension. "Something's coming, Scully."

Silence.

She turned her back on him then, and opened a cabinet drawer, 
flicking through the files without seeing them. Only when she was 
sure her face was hidden did she speak, oh so casually.

"Did you ever work a case with Agent Klein, Mulder?"

******

The second murder, and Scully knew what was coming - knew it by 
the dull ache in her stomach. 

"It's not what we thought it was."

She looked up, seeing an agent with shadowed eyes. There was blood 
on his hand as he reached for the support of the wall and held it.

Not what they thought it was. She swallowed. "No."

"We thought....." A shuddering sigh. He passed his hand over his 
eyes, and blood smeared there, too. "Revenge. We thought it would 
be one of us next."

Guilt hung over the scene like a miasma. When the news had come 
in, the first thought on a hundred minds had been relief - relief, 
and an easing of four days of watchfulness. It had been mirrored 
on every face. An instant of relief, then a wave of guilt that a 
girl's death should have been, even for a moment, good news.

"We've got nothing, now." The agent rubbed his eyes again, emotion 
naked on his face. "Serial killers' victims usually stay within 
type. Where do we go from here?"

She turned back. Mulder was a statue, crouching at the epicentre - 
at the girl's body. She knew that, for him, it had changed again - 
changed utterly.

Then she spoke at last, without turning. "We do our job. We do our 
best."

******

It needed silence, and light. Silence. Still silence.

The sun streamed in through the open window and touched his face, 
his open eyes. Words danced on the white pages - lines of black 
marks hurting his eyes, making them feel scoured. And his mind, 
his whole being.

Mulder sighed, turning a page with an aching arm. Nothing yet. 
Nothing. 

Scully had frowned when he had told her, once, not understanding. 
Cases were like wine, to him, needing the right accompaniment to 
be anything at all. Some were feet-pounding-on-the-asphalt-beyond-
the-point-of-exhaustion cases. Some were staring-at-the-ceiling-
in-the-darkness-of-a-waking-night cases. Some were..... _This_ 
was. Full sunlight through the window and the knowledge that 
people were close.

"This is the second."

He murmured the words now, seeing it again, though he didn't need 
to try, really. Images of the dead girl's face were imprinted on 
his retinas like the flash flash flash of the photographers. Crime 
scene photographs of the body, and then.... Scully's face would be 
on a newspaper, in grainy black and white, lips frozen forever in 
the middle of her "we have no comment at this time". They had been 
drawn to Scully's face like flies.

Scully. He shook his head sharply to remove the lingering fear of 
that juxtaposition. But no-one was safe, he knew that. The killer 
was an enigma.

This is the second. He clenched his fists, remembering what he 
must never forget. "This is the second," written once more in 
sloping copybook italic. She had been fifteen and beautiful, taken 
while returning from a band practice and killed a few hours later. 
The knife had pierced her lungs and blood had trickled from her 
mouth into her blonde hair. Beside her, a child-like drawing of a 
horse, all bold black outline, was stained with her bloody hand 
print.

"This is the second." He licked his dry lips, feeling the pain, 
the terrible burden, of responsibility. "And the third....?"

A shadow spread like a stain across the table as a cloud obscured 
the sun. 

******

He was becoming a stranger to her with every hour, yet familiar, 
too - so painfully familiar. Sometimes she saw him, in these 
times, as a shell only. He _was_ possessed. The grotesque 
personification of "the Case" looked at her through the charcoal 
slashes of his eyes.

Two days after the second murder - six days after the first - she 
snapped. 

"Why, Mulder? Why? I'm _sick_ of it." 

He froze, like a rabbit blinking into headlights, but said 
nothing.

She sighed, lowering her voice. Her attack had been like a slap to 
him, she knew - a betrayal. "Why do you let it do this to you, 
Mulder?"

"It's..." He cleared his throat. "It's a challenge, Scully. He's 
issuing a challenge. You said it yourself. The notes.... Why do 
you think he chose her for the second victim, Scully?"

She pursed her lips. A rhetorical question. She would not fall 
into his trap this time.

"You've seen the media interest on this one, Scully. A young girl, 
beautiful, full of promise. It's maximum exposure, Scully. He 
killed one of our own, to get our interest. He killed her, to get 
the public's interest. He's taunting us, Scully."

She had to nod. "Taunting us. Yes. _Us_, Mulder."

It was lost on him. She wondered sometimes if he ever listened - 
really listened - to her. "He's proud of what he's doing. I know 
people like him, Scully. He's clever - most serial killers are. 
They need to be clever to get away with it. But part of him craves 
appreciation - to have people know it's _him_ who does these 
things. He almost wants us to catch him. What's the point of a 
performance without an appreciative audience?"

"So you're being that audience?" She folded her arms tight on her 
chest. "You're letting him manipulate you. You're falling on his 
little bread crumbs - his notes, those pictures. You're doing just 
what he wants."

"I've got to, Scully." There was real pain in his voice. "It's the 
only way." He held up the blood-stained picture, blown-up and 
grotesque. "The answers are here. I'm missing something."

"Why you?" She walked towards him with quick angry steps and 
pulled the picture from his hands. Is it because the last victim 
was a young girl, she continued silently. Are you that easy to 
manipulate? Is that all it takes for you to lose yourself?

"He gave the challenge." He clenched his fists. 

"The others don't think that." She had passed a crowd of them in 
the lobby, leaving for the weekend, smiling. "Why you? You do you 
see this as a personal challenge, Mulder?"

Her voice rose, and she wondered. Was she challenging him to admit 
it - to admit that he was always a puppet with other people 
pulling the strings? She bit her lip, knowing she was hurting him, 
but knowing, too, that he needed it.

"Because I can do it." His palm opened slowly and he stared at it, 
as if wondering where the picture had gone.  "I - can."

"And they can't? _I_ can't?" She let her breath out in an angry 
sigh. "Are you that arrogant?"

It was only after she had shut the door on his answer that she 
realised she still held the blood-stained drawing. She stared at 
it, frowned, then tore it up as if it was a live thing, and 
poisonous.

******

The third one came, and they had barely spoken. She had gone to 
her mother's, endured smiles and a dinner, knowing that he was 
sinking into a Hell in which blood-stained horses taunted him with 
murderous eyes. On Sunday night she had called and called his 
apartment, but had been greeted only with the laconic tone of his 
machine.

The third one came, and the team was like a butterfly crawling 
from its chrysalis, rejuvenated. Eyes that had wept for the 
colleague and the girl held nothing but hope as they scanned the 
body of the homeless man lying charred on a park bench in an April 
dawn.

"There's a print here." The forensic examiner's face had been 
inscrutable. "A good one. And another."

"Why him?" The agent twisted a blade of grass between his fingers. 
He was a different man from four days ago, asking with the air of 
someone who had the leisure to ask unimportant questions. "Why a 
homeless man? It's not like the others. Easier."

"He doesn't need to attract us anymore. He knows I'm watching." 
Mulder. She started. He came and went like a ghost, now, and had 
approached on silent feet. "That we're watching," he corrected, 
with a small smile. 

She let herself feel hope. Just a little. "This is the third. And 
the last." The note had been the only pristine whiteness in the 
black ash and burnt flesh.

"But he's finished, Mulder." She touched his arm gently, but it 
was like stone, unresponsive. Too soon, perhaps. Too close. The 
peace gestures would come later. "This is the end. Why did he 
bother getting our attention for this?"

He made no sound, no movement. 

"The Horse Whisperer," she murmured. A colourful name given to the 
killer by one agent. It  had stuck. "Why the horses?"

She wished she could bite the words back, knowing that Mulder 
needed no new questions to torment himself with, but he didn't 
react. She sighed. The question had been tormenting him for days, 
she knew that, really. If only he....

"Hell." His voice was low, almost prophetic. The latest picture 
was clutched in his hands, and his fingers were white with the 
holding. "Have you _seen_ it, Scully?"

"Fantasy art." She lifted her chin, meeting his eyes. "Nazgul. An 
illustration from  'The Lord of the Rings', or some such book. A 
black horse with red eyes."

"It means something, Scully." His eyes were dark and a cold hand 
clutched at her chest. "It's a message, but it's more than a 
message. He kills with such precision. There's no anger in this. 
There's a pattern in it. A ritual." He gave a low moan and passed 
his hand across his eyes, his fingers digging in deep. "I wish I 
could see it, Scully."

I don't, she whispered silently. I hope _you_ don't.

There was nothing she could say.

******

"That's it, then." 

Scully let out a long breath. She felt as if the cage door had 
been opened and the light was streaming in, warm and inviting.

Mulder was hunched over, arms folded. He said nothing.

"It's over, Mulder." Louder this time, using his name as a direct 
appeal.

Still nothing. The pictures - the damned pictures - were spread in 
front of him, one, two, three. She wondered if horses white, red 
and black haunted his dreams, now.

It had been so easy. The fingerprint had led them to a known 
offender who had killed himself, as far as could be established, 
the same hour as the homeless man had died. The knife in his 
stomach still bore the encrusted blood of the first two victims.

"It's over, Mulder." She reached for his shoulder, wanting to jerk 
him towards her in one sharp movement, but changed it to a soft 
touch at the last minute. "We can't know what made him do it, but 
we do know that he _did_ do it." She paused, waiting for a sign - 
any sign - that he had been listening, but got none. "No-one else 
will die, Mulder. Let it go."

"I can't." He wrenched his head round as if every move was an 
effort now, and painful. "I can't let it go. It's not over, but 
no-one will believe me, will they?"

She couldn't meet his eyes.

"You see, Scully?" So soft. He saw it as a betrayal, she knew 
that, yet was resigned to it, expecting it. God, how she hated him 
for that - how she....

She took a deep breath, shut her eyes, and counted. "Why do you 
think that, Mulder?" she asked, at last, her voice level. How 
could it be level?

"It's all wrong, Scully." He was deadly calm, now - more certain 
than a week ago when he had had nothing. "There will be four 
deaths. Four deaths, each four days apart. It was all just another 
game, to make us relax, to put us off the scent. The big one is 
still to come."

The very air in the room pressed down on her. The walls darkened. 
He was an Old Testament prophet, standing on a wind-lashed 
hillside, pouring out words of doom. She was a small girl in 
church again, and afraid.

"The last one?" She spoke - anything. "When?"

And then he seemed to crumple in on himself, and he was Mulder 
again - though not Mulder, but someone afraid, needing help. 
"I.... I don't know," he whispered.

*****

End of part 1

*****


"Dreams of Fair Horses" part 2 of 2

by Pellinor (Pellinor@astolat.demon.co.uk)

CLASSIFICATION: XA
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Why does a killer leave notes? As a serial killer toys 
with investigators like a cat with a mouse, Mulder and Scully find 
out what it is to predict a murder but to be powerless to prevent 
it.
___

Horses had galloped in his dreams. 

The white one first, fluid as the wind, its rough hewn lines 
somehow abstract yet Horse - the essence of Horse - at the same 
time. It had come with the clash of daggers and the rattle of 
chariot wheels, and the echoes of a belief system that had left 
only fragments.

"Enough to kill for," he had whispered, reaching out to stop its 
path. "Tell me. Ancient gods and New Age beliefs..... Is it a 
ritual from the past? Is it?"

But the horse had galloped on, and the pieces of the puzzle were 
still discordant.

And then the child-like horse, dapple-red with blood. It had 
lumbered, its legs straight, its body without life and vigour, and 
it had come with the screams of children and the weeping of a 
mother and the memory of a bright light that had taken someone 
else, once, long ago.

"A child?" He had gasped with pain, unable to reach it even as it 
had crept past, slow, so slow. "A child-like horse.... Revenge for 
the death of a girl like this, and the law enforcement that could 
not help? Is it? Is that it?"

Two bodies now, and still no answers, no key.

The black horse _was_ Nightmare. Red eyes and fire, and its 
blackness had been the charred ash of fire, and its eyes had been 
flame. It had been....

Terror. His arm shook and he'd been unable even to reach for it. 
He'd shut his eyes, curled away from it, knowing that he _had_ to 
look, knowing also that he would lose his mind in an instant if he 
saw too much.

Sparking hoofs had retreated, and he'd been alone with his 
failure, tears on his face.

And then....

Even in his dream, his breath caught at the sight.

And then they had returned, and they had been all three together, 
white, red and black, and the pieces had fallen into place. He had 
understood.

There had been a fourth.

******

"Revelations."

She bit back her answer, and looked.

"The four horsemen of the Apocalypse." He jabbed a finger at the 
pictures. "White, red and black. There will be a fourth. A pale 
horse." He swallowed. "Death."

"And then the Antichrist?" God! She wanted to laugh - hysterical 
insane laughter. "Is that what you think this is? Someone's trying 
to summon up the Antichrist?"

He breathed out, and she could almost see the barriers being 
erected. "I don't know," he murmured. "I only know what I see here 
- what he's daring us to see."

"But, Mulder." She opened her hands, palms uppermost. "We found 
the man who did this. His prints were all over that last note."

"He killed him too. Made it look like suicide." There was such 
confidence in his voice now, but she knew that the insane often 
sound so confident in their delusions. "He pressed his fingers 
against the note."

Again, she bit back her answer, instead speaking cautiously, 
assessing the situation first. "Why go to all that effort to get 
our attention only to make us think it's over before it is?"

"The triumph of the last one." He spoke without hesitation. "The 
last one - the biggest one. It will be like striking from beyond 
the grave. It will be his biggest triumph. It will be...." He 
shivered suddenly, his eyes closed, as if seeking the right word. 
"Wonderful," he said, at last.

She narrowed her eyes. "You understand him so well, Mulder," she 
murmured, then wished she hadn't.

He shook his head sharply, and she wondered what images he was 
shaking away - what wild horses stalked his night. "I always have, 
Scully," he said, softly.

She bit her lip, and wondered.

******

"It's tonight, Scully."

She sighed sharply, laying down the file she had been studying. 
Another case, now. They had moved on. "Let it go, Mulder."

The other agents had looked at the horses, considering for long 
painful seconds, then, as one, had laughed. They had called him 
in, then discarded him. The case was closed, and the horses were 
listed among the unknown and the unknowable - the don't-want-to-
know. 

She understood.

"It's tonight. Four days gone." He was like a wraith with eyes of 
burning coal. "I know when. I.... I can't see where. I can't stop 
it."

She shut the file with a sharp slam. They had talked about this so 
often, now. "Go home, Mulder. Get some sleep."

He held her gaze, then nodded - a small movement, accepting. As he 
stood up, his movements were stiff and painful.

They both kept up the fiction. He wouldn't sleep. 

******

Mulder traced a horse on the arm of the couch, his finger running 
in fluid curves along the black leather. Flowing legs and rippling 
tail.... Round and round and.....

He stopped, froze. His finger pointed still. The small groove left 
in the leather lessened, then disappeared, but still he sat, 
wondering.

Then he breathed out in a rush, and his finger moved again, 
tracing a different picture from memory. A dot, careful, on the 
far edge of the arm, then a slow trace away to the right. Another 
dot, pressed in with a shaky finger, then a quick movement and 
another. His finger came up then and hovered in the air as he 
paused, hearing his heart beat, then it came down again, sure and  
confident. Another dot.

He shut his eyes, feeling the exhilaration of relief, though he 
knew it was not over yet. Exhilaration, but shame too - shame that 
he had not noticed it before. It was so obvious - too obvious, 
perhaps. His mind had been chasing paths through the hoof beats of 
horses and had missed the most obvious thing of all. 

It was a square. The three murders forming a perfect right-angled 
triangle, and the fourth....

He scrabbled for the map, spreading it out on the coffee table 
with hands that shook. The fourth was.....

And then he saw it, and everything fell into place.

******

"It goes in fours, Scully." Mulder's voice was distorted over the 
phone. 

Scully yawned, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, but said nothing. 
Leave it, Mulder. Please leave it.

"Everything. The dates. The horses. The position of the bodies.... 
The elements."

"Elements?" It escaped her before she could stop it. She had 
resolved not to encourage him with this.

"The New Age place - that was Earth. The girl from the band, 
killed while holding her trumpet - that's Air. The man who was 
burned to death...."

She laughed. She couldn't help it, and she laughed. It was either 
that or cry at his crumbling sanity - his insistence on seeing 
patterns in the unconnected. There was such a desperation in him 
always.

"It's the...." He paused, checked, the continued, his voice 
changed somehow. "Watergate hotel. It's in the right place. It's 
tonight."

The laughter left her, and she was silent.

He sighed, as if expecting no less, as if never expecting her 
support. "Good night, Scully," he said at last. "Good-bye."

Anger flared in her at that, and she slammed the phone down 
without another word.


******

He is coming. My blood thrills at the sound of his footsteps. He 
is coming. I wonder....

"Are you okay?" He is not what I expected. His voice is low and 
soft as he bends over the woman, his hand reaching to her neck. He 
will find a pulse, of course. It is not my way to kill without 
need.

She says nothing. Blood is sluggish, trickling from her head 
injury. Perhaps she is blinking with frightened eyes - perhaps 
not. She is no-one - a stray from the street.

He glances up, and I draw behind my pillar, closer into the arms 
of the darkness. I am a cat, watching with eyes that see so much, 
but invisible still. And if I am a cat, then he is a mouse. 
Greater than a mouse, though - far greater. A magnificent golden 
tom cat with a torn ear, perhaps, or a noble bird with great 
feathered wings. Worthy, anyway.

She groans, then, and coughs - perfect timing. I want to laugh 
aloud at the exhilaration of this moment. It is what I have lived 
for.

"Where do you hurt?" His voice is gentle. He responds well to her, 
as if he is used to caring. I wonder if he has a daughter, or a 
sister - someone smaller who needs him. "I'm going to roll you 
over onto your side. It will help you breathe."

It is time. I clench my fists, fighting the urge to stay and watch 
this - to savour the anticipation. This is my crowning moment, 
after all. But it is time. There is a time for everything, I was 
taught, by cold voices in a draughty hall. A time to be born, and 
a time to die. A time to die especially....

I am beside him in an instant. His hands are behind her head, 
lowering her to the ground, and I see the slightest flicker as he 
hears me but knows he can do nothing, not without hurting her. I 
take his gun in my hand and hold it on him, stepping back out of 
his reach.

He murmurs, "Shh... It's okay. You'll be okay."

And then he stands up, turns slowly to meet me. I am awed by him 
for a moment. He knew there could be a bullet in his brain any 
second, yet still he found time to reassure her, a stranger - to 
put her first. Awe turns to a thrill. He _is_ worthy. 

"You found me." It should be solemn, like a mass, but my voice is 
hoarse from the long cold waiting.

He nods, accepting. His eyes are unreadable, and I feel a tiny 
shiver of doubt run down my spine. They go in packs, these people. 
I am clever, but am I clever enough?

"What's your name?" Better, this time, though the words still seem 
inadequate, somehow - almost like a conversation between potential 
friends.

"Mulder. Fox Mulder." His eyes flicker, to me and then the gun, 
and I know his mind is racing.

"You found me." Again. It is all that matters, after all. 

"Yes." He licks his lips - the first sign I see that he feels 
fear, though he hides it so well. The first man was an FBI agent 
too, but he whimpered for mercy as the blade moved towards him. 
"Are you looking for the Antichrist?"

I laugh  - a full-bodied laugh that feels so good - but then 
something in his eyes stops me. He is ahead of me here, too, 
perhaps. "No." I shake my head. "But you knew that, didn't you?"

He shrugs. His face is accepting, but his body is like a coiled 
spring. I must hone my every sense. He is a sly one, this one. A 
sly fox. My lips curl into a smile.

"You know what I'm looking for, don't you?" I gesture with the 
gun, and his eyes follow, but my finger doesn't leave the trigger. 
"You know that I've found it."

He is silent, but I can tell. Part of him knew. He predicted it, 
somewhere deep down, but still he came. I was right. He is a 
precious jewel indeed.

"What was I looking for, Fox?" My left hand snakes into my belt 
and I pull out the new shiny knife. His will be its first blood - 
and its last. I will not sully it with anything less. "Say it."

He swallows, as he is finding this harder than the rest. I smile. 
Modest, too. "A worthy adversary," he murmurs, as if the phrase 
stirs some memory with him. "It was a game, to see who could 
follow the clues and find you."

"Good, Fox. Good." I laugh, feeling a rush of warmth for this man. 
We are brothers, after all - brothers in spirit and mind. "It is a 
culmination. The others were easy, but to kill a man such a 
you...." I laugh again, wishing once more that I lived in another 
age, another time. "Now that will be a killing worth singing 
about."

He licks his lips, and glances at the woman on the floor. She is 
groaning softly, but her eyes are still shut. "You'll let her go?" 
he asks.

"She is nothing," I spit, then master myself again. "Yes, I will 
let her go." Again that sly fox look at the gun. "You know, of 
course, that if I don't kill you, the pattern will be broken. I 
will have to start again. Another three innocent lives to get 
another such as you."

"Not if I kill you first."

Ah, but he is angry. I have cut beneath his skin, roused an 
emotion. Another victory. I smile slowly, letting him see the 
truth in my eyes.

A car engine sounds somewhere far away, but it is a reminder. 
There is little time. I would take him with me if I could - talk 
to him, share minds with him, let him know every detail of my 
superiority, but it is, perhaps, fitting that I should make a 
sacrifice too. 

"No, Fox. Now," I murmur. I crouch down, and quick as thought the 
knife is at the woman's throat. "If you try to prevent this, she 
will die."

He makes a low noise in his throat, and the muscles in his jaw are 
working convulsively. His hands are clenching and unclenching, 
clenching and unclenching.

"There is nothing to be afraid of, Fox." My time is close, and I 
allow myself to croon, to offer comfort. "Nothing to be ashamed 
of. Few men in the world could get this close. It is no shame to 
die like this."

There should be solemn music, and crowds watching. This is ritual 
- this is right and fitting - but the world has forced it to take 
place in a dark parking lot that stinks of urine and cigarette 
ends. I wonder if _his_ worth was unrecognised too. It is always 
that way.

But the world forces me to use its wiles - to use subterfuge. I 
smile a secret smile, and my finger tightens on the trigger as I 
prepare to speak again. Bullet first, to fell him, then the knife.

"I have saved a pale horse for you, Fox. I will put it...."

My finger jerks, and there is a bang, and, somewhere, an echoing 
bang. The recoil knocks me off my feet and I am falling, 
falling....

And the pain....

My hands claw, groping, struggling to get up. The pale horse.... 
The pale horse is pounding in my head, grinning at me with its 
skull-like face. Embers burn in its eyes. My hand is sheeted with 
blood, and I am drowning in it, drowning in it.

The horse has me by its teeth, biting at my throat, and the words 
I need to say are strangled.

******

Had he known?

Scully knelt in the blood and held his limp hand, tears pricking 
her eyes. She had arrived too late - or perhaps just in time.

Had he known? 

There had been a burden of fatalism about him this last day, and 
before. He was as one marked by fate, going open-eyed into the 
battle, knowing that he could fight and fight but that the ending 
was written and that all struggle led but to the grave, in the 
end.

"Did you know, Mulder?" she whispered, knowing that he was beyond 
hearing her. "Did you know, and still come?" She choked back a 
sob. "I'll hate you if you did."

In the distance, a siren sounded.

******

END

******

NOTES: This story was inspired by a distant memory of the story 
"Death and the Compass" by Jorge Luis Borges, though I 
deliberately didn't reread the story while writing this. The 
title, once again, is stolen from a children's book which bears no 
resemblance to this story at all. The detective who likes 
crossword puzzles, mentioned in passing in the first scene, is 
Inspector Morse, created by Colin Dexter. 

The chalk horse mentioned at the time of the first murder is the 
Uffington white horse, by the way. It is truly bizarre, stylised, 
and very old.

Feedback will be politely entertained and given tea and biscuits 
at Pellinor@astolat.demon.co.uk

*****

Pellinor@astolat.demon.co.uk

"The truth IS out there. It's just a pity that I'm in here."