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Sebastien watched Caleb like a hawk. The blonde human scurried around his messy apartment like a rabbit looking for somewhere to hide. He snatched a notebook, a small leather satchel, and a white medical kit. Then, he took one last look around and made his way over to the door.
"Okay, this is everything," he said, looking at Sebastien.
Relieved that this hadn't taken very long at all, Sebastien nodded and pulled the door open. "Let's go."
They left his apartment and headed back down onto the street.
"So, I've never seen you around before," Caleb said as Sebastien led the way to his car. "Since we're gonna be working together, I think you should probably tell me your name."
He ignored him. Once they got to his car, he unlocked it and opened the door. Caleb hurried around to the other side while he got in, and once the little human was in, too, Sebastien leaned behind and put the books on the back seats. Then, he started the engine.
"Hello?" Caleb drawled as he rested his things in his lap.
Sebastien side-eyed him. "Literally, I'm about to gag you and throw you in the trunk."
Caleb pouted. "Sorry. Just trying to get to know you."
"Well, don't," he grumbled, pulling away from the kerb.
"Fine. Where are we going?"
"Alder Estate. My boss had a guy looking into something there. We think it might be where this sickness started."
"Oh, because of the raccoon?"
"No, because some guy called Viktor Wood who worked at the house as the groundskeeper went into the basement and came out sick. After that, everyone else started getting sick."
Caleb nodded slowly. "Then...is it really a good idea for us to be hanging around the place where patient zero contracted whatever this is?"
That was a good point. Sebastien was a demon—he was naturally resistant to human illnesses—but Caleb was a human. If he came into contact with an undead raccoon or whatever else might be lurking around the estate, he could get sick.
He could get sick.
Sebastien needed to confirm whether or not these rotten creatures were responsible. He needed to be absolutely certain. He considered getting a human to touch the raccoon he found, and he didn't know this Caleb guy or care a single bit about him, so maybe he should get him to touch the raccoon. If he got sick, that would confirm the rotten creature was responsible. Hell, that raccoon could even be the same creature the groundskeeper came into contact with.
But then there was the question about what happened to Henry, Alucard's informant. He was a demon, so there was no way these undead animals could have made him sick and die. There was no sign of him around the estate, either. If there was a dead demon, Sebastien would have been able to tell before he'd even reached the house.
"Hello?" Caleb drawled.
Sebastien tutted as he drove out of the town and followed the long forest road. "We'll be fine. The raccoon that I suspect is responsible for Viktor's infection is dead-dead, remember?"
"But what if there's more?"
"Then I'll kill those, too. We know that wolfsbane kills them, so when we get to the house, we'll gather some up."
Caleb shuffled around uncomfortably. "Okay, if you say so." Then, he opened his notebook and started flipping through it. "If we're gonna be trying to find where this disease originated, we're going to need to rule out a couple things."
"Oh?" Sebastien grumbled.
"Well, I was never able to find a necromancer, but I've only looked around town and not too far out in the woods. Now that we're working together, we can cover more ground. And since you said that groundskeeper man was the first to get sick, I suspect that if there is a necromancer, he or she might be out near the estate."
"Right," Sebastien mumbled. But as he drove along the road which led to the estate, he glanced up at the sky. It was getting dark, so walking around in the woods at night probably wasn't the best idea. "We'll wait until tomorrow morning to start looking around. For now, I think we need to sit down and think. I also need to make a phone call." And then he remembered that he was supposed to call Mavis and Mathew to let them know he'd got there okay. "Two calls, actually."
"Oh, okay. Well, good thing I brought all my notes, then."
"Yeah. We'll grind the wolfsbane up, too."
Caleb nodded, and then, they both fell silent.
However, as he drove, Sebastien could see Caleb staring at him in the corner of his eye. "Stop staring at me," he snarled.
"Can I ask you a question?" the kid requested.
"No."
"Are you a demon?"
Sebastien sighed and glanced at him. "Am I?"
"Well, I mean...you don't seem all that scared about getting sick—"
"Neither do you, and you're human."
"Oh, I'm scared shitless," he laughed. "But I'm trying to focus on getting answers so no one else suffers."
Sebastien looked at him. "And why are you so dedicated?"
Caleb adorned a sullen frown and looked down at his notebook. "My mother is sick. She was one of the first people to catch it. She was a nurse at the doctor practice, so they weren't prepared for whatever this is."
"Oh. Sorry," Sebastien said as he started to feel a little guilty. He felt like he understood what Caleb was dealing with. After all, Clementine dealt with the same kind of pain and dedication back when they were working together to kill the Ravenblood at Aldergrove Academy.
Perhaps he needed to stop being such an ass to this guy. Caleb was willingly going to help him get the answers he needed to deliver to Lord Caedis, and two pairs of hands were always better than one. Unless this guy got in the way...but he wasn't going to judge him before he'd seen him work.
With a quiet sigh, Sebastien set his eyes on the estate gates, which were just visible through the fog up ahead. "I'm Sebastien."
Caleb's face lit up as he turned his head to gawp at him. "Ooh, fancy name," he said with a slight laugh. "So...are you a demon. I mean...your eyes and hair are a big giveaway—"
"So why ask if you've already worked it out?" he snarled.
He was doing it again. Snapping. Caleb seemed to be getting used to it, though.
The kid adorned a look of awe as they approached Alder Estate. "Woah...this place is even fancier than I imagined. It's...a bit overgrown, though."
Sebastien parked by the fountain and shut the engine off. "I've got all my stuff in one of the rooms upstairs, so we'll head up there and start looking through these books," he said, taking the books from the backseat.
Caleb nodded as he gathered all his things and got out of the car.
Once Sebastien was out, he locked the car and then led the way towards the house.
"Damn, there's wolfsbane everywhere," the human mumbled.
Sebastien looked back over his shoulder and watched the kid do his best to tread between each vine. "Just step on them."
"But then they'll die."
"They'll just grow back. Look, the vines are growing around my car already," he said, nodding at his car.
Caleb looked back at it, too, and then scoffed. "Huh...well, okay," he said and then started stepping on the vines as he followed Sebastien to the house. "If these dead things are like...allergic to wolfsbane, then, why would they be hanging around an estate where there's what looks like an unlimited supply of it?"
"Beats me," Sebastien mumbled, heading inside.
But when he stepped into the entrance hall, he looked over at the cabinet he left the dead raccoon in...and it was empty. The vase he stored the corpse in was smashed, and there was no sign of the body.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" he exclaimed as he rushed over to the cabinet.
"What?" Caleb called worriedly.
"I left the raccoon right here," he growled, waving his hand around at the cupboard.
Caleb stood next to him. "Do you think it got back up again? What if the wolfsbane didn't kill it and just stunned it?"
"No, it was dead!" he insisted, looking around for a trail he might be able to follow, but there was nothing. There was no sign whatsoever of where the raccoon had gone or what might have happened. Could someone have taken it?
Sebastien stepped away from the cupboard and looked around again. He focused his senses, trying to pick up the awful scent the raccoon gave off, but all he could smell was Caleb's human stench mixed with cheap cologne and the dust from the house.
He growled in frustration and stormed past Caleb.
"Where are you going?" the kid called, hurrying after him.
What the hell was he supposed to do now? He needed that raccoon. And because it was gone, he was going to have to find another undead corpse, wasn't he? How the fuck was he going to do that? Sit around and hope something else was going to jump him?
He sighed and dragged his free hand over his face as he walked up the stairs and down the hall. He'd figure it out later. First, he needed to talk to Lord Caedis and call Mathew and Mavis.
"In here," he mumbled, pushing the bedroom door open.
Caleb followed him in.
Sebastien dumped the books on the bed, and while the human set his things up on one of the tables, he headed over to the phone. He glanced at the phone number Caedis had given him, and once he dialled it, he held the phone to his ear.
It was ringing.
"Hello?" came a silvery, Deiganish voice Sebastien didn't recognize.
He frowned and looked at the number written on the paper. Had he dialled it wrong?
But then a sigh came through the phone, and whoever was on the other side hung up.
Sebastien put the phone down and stared at it for a few moments. He must have dialled wrong. Caedis wouldn't have given him the wrong number, would he?
He put the number in again, but carefully and slowly. Then, he held the phone to his ear.
"Hello?" came the same voice, but this time, he sounded irritated.
"Uh...is Lord Caedis there?"
"Isn't it proper etiquette to at least announce your name so I can put a face to your voice before you start demanding someone's attention?"
Sebastien scowled and tightened his grip on the phone. Whoever this guy was, he was pissing him off already. But he tried his best to remain calm. "It's Sebastien. I'm at Alder Estate looking into Lord Caedis' missing informant and the disease currently killing people in Alderon," he explained slowly.
The man sighed and said, "Darling, Sebastien would like to speak to you."
Darling? Was...was he speaking to Lord Caedis' husband?
"Vhat?" came Alucard's accented voice. "You 'ave answers?"
"Uh...progress, but also some questions."
He sighed and waited.
"We never talked about the details of this deal. When I get this done, and you bring Clementine back for me, he...will be alive, right?"
"Vhat makes you ask zhat?"
"Well...just something someone said about how there's no coming back from the dead once you're gone." He wanted to mention the fact he'd been roped into something he didn't agree to, and how he felt like maybe Caedis was going to pull the same stunt, but he didn't want to offend him.
Lord Caedis groaned quietly. "No, Sebastien. Not in zhis case. Your mate vill be alive vhen you get me vhat I sent you out zhere vor."
Sebastien nodded as relief replaced his worry. "Uh...I'm looking into what this disease could be. I still don't know where your guy is, but I'm gonna search the whole estate for signs at some point. I—"
"At some point?" he questioned impatiently.
He tensed up. "Uh...soon. I just gotta look through some books I found. I did find an undead raccoon, though. I think it's connected because it was down in the basement where the groundskeeper was before he turned up sick. I also saw the raccoon like...die again when it touched wolfsbane, so maybe that has something to do with all of this too. I'm gonna connect it all, find your guy...and that's it, right?"
Caedis took a moment to answer. "Da. Vind out if zhese dead vings are vesponsible vor making people sick. Ve vill need samples of zhese dead vings and zhe volfsbane you vound, too."
Sebastien glanced over his shoulder at Caleb, who was looking through his notes. "Uh...how do you...want me to confirm that the dead things are responsible?"
"'Umans are zhe vones getting sick, so if you must, bring a 'uman into contact vith vone of zhe dead vings. Make sure you make notes of all your vindings."
Just as he suspected. He was going to have to get someone sick. But he felt guilty considering using Caleb. His mother was sick with the same disease he was going to have to infect someone with. That was a problem for later, though.
"All right. There're doctors looking into this stuff, too. I think they wanna find a cure. Do you want me to share what I find with them, too?" he asked. It wouldn't be right to leave everyone to suffer, would it?
"Hmm. Yes." Then, Lord Caedis hung up.
Sebastien put the phone down.
"What was all that about?" Caleb asked.
"Just...my boss, I guess."
"Boss?"
Sebastien exhaled deeply as he sat on the edge of the bed. "Yeah. Dude sent me out here to find his missing crony, and once he heard about the sickness, he got me working to find out what it is."
"I heard you say Lord Caedis...."
He glanced at the kid to see his eyes were wide and his face had a curious expression. "Yeah," he said, crossing his legs as he grabbed one of the books. "Him."
"Why would the Lord Caedis be interested in all of this?"
"I don't really know. Something about his guy looking into something in this house. He had pictures of the undead animals and—"
Something shuffled through the wall.
"The hell was that?" Caleb stuttered.
Sebastien stared at the wall he heard the noise come from, but he couldn't sense anything. "Probably the wind. This building is old as fuck."
Caleb scoffed. "Right."
Sebastien opened the alchemy grimoire and looked through the index. Of course, the first thing his eyes fixed themselves on was necromancy, so he flicked through to page 198.
But then the walls shuffled again. They groaned, and the sound reminded him of Aldergrove Academy. Those walls were alive...and now he found himself wondering...were these walls hiding something, too?
He took his eyes off the book and slowly looked around the room. If there was a spirit here, he'd be able to feel it.
Something was rustling around inside the walls, though. There it was again. Could it be the raccoon? No, he couldn't smell it.
He followed the scurrying sound with his eyes; it circled around the room several times, and then it headed off down the hall. Sebastien got up and looked out there, but he couldn't see anything.
"I'm starting to get a little creeped out," Caleb said quietly. "Maybe we should just go back to my place."
"No," Sebastien said as he sat on the end of the bed again. "We need to be here. My boss needs me to capture one of the undead things."
Caleb frowned strangely. "How the heck are you gonna do that?"
"I don't know," he said with a shrug. "I'll think of something."
"Like what?"
He sighed irritably. "I don't know, all right? Can we just go back to reading in silence? I need time to think."
Caleb pouted but nodded and said, "Fine."
Then, they went silent again.
Sebastien started reading the necromancy notes. There were all sorts of concoctions and spells which could be used to reanimate something or someone who died, but none of what he read sounded like the raccoon he'd seen. All these spells brought things back as spectres or vessels, not rotting, zombie-like creatures.
A cold chill ran down his spine.
It felt like something breathed on the back of his neck, and when he dragged his hand over it, the wind outside carried a whisper.
A voice.
A slithering, distorted voice.
"Kludde..." it called.
Sebastien's body tensed up. His heart became enthralled in angst, and as he slowly turned his head to look behind him, he saw a dark apparition seething through the fog.
It looked like smoke from a fire, but as it drifted closer to the window, a shimmering pair of bright green eyes revealed themselves. And a grin of sharp, jagged teeth stretched across its face.
He was right. There was something in this house, and his mission was about to get a whole lot more dangerous.
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