Daywalker chronicles com.., p.34
Daywalker Chronicles Complete Series Boxed Set, page 34
“What about the doctor’s office?” Dracula suggested.
“That’s a possibility,” Delphine agreed. “However, I suspect there’s a lot of negative energy associated with that location. We’re more likely to lure the doctor into a negotiation in a neutral room or location in the facility.”
“Negative energy impacts his willingness to negotiate?” I asked.
“Think of it like how an emotional state of mind might impact your ability to carry on a rational, level-headed conversation with someone. If you’re overwhelmed with anger or sadness, it’s hard to open up and listen to reason. If you’re more emotionally level-headed, you can think and hear more clearly. Spirits are more subject to the flux of emotions like anger, rage, or even embarrassment than living humans. Without the usual biochemical interactions that fuel emotions, spirits are easily swayed by the energy of their environments. Given all the horrors we know that have happened in Feuerhahn’s office, trying to speak to him there would be like trying to flirt with a widow at her husband’s funeral. The energy wouldn’t befit the conversation.”
“Got it. Is there anything you can do to neutralize the energy in a place?”
“I can, and I intend to do so. Such methods, though, are limited. The kind of energy that covers this place is intense and profound. More than I can neutralize with burning sage alone. We may find a place, ideally an internal room, with low energy. A place where someone hasn’t died or where the doctor didn’t conduct his experiments.”
Dracula cleared his throat and pulled out a file folder from his cloak. I chuckled a little. He had been hauling that thing along all this time. He pulled out a sheet of paper that resembled a blueprint of the facility and showed it to Delphine. “I believe this room here was once a place where nurses congregated. A break room of a sort. I haven’t seen anything in the records that would warrant a vengeful spirit directing his angst toward any of the nurses here. That might be as neutral a place as we can find, energy-wise.”
“Good thinking,” Delphine told him. “Let’s give it a shot. I’ll be able to get a read on the room pretty quickly.”
Dracula led the way through the halls. The facility was a bit of a labyrinth, and it was easy to imagine getting lost there. It was enough to drive anyone crazy which, for a mental institution, was probably beneficial when it came to retaining their clientele.
Doors slammed, and we heard a few unidentified flying objects, probably of terrestrial origin, flying around elsewhere in the facility. Odd crashes, glass breaking, and a groan or two, made the whole experience unsettling.
We made our way to the break room. I had to admit, it was more peaceful than the rest of the place. The air was lighter. That I noticed it said something, considering my general lack of sensitivity when it came to paranormal phenomena. Even with my adoption by the Scholomance and my potential affinity to wield magic, I was no more psychic than a shoe. Probably less so. At least a shoe could predict a step ahead.
“Yes, yes,” Delphine murmured. “The energy here is far more pleasant. This is the place.”
“Too pleasant for the ghost of Doc Feuerhahn?” I asked.
Delphine shook her head. “The energy of a place impacts the disposition of a spirit, but it has no impact on the spirit’s capacity to communicate or manifest. This location will serve our needs well.”
Dracula and I stepped back, and Dylan approached me from behind and placed his hand on my shoulder. I still hadn’t had a chance to tell him about all that had happened at the Scholomance. If I was on the path, I might be able to resist the paralyzing contagion that could impact me if he and I ever got frisky, or if our methods of protection failed. It meant we had a chance. Still, until I knew for sure how all this was going to pan out, I was trying not to think about it. We still had a tall order to fulfill before Dylan and I would have a real chance at romance. We had to end Samuel Van Helsing, and we had to fulfill the wishes of Sin and his priestess. We had to reunite the paths and become co-masters of a re-forged school of the moon.
I caught Dylan leaning in and taking a brief whiff of my hair. A little weird, right? But I liked Dylan. It was sweet.
We watched as Delphine laid out her summoning board and arranged her candles and various trinkets and crystals around the room. When she started lighting the candles, I knew the time had arrived.
“Shall we begin?” she asked.
Dracula nodded. “Are you prepared, Sienna? If he takes us up on our offer, he may require to see the golem that will become his new body.”
I touched the bulge in my back pocket. “Yes, I have the crystal. It’s programmed and ready to go. I just need a little light to channel through it and the crystal will create the golem we require.”
“I can give you the light required.”
I nodded. “All right, Delphine. Let’s call the doctor. Is there anything you need from us to begin?”
“Calm your minds. Maintain a positive energy. Any negative thoughts can taint the energy of the room.”
Like Peter Pan, I tried to focus on happy thoughts. I didn’t think it would help me fly, but if it helped make the doctor more amenable to persuasion, then a little positive thought couldn’t hurt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I was thinking as positively as I could. I was good enough. I was smart enough. And, gosh darn it, people liked me. Stuart Smalley would be proud. It was hard to stay in that mindset since the mumbo jumbo coming from Delphine’s lips was so strange. It vaguely resembled the “momma say” featured in Michael Jackson’s Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, or “mecka lecka hi mecha hiney ho” from Pee-wee’s Playhouse. As old-school as those references were, though, Delphine’s chants were even older. I didn’t know much about what traditions she’d relied on to master her craft. As I understood it, her abilities were inherited. I imagined the training and texts that guided her as she grew in power were also passed on from her ancestors.
The candles flared. The flames atop them were at least as tall as the candles themselves.
A semi-translucent figure appeared in the room. He had gray hair in tight curls. He was wearing a white coat and dark slacks. His ghostly form was mostly devoid of color, but his skin was pale and his eyes were black as night.
“I told you you’d soon become my newest patients,” Doctor Feuerhahn greeted us.
“Not going to happen,” Dracula fired back. “We’re here to ask you a few questions.”
Feuerhahn laughed. “Join my collection, and I’ll answer all your questions.”
I snorted. “Your collection? You refer to these people you killed as a collection?”
The doctor steepled his fingers and turned to me. “I liberated their souls from their disabled bodies and minds.”
“And you enslaved the spirits here that you might continue to experiment upon them.”
The doctor narrowed his eyes at me. “Psychology is a phenomenon of the mind, not merely the brain. The mind persists in some form even beyond death. Like this, the mind is without restraint. It is one thing to experiment upon minds contained within the body. It is another to experiment with minds in the wild, in their unrestrained form.”
“What have you learned all these years?” Dracula asked.
“Very little. I was killed before my time. My dear patients were ungrateful and spiteful. They did not appreciate the gift!”
I rolled my eyes. “Gee. You stuck a metal rod in their heads and electrocuted their brains. I wonder why your name isn’t the first thing they mention they’re grateful for when they go around the Thanksgiving table in the afterlife.”
Dracula raised his hand to silence me. I was getting a little mouthy, and an adversarial posture wasn’t going to accomplish our purpose with the doctor.
“We’ve come to ask you about the strange trinket you possessed,” Dracula said. “We believe it’s come into the hand of someone else who has taken away your patients.”
The doctor stroked his chin. “What you say is correct. Someone arrived here not long ago with the pendant you speak of. He stole my subjects.”
“We need to know everything there is to know about that trinket,” I demanded.
The doctor looked at me and grinned. “What’s in it for me?”
I shrugged. “Maybe revenge on the guy who stole your ‘subjects.’“
The doctor paced. He wasn’t perfectly in sync with the physical world, and his feet hovered sometimes a half inch above and sometimes a half inch below the floorboards. He was creepy enough as it was, and none of this helped make our conversation more comfortable.
“Revenge against the thief will give me little consolation. The most it would do is leave me back in the condition I was before.”
Dracula and I made eye contact.
“What if we could give you a new body?” I proposed.
The doctor smirked. “I’ve possessed a human or two in my time. It’s not entirely pleasant. Their minds are never silent.”
“But what if we could give you a body that’s never been possessed by a soul, one without a previous mind or memories.”
The doctor waved his hand through the air. “Impossible.”
“Not impossible.” I reached into my pocket and recovered the archeus crystal to hold in front of me. “This was made by the gods. It’s how they create bodies for themselves when they walk the earth.”
“I don’t believe in anyone’s gods!”
I shrugged. “What you believe doesn’t determine if they do or don’t exist. What I’m telling you is true. We can give you an unclaimed body.”
“But you mustn’t resume your experiments,” Dracula warned. “The ghosts taken from here wish vengeance upon you. You will be powerless to thwart them without the trinket.”
“Then get me my pendant!”
I chuckled. “This is a negotiation, ass hat. We aren’t here as a charity organization catering to the desperate needs of psychopaths. We need the pendant. We need to know what it is, where you got it from, and how it works. The person who took it isn’t exactly a saint. We have to stop him.”
“If I tell you what you need to know, and you manage to retrieve my pendant, I get to have a body of my own?”
I nodded. “That’s the deal. Once your information checks out.”
“I’m no liar! I’ll tell you the truth and tell you where to look to verify what I’m saying. You will give me my new body once I’ve given you the information. If you use that to secure the pendant or not is up to you. It is not my responsibility to ensure your success, which I could not do regardless as a ghost.”
I exposed my fangs. “Accompany us in your new body and help us recover the pendant, and perhaps I won’t make a snack out of you when all this is said and done.”
Dracula raised one finger. “And if you make an effort to resume your efforts and kill anyone at all, I’ll bite you myself.”
Doctor Feuerhahn nodded. “Understood. I will have to find another reason to live, I suppose. But one needs to live before he discovers his purpose.”
I smiled. “Stick to that philosophy, and we’ll be cool.”
“Then it’s agreed. I will give you everything you must know about my pendant. After you give me my new body, I will accompany you as you attempt to recover it from the thief. After that, I will find other ventures to occupy my time.”
“Ventures that don’t include murdering people?” I asked.
The doctor rolled his eyes. “That’s rich, coming from a vampire. Have you never killed for reasons less noble than mine?”
I clenched my fist. “I’ve only killed a couple of times, and it was to save my friends. Not to entertain my curiosities and explore my deluded theories.”
The doctor folded his hands across his chest. “Very well. The terms are acceptable. The pendant you seek was once worn by a Babylonian priestess.”
I tilted my head. “Ennigaldi?”
“Why, yes. How did you know?”
I sighed. “Just a guess.”
“It cannot be a coincidence,” Dracula mused. “Perhaps she meant for us to find it all the while. Maybe the idea to seek out the asylum was implanted in my mind without my recollection when I was last in the Scholomance.”
I shook my head. “I have no clue. I agree. It’s too strange a coincidence to be true.”
“What are you talking about?” the doctor asked.
I waved my hand through the air. “None of your business. What can you tell us about how the pendant works?”
“It’s simple. Whoever holds the pendant, no spirit can possess. No spirit can assault. And no spirit can disobey.”
I nodded. “So it protects you from ghosts, but also gives you the ability to command them?”
“For a time,” Doctor Feuerhahn agreed. “The problem is that it’s impossible to know when its energy is expended. The moment the pendant is exhausted, the spirits are free. If you’ve used the pendant and violated a spirit’s will, there’s a good chance the spirit will come after you. As such, I only used the pendant sparingly and for short periods of time.”
“That’s why you had your office protected with salt.”
The doctor nodded. “Of course. I needed a refuge where I could conduct my experiments without interference from the angry spirits in the asylum.”
I shook my head. “I still don’t understand. What were you trying to accomplish by these experiments?”
The doctor narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
Feuerhahn took a deep breath. Ghosts didn’t have to breathe, but neither did vampires. It was an old habit left over from our human days. “Insanity is a problem in the brain. The spirit exists apart from the brain. However, the mind can heal itself. By pulling spirits out of their bodies, if we could keep the bodies alive and increase the voltage of the electrical impulses within the brain at the same time, the spirit could theoretically use those impulses to fix his own mind.”
“Fascinating. All your patients died, though. None of them fixed themselves.”
The doctor bowed his head slightly. “The road to scientific progress is paved with failure. I’d have figured it out eventually.”
“When those failures mean murdering people, you might want to reconsider your scientific ethics.”
Doctor Feuerhahn shook his head. “Death has always been the vehicle of progress. Natural selection. The survival of the fittest. The weak must die that the strong might reproduce.”
“Funny. A lot of vampires use that same notion to justify wiping out humans. Or, herding them like cattle.”
“Perhaps they’re correct. The point is when nature kills that a species might improve itself, we don’t call it murder. When a doctor does it to the incurable, with the chance that it might lead to a breakthrough that heals them and millions of others forever, some call it murder. What’s the difference if the end result is progress? Would you begrudge nature for elevating humanity from the apes?”
“Nature is impersonal. It doesn’t make ethical decisions. We don’t have that excuse.”
Dracula cleared his throat. “Are we going to argue over the doctor’s past, or are we going to get on with it?”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Doctor Feuerhahn said. “I’ve told you what you want to know. Why should you hold up your end of the bargain?”
I shrugged. “The thought did occur to me. But I stick to my word. You know, ethics and all. That shit matters.”
“Pardon me for not taking a vampire’s commitment to ethics seriously. If, however, you’re considering not upholding your end of our deal, know this. The pendant can only be activated by a particular incantation. Without it, even if you recover it, it will be useless.”
“Then tell us what it is!”
Feuerhahn laughed. “Once I have a body.”
“How can we trust that you’ll uphold your end of the deal?”
“I’m here with the most famous vampire in history, and another young vampire who is frightening enough in her own right. Not to mention, three werewolves are here. I’d be a fool to attempt to cut and run once I have a body. I’ll give you the incantation. But not until you recover the pendant.”
“Why not straight away?” Dracula asked.
The doctor shook his head. “The man who stole the pendant has a strange magic. He’s manipulating its power somehow, activating the pendant by using a method I don’t understand. You were right, before. I know you do not welcome me with open arms to your little team of monsters. But let’s face it. We’re all monsters, aren’t we? I want to stop the man who took my pendant as much as you do.”
“One more question,” I said. “How did you acquire the pendant?”
“It was a fortuitous accident, I suppose,” the doctor began. “My brother, may he rest in peace, was an archeologist. He discovered the pendant in a burial chamber in Ur. He had no family. He was killed when a tunnel he was excavating collapsed, and I inherited his personal wares. The pendant was among them, along with several notes on papyrus detailing how to use it.”
“Do you still have those notes?”
Feuerhahn looked at me sideways. “I’ve been dead for nearly a century. Forgive me if I’ve lost track of my personal belongings. I cannot say if it remains with my heirs. What would they do with an old piece of papyrus written in a dead language? No matter, I remember everything. With or without it, I can help you learn to use it, without manipulating it through foreign magic. There’s no telling how the pendant’s properties might be warped when activated in ways it was never intended.”
I looked at Dracula and then at Delphine. We all nodded in agreement. I didn’t trust Feuerhahn any further than I could throw him, and since he was still a ghost, I couldn’t throw him at all. I suspected he was making a play to get the pendant back for himself. We needed his help, though. I’d made deals with the devil before—Hades, in the past, and later, Athena—so if I had to work with a demented head-shrink, it was hardly the worst arrangement. Besides, I’d programmed his golem. It was an average body, filled with human blood. If he betrayed us, I could always use a fresh meal. Ever hear of meals on wheels? For vampires, it’s lunch on legs. No one could argue that the doctor wouldn’t deserve it. Especially if he betrayed us.
