Part 24: A Living Battery
Scooby watched closely as Adam and Jekyll carried the sleeping forms of Shaggy and Velma back to their room in the castle. All in all he still did not trust any of them. They all smelled like death.
Shaggy was laid on the bed and Velma on a cot that had been brought in sometime during the day. Had Shaggy been awake he would have insisted on taking the cot, but Jekyll and Adam seemed to consider Shaggy the more important asset.
Once they had left Scooby began sniffing around the room. He had felt a slight draft when he first entered the room, but helping Velma nurse Shaggy back to health had prevented him from investigating.
Tonight he was able to track it to the east side of the room, opposite the window. He pawed at the decaying wallpaper, putting his claws through it and tearing. So old, was the paper, that when it tore it did not even sound like paper and it almost turned to dust at the mere touch of Scooby's paws.
Finally getting it out of the way Scooby stared at the loosely bolted grate that had been behind it. He bit down on it and yanked it free, creating a loud metallic ringing that he was sure would wake up Shaggy and Velma. Yet, looking back, he saw them as sound asleep as ever.
Apprehensively, Scooby climbed into the new opening. It was a tunnel barely big enough for him, probably an old air vent that Dracula had deemed unnecessary. Cobwebs brushed against his fur and made him shiver, which in turn made him scrape his body against the walls.
Through the cracks in the stone, Scooby could hear indistinct chatter, and he had a vague suspicion that he was getting echoes from across the castle. He pushed through, some of the chatter growing louder. At one point he thought he heard the Black Knight from earlier laughing, and he realized that whatever this little expedition brought, it would have to be over by morning. Something would happen then, and he had suspicions that it had something to do with Shaggy and Velma's assisted partying earlier.
Finally, Scooby came to another grate, this one free of paper. He pushed against it and broke out into a large chamber. The walls were all covered with glass panels that reflected the room three hundred and sixty degrees and come to a dome at the top. Wires ran from the center of the dome down the walls and into the center of the room where they connected to a wooden and metal chair.
On any normal day, seeing the chair, and the young woman strapped to it would have made Scooby run for the hills, instead, he just had to suppress his own gag reflex. It was plain, even to him that the girl was hooked up to some kind of machine, glowing auras of energy sped from her body along the wires. But it was not merely the presence of the girl that turned his stomach, though that was enough. It was her identity.
Though the black hair was disheveled and frizzed as though she had been electrocuted and the red highlights all but faded away, Scooby still recognized the scent. It was Thorn, or Sally, as her father had called her. He admitted that he was out of his depth, and unsure exactly what they needed her for, but at this point he was not surprised.
Quickly he ran to the center of the room, intent on freeing her. His plans were put on hold by the creaking of the door at the far end of the room. Scooby ducked behind the chair, close enough to hear Thorn's shallow breathing.
Two men walked in, one was short and fat, with greasy black hair and a scruffy beard. The other was taller, more lithe, and walked in a way that Scooby had come to associate mostly with human females.
The fat one checked one of the cables, waving his hand over it and extracting some of the glowing energy. "The power this little girl is generating is amazing. Are you sure you have to kill her when we're done?"
A white shadow passed across the other man's face, and for a moment, Scooby saw the specter of a woman, with sharp features, a pointed nose, and long flowing hair. "I must have vengeance for what this little one's family did to me. Only then will I be able to restore my own body, and leave this substandard dwelling." The man with the ghost inside him looked disdainfully at himself in the mirror. "It is my reward for serving the master faithfully."
"Once she has given enough power to reassemble the key?"
"Yes, of course."
The possessed man walked up to Thorn and grabbed at her chin, staring her straight in the eye. Thorn looked up groggily, but when their eyes locked her face hardened.
"Go to hell" She half sobbed.
"Never again," the ghost woman said severely.
The two men adjusted the equipment and drew a bit more energy from the wires before leaving, clicking a lock on the door behind them. Scooby slinked out from his hiding spot and passed in front of the human girl he had met so long ago.
"Rorn?"
Thorn looked down. A small smile broke onto her smudged face. "Hey, you're the dog from the Florida show, nice doggy."
"Rime ronna ret roo outa rere."
"Turns out I'm a witch, how about that?" Scooby was getting the impression that she was not all there at the moment. "That's what they were testing for in the swamps, we were all witches." She sang.
"Rime ronna ret roo outa rere" Scooby repeated.
He gave Thorn a lick on the face, a gesture that carried more meaning to his kind than human's often recognized, a gesture of loyalty. He would come back for her, and, coward that he may be, he was going to make the ones who did this to her pay dearly.
As he squeezed back into the vent, he had a sudden and terrible thought. Maggie and Madelyn had both been taken like Thorn back in March.