Note: I am setting this roughly 18 months after the end of season 4/start of season 5, so Flack has had some time to recover from Jess Angell's death. Also, since it's in the future and I have hope, Danny is up and walking again.

Chapter One

Tuesday

8:01 pm

Abandoned Factory

South Bronx, NYC

They were finally ready to make the bust. The SWAT team was going in first, to secure the area. Mack, Flack and the rest of the team hung back, to go in as soon as they could. It was the biggest human trafficking bust they'd had in a long time, and they wanted the evidence as quickly and cleanly as they could get it. The problem was that the gang in question had set up in an old factory compound, meaning lots of outbuildings, rooms, and underground spaces where they could be hiding. It was a rat hunt, one no one would enjoy.

Detective Donald Flack, Jr. was not having a good day.

When the alarm went off the gang leader and his second jumped. They stopped what they were doing and went to check the monitor. The sight of the armored cops goaded them into action. "You alert the others and secure the escape route." The leader growled, "I'll go eliminate the witnesses."

As the NYPD made their way through the old factory they could hear gunfire from somewhere deep in the complex, slow, methodical gunfire, accompanied by the sounds of women screaming. By the time they caught all the way up to the leader at least a dozen of the gang had died in the shooting, and three cops were wounded. But it was in the last room that the horrors were revealed.

It was in a room at the very back, one where they had turned the stored pipes into long, impossibly narrow cages by the simple expediency of welding a grate on the front of each one. The leader of the gang had been cornered there, had been told to put down his weapon, had fired at police, and had died there. But not before he finished his work, making sure there were no witnesses to finger anyone higher in the ranks.

"Oh my God," even in his days as a Marine, Mack Taylor had never seen anything like this.

In each pipe lay the body of a young woman. They looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. It was clear that the leader had fired through the grate of each pipe, a bullet that had ricocheted inside the solid iron tube, devastating the woman lying within.

Flack was the one that found the seventeen round magazine, lying empty in a pool of blood, "Looks like we caught him as he was reloading."

"I only wish we could have caught him sooner. Looks like a lot of families are going to be facing their worst nightmares." Mack sighed and shook his head in disgust.

It was then that Flack heard it, a slight scratching sound coming from one of the pipes.

"Shhh!" Flack held a hand up to the room. He could have sworn he heard something coming from one of the pipes, must be a rat, he thought, or a really big roach. But he pulled his gun and got down to look at the bottommost pipe, back in the corner. If just one of these bastards was alive, he was going to have him for lunch, swear to God. He crouched down and looked in the bottom, corner pipe, expecting to find at best a large sewer rat waiting for the people to leave. He did not expect what he saw back there, a mat of hair, a flash of bare skin, and finally two intelligent grey-green eyes peering back at him.

For a moment there it seemed like time stopped. He remembered his Grandfather, the tales Pop used to tell of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the daoine sídhe. Sidhe, he thought, at his first sight of what seemed like such a tiny creature. They caught one of the fae folk, they must have. It would take that kind of luck to be in the eighteenth pipe

And now I've been caught too.

"Hey. Hey there. Mack?" He kept his voice quiet so as not to startle her. "Clear everyone out and call the medics, we got a survivor." While Mack went to work he opened the grate and started trying to coax her out of the back of the pipe. He didn't want to add to the trauma by going in and dragging her out. Besides, no way he would fit. He did not even want to think about that, trapped in someplace cold, dark and hard, always with that curved surface. Iron pipes, he thought. Pop always said cold iron would trap a fae. "Hey honey, its okay. We're the police, NYPD. Come on, tar amach, you're gonna be safe now. Siúil leat. Come here." He was coaxing her half in English, half in Gaelic, and he didn't care. She just kept watching him with those eyes.

He reached in, offered a hand, and offered something more than a thought and less than a prayer to his own, private angel. Jess, you must have been pulling for us tonight. Thank you. Thank you for this. Thank you for one. Now please don't let me fuck this up. He got all the way down on his knees and peered into the pipe. Those eyes, he thought as he looked at the creature down in the pipe. She's scared out of her mind, and yet I've never seen eyes like that before. Fae eyes, I swear. What the hell? "Yeah, that's it sweetie. Come on out of there. Tar amach .That's a girl, come on."

He held his hand out for what seemed like forever, until she carefully, tentatively put her hand in his.

Thank you god. Thank you Jess. Thank you whoever. He tugged gently, and guided her out into the light. He had a sense of way too much whiskey hair, and fine boned features, but really, all he could see was her eyes. Something about those grey-green eyes that didn't want to let go. Bewitched, he thought, I'm caught. She finally looked away, looked around the room, at the bodies, and slowly dropped to her knees, burying her face in her hands. She's so tiny, he thought, as Stella handed him a blanket to wrap around her, fully grown but tiny. "No, don't look honey, you don't need to look." Then she was light in his arms as he carried her up, away from the bodies and the blood.

He put her on the gurney, turned as Mack came up behind him. "Thank god for one," Mack said.

"I have to agree with you on that one." Flack thought. Luck of the Irish, maybe luck of the Sidhe.