Darkest Shadows, a warehouse 13 fanfic

Disclaimer: Warehouse 13 was Created by Jane Espenson and D. Brent Mote and was Produced by Universal Cable Productions.
Dark Shadows was Created by Dan Curtis and was Produced by Dan Curtis Productions.
I make no money from this story (WAH!) and all Rights are retained by the original Persons and Companies.
This is my second Warehouse 13 story, which takes place six weeks after 'Endless', the final episode of the televised series. The first was "Come Forth." This work takes place two weeks later.
The next story, which takes place a week after this one, is "Triple Threat" and the fourth planned story is "A Moment", set to happen two days later.
If well received, as indicated through Reviews, this series will continue.
Rated: PG-(WH) 13

Darkest Shadows
A Warehouse 13 Adventure
By JMK758
Chapter One
Hands of the Careless

'Is it too much to ask for a little peace and quiet?' Arthur Nielsen thinks, though he knows that since both teams of Agents have returned this late afternoon from far flung assignments; Myka Bering and Pete Lattimer from New Orleans and Claudia Donovan and Steve Jinks from Baghdad, the chances of quiet are even more remote.

'Well, there's always the piano.' He has a keyboard here in the office where he may relax, and the instrument in the main room at 'Leena's Bed and Breakfast' is his semi-private sanctuary in the midst of the crowd. The time he spends at either, be they minutes or hours, are his oasis from the pressures of administering the Warehouse and coordinating its teams, and though he has never said 'leave me be' while playing - or has he? - his people are astute enough to recognize that an unwritten law is sometimes more forceful than a delineated one.

Besides, the only other person with any musical talent or inclination is young Claudia with one of her guitars.

Okay, he no longer thinks of the twenty-two-year-old as 'young Claudia Donovan', though he unabashedly treats her as the daughter he never had, despite how much it might ruffle her feathers.

Or perhaps because of that.

At any rate, he hasn't barred the possibility of them playing together, piano and guitar, some day. When she develops a little more maturity.

Okay, twenty-two isn't a child, and maybe someday their parent/child dynamic will change.

When she's thirty.

Maybe.

In the meantime, mentor/protégé feels comfortable.

'Leena's Bed and Breakfast,' their home away from… well, their home; is where they will head for dinner shortly.

The name on that sanctuary hadn't changed during the brief yet lamentable period when his best friend had been dead, and Abigail Cho had been hired to assume her duties when she wasn't psychoanalyzing them.

It had been a month after the dramatic episode when they'd almost lost the entire Warehouse - again, this time when it had nearly been hijacked by an alternate time line Benedict Valda - that they'd come to understand why their departed friend had not departed, but had been seen numerous times in this Warehouse. Or so that had been Claudia's theory.

It had been Claudia - typically - who had conceived the notion of using that huge stone that had sealed the tomb of the departed Lazarus nearly two thousand years ago and is one of a very small number of artifacts whose nature could be traced back to divine origin.

Leena's body had been in the morgue, her spirit had been traveling the mysterious realms possible in the Warehouse, and after a feat of persuasion of Peter and Steve of Olympic - the Greek Myths, not the Games - proportions, body and soul had been united as a fait accompli before he'd had any idea what the woman had been planning.

In fact, Leena's entrance into this office had almost sent him on his own sojourn into the Afterlife.

The Regents had been quite concerned by this act. As happy as he and the others had been, to that same extent their governors had been of a different mind. Where his use of Magellan's astrolabe had also come to their attention as a fait accompli, on that occasion the artifact had been a last resort solution which had reversed the destruction of the Warehouse, significant in itself, but it had undone the deaths of Mrs. Frederic, Claudia, Pete, Helena and who is to say how many more all over the world? It certainly had not been considered a punishable act.

In fact, for a brief time this latest act had been known as "Artie's Encore", an ironic designation because he'd known nothing about it.

But where his action with the astrolabe had accomplished numerous benefits, Claudia's restoration of Leena had been willful, thoroughly planned, recruited and executed.

The Hearing had lasted a morning, an exceptional amount of time for an act which allowed no doubt or excuse. Pete had been surprisingly eloquent in her defense, the other agents had done all they could when little could be done, but in the end the Sentence had been handed down to a horrified team:

Claudia Donovan was to be Bronzed.

For One Hundred Years.

The great horror in bronzing a dangerous criminal for whom no hope of rehabilitation exists is that, after bronzing, the sentenced malefactor is awake and aware, and exists indefinitely, locked in the solitude of his own mind, perhaps for hundreds of years, without hope, without even the release of death.

The response had been cataclysmic and was equally unanimous. He, Pete, Myka, Steve and even Leena, Vanessa and Abigail had stood shoulder to shoulder, arms locked in iron solidarity and their ultimatum was easily stated: If you want to Bronze Claudia, you have to Bronze us first.

It had been the ultimate stand, and it had won the day.

Life in due time returned to normal, at least the fluid and amorphous thing that translates to 'normal' for Warehouse agents. Leena resumed her duties whereas Abigail Cho had stayed on as 'Live-In Psychiatrist' - she had a lot to do - and they continued to receive warning 'pings' of artifacts' activations; 'snag, bag and tag' missions had been deployed and in these two weeks the stability of the Warehouse seemed to have been restored. Today's had been a double operation, and life was once again not-quite-cataclysmic.

At any rate, the four of them (three of them, what's keeping Pete? The Bugsy Siegel Sector, where the color changing chips will reside, isn't in Norway) are by no means bad, no matter what they, individually and collectively, can do to his peace of mind.

But they are not bad. In fact, the four are a collection of very individual personalities that have somehow - and it is never easy or assured with Warehouse agents - developed into a harmonious and efficient unit.

Harmonious? Well, efficient.

There have been many such persons in 13's history, and the fates of those agents have, for the most part, been unenviable. In fact, of those under his watch, more have died than have reached the age of peaceful retirement, and even with Hugo Miller it'd been a close call.

No, this kind of maudlin thinking will not do at all, and in fact has led him to drift away from contemplating their reports.

Myka and Claudia take their ease in chairs in his office, though Steve has forsaken a chair in favor of the corner of Claudia's 'borrowed' desk, while the young woman has made herself too comfortable in the chair, reclining so far back that it threatens to spill her out should she avail herself of one more inch of incline.

The quartet is a study in contrasts, even to appearance. Claudia, with her shock of red hair (thank Heaven she'd dropped that tendency to dye one set of strands on her right side the most outrageous colors as though she'd developed her own definition of 'standout') is at sharp difference to Steve, her perpetually buzz-cut partner, Myka favors a curly mane of black hair while Pete had recently adopted a forward styled short cut that makes him think of a poorly cast monk (that'll be the day) or a denizen of the Vulcan lowlands.

Their clothing styles are equally eclectic, Claudia running to dark jeans, printed dark tee shirts and sneakers while Steve favors more normal attire befitting his self-image as an ATF more that a Warehouse Agent, Myka prefers a variety of casual clothes while Pete gravitates to tight tee shirts that conform to his self-vision as a 'chick-magnet'; the fact that the past Marine recently started a workout regimen intense enough to support the image is the sole saving grace.

Yes, if the four had been recruited at the same time… well, they wouldn't have been.

Come to that, other than Claudia he hadn't selected them, and even with her it was more an inevitable absorption than a selection. The Warehouse Caretaker Irene Frederic – who herself frequently defies classification – had selected Myka, Peter and Steve while Claudia had won her place by virtue of having broken into the Warehouse with an artifact mission all her own.

This only serves to make him realize that there's only one voice speaking and from the tone its winding down.

"Yes, good job."

Well, Myka Bering is a consummate professional, more so than her partner – no, that's not fair, he does have a history of successes when on assignments – but still it's a safe bet that the woman had done better.

"Thanks." But her tone hints at the possibility that the compliment hadn't quite fit the report. But who cares? It's nice to be the boss.

"And how about you two loafers?" he asks, certain in his change of subject that they'd done anything but.

Claudia, still gambling safety vs. gravity, holds up a neutralizing bag. "One genuine first century emerald ring, guaranteed to make anyone into a compulsive thief, though with no guarantee that he'd be a good one."

In fact, the last five known holders of said ring, according to the reports he'd collected before sending them out, had come to uniformly unpleasant ends courtesy of the Persian justice system.

The ring had not seen the figurative light of day with its first four wearers since before the country's name was changed to Iraq, and now with the capture of the last luckless holder, it is unlikely to do so again in the foreseeable future.

Nonetheless, Leena will find a suitable home for it, somewhere where it's energy will complement those of other artifacts, always in an effort to strive for harmony among things for whom the words 'dangerous', 'deadly' and 'cataclysmic' seem to have been coined for the Warehouse.

"Hey, hey, hey," is how Pete Lattimer announces his arrival as he crosses the room from the elevated platform that overlooks the visible expanse of the Warehouse - it's a given that no one has seen the entirety of the gigantic facility at any one time - twirling in slow revolutions a black cane with a silver handle. "You know, this would be a prize at a Convention. What say –?"

"WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?" leaps from Artie's mouth faster than he can leap from his chair, even if outrage did fuel his launch. It is punctuated by the thump of Claudia's chair's forward feet hitting the floor, though a thunderclap would have been more appropriate. "Never mind that, I know where you got it." He yanks the cane from Pete's grip. "Why do you Have it?"

"Relax, Artie, it's not dangerous. I happen to remember you using it during your final bout with appendicitis before you –."

"Because I needed it for its recuperative properties and I had the good sense to know how to handle it!"

In those happily past days, Artie had been smitten by the lovely Dr. Vanessa Calder, yet he'd been too shy, or was it that he was afraid of risking a broken heart, to say so. So instead he'd annually used P.T. Barnum's Top to regrow his diseased appendix, which meant he'd had to call for the woman's help to remove it.

These were the only occasions when he could spend any time with her, being unable to speak of his love, and he'd considered the pains, infections and life-saving operations as a very small price to pay for her presence.

The agents had been very pleased when he could finally admit to her the truth, and their relationship had progressed beyond the annual emergency surgery stage.

True, it had hit a bit of a snag during the case of the body-leaping Alice (of Wonderland fame), but at the celebration party for Leena's resurrection they'd cleared a lot of bad air, resulting since that evening in a considerable amount of good kissing.

Oh, and he'd finally been able to gift her with that bicycle bell.

"What is it?" Myka asks, looking at the cane he clutches, rising not so much to defend her partner and love as to administer the appropriate fist shot to his upper arm when the moment presents itself. It's most likely this will be after Artie outlines the danger involved in the walking stick's possession.

It looks like nothing more than an ordinary black cane of standard length, the handle of which is silver and the design of its end represents the head and open mouth of a wolf. For added elegance, the tongue and open mouth are highlighted in gold.

However, here the words 'ordinary' and 'standard' rarely apply, and nothing makes its way into the Warehouse without a downside, which usually tends to be pretty spectacular.

"This," Artie says, sounding like he's tempted to better Myka's as-yet-undelivered reprimand, "is the cane used by Jonathan Frid and Ben Cross in the various incarnations of the TV show 'Dark Shadows'," he wields it with sharp emphasis before the stricken man's face, "and it is not a toy!"

"What's it do?" Pete asks, realizing this is something he should have read off the lighted screen that accompanies the artifact.

Everything in the Warehouse does something, and often these bring to mind the axiom 'you don't want to know'.

Artie grasps it by the silver handle. "If you stay within seven feet of me, you're going to find out what it'll do."

Claudia steps in, relieves Artie of the weapon and continues on to the balcony door. "I'll just put this back where Snatchy McGrabby got it."

"It's –."

"Hammer Sector, Section 823, Aisle 942-4823, Shelf 16746-2846-93, I know."

Few people could keep such detail in their heads, but Myka has been near the woman for the entire conversation and knows she hadn't looked on the computer for the location.

Claudia's first assignment upon being hired in the Warehouse, itself a memorable and quite unsettling occasion, had been to catalogue on the computer database the staggering number of artifacts, a job that Artie had begun with Hugo Millers computer over thirty years ago and which she'd attacked with vast distaste. She'd considered the assignment a horrible underutilization of her many and varied talents, something the others had eventually come to agree with her on.

But the weeks of work, coupled with her more recent training as Future-Caretaker-to-be should they one day suffer the loss of Irene Frederic, have yielded one very positive result: she knows the colossal Warehouse with a surety that rivals her Mentor's, even with his forty-year tenure.

When she's gone and tensions can ease, though Pete does experience a sharp pain in his triceps and the exchange with his partner of a disturbingly pleased look, Steve says "Hammer sector? I'm not familiar with that one."

"Hammer Film Productions, starting in the 1950's, is best known for a series of Gothic Horror movies, pretty much cornering the market and introducing film versions of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman and a plethora of other staples."

"Best known" Pete declares, "for the most gorgeous, buxom beauties in silk nightgowns and low, low necklines showing their best assets." He relishes every word, combining them with a cutting motion very low across his chest.

"If you're interested in that sort of thing," Steve says.

"Oh, yeah," which earns him another arm punch.

"You are Banned from that Sector on pain of pain," Artie announces, "and when Claudia comes back from that long Segway ride, I'll let her administer it retroactively."

"Ow!" is Pete's discovery that Myka is not done, else she's warming up to help in the next chastisement.

He's starting to wonder, though, what effect this is going to have on the coming night when everyone else has retired.

That being out of the way, Artie answers the hanging question.

"No one knows the extent of its power. We got the 'ping' years ago; MacPherson and I, when it crossed the threshold from prop to artifact. We were able to snag, bag and tag the ring and to douse the cane with neutralizer before anyone fell prey to them. It had been stored in a warehouse, ironically enough, and hadn't been touched in years. We managed to switch the cane and ring out for what were then easily obtained commercial copies. It was a rare moment of being first on the scene before the disaster.

"Frid had used it for six years, portraying the vampire Barnabas Collins from 1966 to 1971 before, twenty years later, actor Ben Cross took up the role, and the cane and ring, the two iconic features of the character, for a miniseries that revived the mythos and introduced a new generation of fans to the concept. That series died because episodes were regularly preempted by nightly coverage of the Iraqi war in an attempt to recreate the pageantry of the Vietnam war."

"Something tells me you're not a fan of televised war," Steve interjects.

"Never."

"And we don't know what it, the cane, does?" Myka tries.

"We did find out later that it had advanced healing powers, probably from the fact that Barnabas Collins was virtually immune to everything but wooden stakes and fire; he had even been shot numerous times and suffered what would have been fatal wounds without a scratch, but what the downside was we never found out. I used it for its healing traits on those times when I'd had my appendix removed because it got me better in only two days. But we put it in the Hammer Sector on general principle because, trust me, it has a downside. Everything here does.

"We've all seen how the emotional content of one person can infuse an object and make it into an artifact. Dark Shadows had literally tens, hundreds of millions of fans worldwide who were emotionally invested in the Gothic Soap Opera - what a horrible phrase - for decades.

"We don't know the effect of millions and millions of emotionally charged people had on them. Suffice it to say," he takes a step to Pete to reinforce his seriousness, "it is not for the hands of the careless or the unenlightened."