"Unfortunately a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares."
—Peter Ustinov

To put it bluntly, her psych eval had drawn up things she didn't want to talk about in the slightest with anyone. More specifically, memories.

Jodi had woken up in a cold sweat that morning to a searing pain rocketing through the lower half of her right leg as phantom limb pain tried to feel for something that wasn't there. Though she hadn't felt it in 2 years, she'd spent the majority of her night dreaming of bloody axes slicing through her knee, the chilling screams of her mother, and the feeling of life leaving her as she nearly bled out.

But she'd gone to work that morning anyway, once she's gotten herself calmed down, and made it into the briefing room just in time for it to start. "Sorry I'm late," she muttered hurriedly, setting her bag down at her feet before sliding into the empty chair next to Spencer. "Go ahead and start, JJ."

"McAllister. Western slope of Massanutten mountain in Virginia. 2 bodies discovered in the woods both with apparent blunt trauma to the head."

"Skeletons?" Spencer asked with a frown that Jodi couldn't help but agree with.

"One of them," JJ confirmed. "The second victim was just killed this morning."

"How do we know there's a connection?" Jodi asked softly, flipping through the file she'd been handed.

"They were found about 75 feet apart with nearly identical head wounds," was Hotch's response.

"Where's the rest of the case file?" Morgan asked confusedly, his own copy flipped open to the first and only page. There was a second one behind it but as far as she could see from the corner peaking out from behind the first page, it was just a picture.

She could almost see Hotch smile. "There isn't one. The sheriffs are on the scene waiting for us. Their location is only a half hour away by plane."

"What's the rush?" Jodi asked curiously, looking through her own copy with furrowed brows and a tiny frown.

Hotch audibly sighed as he answered her question. "Well, there was evidence on the scene that could cause a bit of a public uproar."

"Satanic cult," Gideon explained bluntly, his glasses pushed up on the bridge of his nose though now matter how many time he did that, they kept falling down.

Sure enough, the picture at the back of the file was that of a narrow tree, the phrase SATAN LIVES, carved into the wood, and below it the letters LOD though she had no idea what that could possibly mean.

Jodi sighed and raked a hand through her long red hair eyeballing the case file. "Yeah...I'd say that would do it."

👣🔪🧬

As Hotch had promised they would be, they only spent another five minutes in the office so they could collect their things before they were driving out to the airstrip with the jet waiting patiently for them to arrive. Jodi was on her third cup of coffee by then, and already thinking about her fourth by the time she was sitting in her usual seat on the jet beside Spencer, waiting for everyone to get settled in.

Normally this was when they'd work out the beginnings of the profile, but as it was still an unbelievably recent case they didn't really have much to work with. She sat there and ate half of a muffin she was splitting with Elle, glancing over at Spencer periodically out of worry.

There were deep bags under his eyes, which left her scratching the base of her palm. Jodi wanted to talk to him about it, to see if he was alright, but she knew that he wouldn't want to talk about it with a case going on. So she settled for keeping an eye on him as inconspicuously as she was capable of.

"JJ, we need to obviously keep this out of the press for as long as possible," Hotch sighed out through his nose, handing out copies of more in-depth photos of the crime scene.

"I'll do what I can," she agreed.

"Why is that so important?" Elle asked curiously from across the table from her.

Wordlessly, Jodi pointed over to Spencer.

"There was a nationwide scare in the 1980s involving satanic ritual killings and abuse. The satanic panic, it was called. It began after the publication of a book about repressed memories being recovered through hypnotherapy. Memories of growing up with devil worshippers who use children in their rituals and ceremonies," was his response.

Hotch continued on for him. "Most of the claims were later found to be false or just impossible."

"Still, numerous therapists accepted the assertions as true and began searching for similar signs in their own patients. After one year, thousands of people reported the exact same repressed memories.

"The bureau conducted an investigation and concluded that most of the most of the ritual killings or abuse were more urban legend than anything else."

Jodi arched a brow. "You're saying that there's no such thing as devil worship?"

"Not at all," Gideon cut in calmly from the other end of the jet. "But most of the Satanism that we've seen is juveniles damaging property, desecrating churches, cemeteries. To my knowledge, there has never been a proven case of a satanic ritual killing in the United States."

Morgan, who'd had been in the bathroom for the rest of the conversation, grabbed one of the crime scene photos off the table. "Well, maybe there is now."

From the landing strip they were taken right to the crime scene.

It was down a steep incline, so Jodi needed to use JJ's arm for help to get down while Gideon walked down first and Spencer on her other side. She didn't mind that he wasn't holding onto her, as she knew it was nothing personal, but he looked slightly apologetic. To make up for his discomfort at having his hands on her, he told her facts about whatever came to his mind the entire walk down.

"There are actually four different kinds of fossils; mold fossils, cast fossils, trace fossils, and true form fossils. They all occur in different ways."

"The male Gentoo and Adelie penguins "propose" to the females of their species by giving them a pebble."

"The venom of the king cobra is so deadly that just one gram of it is enough to kill a person 150 times over."

"Sea otters hold each other's paws when they sleep so they don't drift apart."

Jodi couldn't help but grin at the last one, knowing she'd have to show Garcia a video of it when they got back to the office.

Once her feet touched flat and stable ground, Gideon was already at the crime scene It was a tiny alcove off the already-hard-to-find path into a brush covered tree, where she was assuming the phrase SATAN LIVES -- LOD was carved like it had been in the photos.

JJ made sure she'd be okay by herself before going to introduce them to the officer waiting for them, while Spencer stood patiently beside her. "Do you, um...do you need an arm for balance to get in there?" He asked.

She could see that he wanted to help but was still fairly uncomfortable, so she just smiled at him. "I'll let you know if I need some help, okay?"

"Okay."

"John Bridges," the officer introduced himself. He was middle aged, maybe mid to late fourties with thinning light hair and a stern face. He was taller than herself but only by a few inches, though it looked much more significant as he was further up the incline than they were.

JJ shook his hand. "We spoke on the phone. I'm Agent Jareau, and this is Agent Gideon, Agent McCoy and Dr. Reid with the FBI's behavioral analysis unit."

"Thanks for coming out so fast," Officer Bridges commented.

Jodi stepped aside as Gideon emerged from the knee-height brush and stopped on the other side of Spencer. "Yeah. Of course," she smiled kindly.

"There was an in-service in Charlottesville last year said if we ran into any unusual homicides we were supposed to call you folks sooner rather than later.

"Yeah, they were right," Gideon promised him.

"Is this unusual enough?"

"It certainly is interesting," Spencer agreed. He took his turn to duck into the brush-covered area, and once he was in there he carefully extended his arm out for her.

Jodi was careful not to grab it, but just kept her fingers pressed to the elbow fabric of his jacket so she had something to keep her balance on while maneuvering her prosthetic over the uneven terrain.

She couldn't hear what they were talking about very well, only uneasy questions as to if they'd dealt with this before, but she was more focused on the scene itself. The scene looked old, as if the various objects there had been collected over time. Most were just little trinkets from the surrounding woods, but there was a dark smooth patch at the base of the carved tree she was curious about. "You guys must get a lot of this, huh?" Officer Bridges asked, clearly a little unnerved. "Satanic stuff?"

Gideon blinked once. "Not really...who found the bodies?"

"A hiker found the first one at the trail, and my deputies located this one while searching for evidence." Officer Bridges wiped a hand over the top of his head, smoothing his short hair back. "We don't even know if it's a man or a woman."

"It's a man," Spencer piped in. Jodi glanced down at him to see what he meant, and took notice of the piece of cloth he was holding up on a stick. When he noticed her watching, he shifted so she could see better and seemed to be speaking to her while knowing the others could head. "The male pelvis is more narrow and the opening at the bottom is heart-shaped, as opposed to oval."

She carefully tugged the stick from her grasp and prodded at the dark patch on the tree, only feeling her brows furrow. "Melted wax?" Jodi muttered to herself, glancing back at the other three in confusion.

"Candle wax?" JJ asked.

"Candles are used in rituals," Spencer hummed thoughtfully.

"They're also used on birthday cakes," Gideon muttered, scanninb his surroundings for something she wasn't sure of yet.

Spencer had a fact for that too, and it made her smile. "Actually, they were originally used to protect the birthday celebrant from demons for the coming year," he recited without taking a breath. "As a matter of fact, down to the fourth century Christianity rejected the birthday celebration as a pagan ritual."

Officer Bridges was staring at him. "What kind of doctor are you?" He scoffed.

Jodi noticed the slightly dejected look that cross his face, only for a moment, and she didn't like it. "A smart one," she answered plainly, looking the officer in the eye as Spencer rose up to his feet. "As the job requires."

He stepped back so Gideon could take a closer look at the scene, and she made a point to continue staring until Officer Bridges averted his eyes. She noticed JJ smile out of the corner of her eye but didn't pay much mind to it because Gideon was turning to look at them with furrowed brows. "Does LOD mean anything to you?"

"Nope," she hummed, briefly scanning through the little she knew of satanism.

Spencer shook his head as well. "I don't know of any significance in Satanism, either."

She glanced over automatically as JJ pulled her phone out and attempted to dial. "Well, I could have Garcia research this LOD thing if I could get a call out."

"Not much of a chance of that out here," Officer Bridges sighed, stance wide and taking up a little more space than was necessary.

"Are there any cults in the area that you know about?" Gideon asked before he had the chance to say anything else. "Secret groups? People you see you don't know much about people who stay to themselves mostly."

"This is a very religious area," was the answer he got. "Church on Sundays, fellowship on Wednesday, bible classes. If there was a secret group, I'd probably know about it."

"That's an inherent contradiction," Spencer cut in immediately, lips twitching up at the corners in a tiny grin.

"Excuse me?"

Jodi could only smile and discretely bump his elbow. "He means," she explained while forcing her lips to turn down. "If there was a group being secretive around here, you probably wouldn't know about it. Hence the word secret."

Officer Bridges didn't look happy with the snark she'd added in at the end. "Look, people out here just want a quiet place to raise their kids. What I know is none of them are capable of doing this."

She glanced back over at the charred, blackened bones at the alter and sighed to herself. It made sense that he wouldn't want to believe someone was capable of such things, but she knew that his opinion on the matter was unbelievably biased.

With JJ and Gideon's help, she made it back up the incline unscathed. Spencer murmured our various facts as he walked behind her to ensure she wouldn't go backwards, and before she knew it she was on relatively flat terrain again.

Hotch gave her a hand up the last meter or so of loose dirt and debris, and didn't let her go until she waved them off. "Find anything interesting down there?" He asked them as the other half of their team congregated there.

"Yeah, it does look like some kind of ritual site," Gideon agreed with a frown.

Spencer was asking questions as soon as he'd appeared beside her again. "Have any of you ever heard the expression LOD or the acronym L.O.D.?"

Morgan shook his head while making a face, and Elle mirrored his expression.

"Cherish?" A woman's voice bellowed out before anyone had the chance to provide any further input. "Cherish? Sheriff Bridges!"

It belonged to a woman who looked to be in her mid to late thirties with blonde hair and a frantic look on her young features. She was dressed for time out in the woods, that much was clear; a flick jacket and a scarf, and sturdy boots.

Officer Bridges, who was apparently the sheriff of this small town, allowed her through and she ducked under the police tape. "Was Adam Lloyd killed out here?" Was the first demand out of her mouth.

He grimaced. "Who told you that, Veronica—"

"Was he? My daughter was with him," she heaved out shakily. "They were out running together this morning. Oh, my god. I can't find her. Cherish is missing. Cherish is missing! Help me, please."

She was sobbing by that point, and another officer was sent to calm her down while the Sheriff spoke with everyone else. In that time, Morgan and Elle ducked into the tree line to see if they could find anything in the immediate area. Finally, that same officer who had been comforting the blonde woman, Veronica, was directed to take her home.