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Revelations
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It was raining as the team moved on the cemetery. The local units with them are handling the bulk of the effort, but with their youngest member in the hands of this unsub, there was no way that the team was not going to be involved as much as they could be. Even Garcia was nearby, her anxiety leaking out into the atmosphere around the waiting ambulances. It was riling up the instincts of the Sensitives among the gathered first responders, even though most of them weren't a part of the BAU pack.
Aaron kept a tight lock on his own shields. It would no one any good to broadcast how much his instincts were demanding he rip apart the person foolish enough to dare steal one of his pups. His spirit wolf had long ago placed the young genius on the same tier as Jack and thus had been growling since Reid had been taken. Prentiss' Persian and JJ's serval had also had a low growl going ever since.
Even more worrying was how quiet Gideon's raven had been, not even ruffling its feathers. The bird was rarely so still or silent. But since the screech it had let out when they had watched Reid die, it had been almost like a statue, a mirror to how Gideon himself had been closed off from the rest of the team.
The gunshot cut through the night like a hot knife through butter. Aaron took off in that direction like it was a starting pistol. Prentiss and Morgan kept pace at his side. He could sense his wolf and Morgan's Labrador taking the outer flank. Every instinct in Aaron was focused on hunting down their stolen packmate.
Reid's little desert fox is a pale tan beacon in the rainy landscape. The fox is perched on a stone monument that had been darkened by the wet as much as the lichen growing on it. Its eyes flashed gold under the beams of their flashlights. Aaron sensed the tension in the air at the same time the fox let out a threatening hiss at them.
"Reid?" Prentiss asked, her gaze locked onto the shadowed figure hunched next to an open grave. She moved to get closer only to be stopped by Aaron's arm snapping up in front of her. Aaron felt Morgan shift farther to the left, preparing to block Reid's path towards the vulnerable EMTs and Garcia without needing to be told. The Marines were fools to have let him go, truly.
"BP dash S," Morgan announced over comms. Prentiss shifted a step backwards. As the newest member of their pack, she was the most likely one to be attacked of the three of them. But the woods were full of law enforcement at the moment, both Sensitive and not, all of which could register as a threat to a sentinel lost to their protective instincts.
Aaron tilted his head to the side as he turned over the facts they had gathered about the case. Hankel had not had Reid for very long, just slightly less than three days. Despite the swings of violence and benevolence, it was unlikely that a sentinel could be swayed into going against his instincts and bonding with his captor. Yet nothing else could explain the state Reid was in. Everything that they knew about the situation indicated that Hankel was working on his own, that presence of his alters would not have allowed for a partner.
Then Reid's head snapped up and in the direction of the groundskeeper cabin. Before any of them could process the shift in position, Reid was sprinting in that direction. His spirit fox followed behind like an eerie lamp. Aaron heard Morgan cuss at the same time that a different explanation occurred to him.
Hankel may have taken another captive.
Aaron grabbed Morgan's arm before he could take off after Reid. Their gazes met and even in the darkness, Aaron could see the understanding in the other sentinel's eyes. The idea had to go against the grain in more ways than one. Garcia wasn't field trained in any way. Honestly, it was against protocol that she was even as close to the op as she was currently, not that anyone would begrudge her sticking as close to her sentinel and pack under these circumstances. At the end of the argument, their department skewed heavily towards sentinel and there was only the two guides to potentially pull Reid back to lucidity without more drastic measures.
As Morgan hung back to report the situation change to the group securing the cabin and asking Garcia to report to there, Aaron took off after Reid in a ground-eating lope. While the genius certainly didn't have the same kind of stamina as the rest of the field team, he was consistently faster in a sprint. The LEOs surrounding the cabin gave Aaron a wide berth as he followed his teammate into the cabin.
The cabin itself was rudimentary, almost exactly as they had seen on the live feed. The bulk of it was the room with Hankel's computer setup and the chair where Reid had been tied. A kitchenette with a small table took up a section that had been out of sight from the camera. The table had a lone chair that matched the one discarded several feet away. A gutted fish and boning knife had been left out on a wooden cutting board. Stranger still was the magenta teddy bear propped up beside it as if to watch the butchering. A cast iron pot was still smoldering on the old-fashioned potbelly stove, filling the space with the vile scent of burnt fish.
And just beyond the kitchen space was a recessed door that had been swung open. The aged wood of the lintel had been carved with symbols that Aaron could recognize as Enochian but not translate. Gideon might be able to, given his religious background. Reid was more likely, if only because his curiosity might had led him to learn. The door was currently being guarded by Reid's fox. The spirit animal gave a low growl but otherwise allowed Aaron to slip by it.
If asked, Aaron could not have given any answer on what he expected to be in the room. Probably some nightmare environment similar to what remained in the barn where JJ had been trapped with the dogs or even the mess that they had found in what had to have been Charles Hankel's bedroom. Maybe even something resembling the crime scenes left behind by Raphael.
It wouldn't have been this.
On the far wall was a pair of beams put together to resemble a St. Andrew's Cross. Roughly made shackles made from pipe clenchers were attached with heavy metal chains. Locked into the homemade shackles was a person who looked to be about Reid's age. By facial features and sienna skin tone, they were either Indian or Pakistani, even if the vivid green eyes staring unfocused in Reid's direction were not typical of that region. The person worn an indigo skirt with magenta poppies printed on it and a black tube-top covered in rainbows. Though the polish had become flaked and chipped, their toenails were painted a luminous magenta.
Stretched out over the crossbeams like grotesque trophies were two broken wings. The sand colored feathers were spotted with brown right up to the edges of each large feather, which were a brilliant scarlet flecked with gold and copper. It took far longer than it should have—something Aaron was blaming on the length of time it had been since he had actually slept—for him to realize that the feathers were twitching, not moving because of a breeze he wasn't feeling. As impossible as it seemed, the wings were attached and alive.
Even more disturbing than that realization was that the person didn't have a psychic imprint. Everyone left some kind of imprint, even the most mundane of mundanes. Aaron had had many guides comment with varying degrees of politeness about how quiet his shield made him. Yet Aaron had never even heard of anyone who succeeded in leaving nothing, existentially erasing themself from the psychic field of the world.
"Hotch," Reid said, sounding like the word hurt to get out. Aaron shook himself out of his daze and rushed forward to help get the being down. The feel of Reid's aura was already less wild than it had been in the rainy cemetery though it did still carry the sharper edges of his protective nature. The winged person didn't register even with Aaron touching their bare skin.
"Penny?" the being whimpered as they tried to pull away from Aaron's grip. No amount of compartmentalization could stop Aaron's heart from aching at the weak effort.
"My name is Aaron Hotchner," Aaron started with his most soothing affection. "I work with Dr. Reid."
"You're Hotch?" they asked as Aaron and Reid managed to get the shackles opened. Their hands reached in Reid's direction as their unfocused gaze continued to move around the dimly lit room. Their fingers clenched Reid's wrecked dress shirt hard enough to turn their knuckles pale. "Penny knew you would understand his message. You're the alpha?"
"That's an inaccurate—"
"And you're a guide?"
"I am," Aaron confirmed right as he felt Garcia's bright presence entering the cabin. His heart skipped a beat as he quickly looked over the wings that were still on display. He called out, hoping to delay her. "Garcia!"
"It's okay," the being said. The wings stretched suddenly before disappearing from sight, leaving only the scent of cinnamon behind. Without the wings to hold them upright, they slumped against Reid's chest. "I think I'm going to pass out now."
"Harry!" Reid exclaimed as the being did exactly that. He couldn't keep them both upright, but Aaron could help slow Reid's collapse. Even unconscious Harry didn't have a whisper of an imprint. Near the door, Garcia gasped obviously having not sensed that there was a third person in the room with her teammates.
"Is she dead?"
"Just exhausted, I think?" Aaron answered. He gripped Reid's shoulder to get his attention. "Is it safe to have EMTs look at Harry?" Reid gave a single nod, pale but confident. His aura had also returned to normal. "Is there anything that we need to know before they get here?"
"Tobias gave us both drugs," Reid admitted. He looked down at Harry's slack face. "Harry more often than me. I think it was the only way he could keep Harry subdued." Reid's eyes were haunted as they met Aaron's. "They're a guide, Hotch."
"Yours?" Aaron breathed, hardly believing that the fairy tale could have happened. Then again, this case had been full of impossible things since the start. What was one more?
"If they'll still have me after this," Spencer confirmed. He pressed a kiss against the lightning shaped scar in the middle of Harry's forehead. "I'm theirs."
Maybe angels really did walk among them.