Cassandra
for the prompt "Conrad and Worth worrying over Hanna"
Alabama
June, year four
Of course, it had to be ghosts.
Hanna's tendency to volunteer for ominous mystery missions hadn't decreased in recent years. If anything, he'd gotten worse—whether that was the guilt talking or just the added idiot confidence of having an entourage, Worth couldn't have said for sure.
So it turned out the thing bumping in the night this time was a ghost. Worth had grabbed Hanna to forcibly drag him out of the house, one way or another, as soon as he'd caught sight of the first blueish flickers. But trying to hold onto Hanna was about as doable as wrestling an eel, and the little monster had twisted loose and kept on running.
"Told him," the doctor muttered, pounding after the fading sound of Hanna's footsteps, "no ghosts. I told him. Five hundred times I told him."
"And you expected anything else?" Conrad replied, keeping pace beside him. One of the great advantages to vampirism—you could run and talk at the same time.
"I thought maybe after the five hundredth!"
"Wishful thinking," Conrad said, darkly. "Did you hear the wailing and moaning in the basement? You couldn't drag detective Cross out of here with a tractor now."
"We're gettin' him a leash fer Christmas, fuckin' Christ."
"I'll look for collars the next time we're in town."
"I'm thinkin' somethin' in pink."
"I'm thinking something in choke."
A guttural shriek cut through the darkness, starting at the lowest register and scything up into the highest, with an eerie two-toned echo underneath it.
Worth wished, angrily and powerfully, that it hadn't been such a dark and stormy night. There was nobody up there with Hanna, wherever he was and whatever he was doing, and Worth had started to forget just how much he counted on the dead guy to keep Hanna under control. How impotent he'd been in the days before the two of them had met.
There was some Greek broad a thousand years ago who might've understood what it felt like to scream sense at a man who wouldn't listen no matter how hard you shook him. Nowadays, Worth was on his own.
They found Hanna on the floor of the living room, seizing and pouring sky blue light from his wide eyes.
"What did he think was gonna happen?" Worth snarled, dropping to his knees beside the arching body. He whipped his belt from his hips and shoved the thing between Hanna's teeth. So far the kid hadn't done himself any damage on that front but this was no time to leave things to chance.
"Why does it happen?" Conrad asked.
"Summat about morphic resonance," Worth answered, only half-listening to himself. "Open a door once an' it ain't hard to open it again. Salt."
Conrad dropped down across from Worth and dug around in the pockets of Hanna's raincoat until he found the bag of seasalt. He dropped it into Worth's waiting palm while Worth was patting down his own pockets. Conrad got hold of Hanna's hands and held them, smoothing out the twitching fingers with firm but delicate motions.
Worth found the stitching of the hidden pocket in his coat and ripped it open with mostly-not-shaking fingers. If anyone had wondered why he was so hellbent on keeping the thing, this might have explained it for them. In the secret pocket there were half a dozen orange pills, the remainder of what had once been a bottle's worth.
The doctor wasn't looking forward to the time when these ran out.
Handling salt as a member of the undead legions was a little tricky. It didn't burn like sunlight or iron, but you could get into a hell of a fix if you penned yourself in.
"Shhh," Conrad was whispering, one hand now smoothing the rain-frizzled red hair above Hanna's glowing eyes. "We've got you, hold on."
Worth pursed his lips but said nothing. There was no point in reminding Conrad that he was still here. The extra bedside manner certainly couldn't do any damage.
"Do you think he does this on purpose," Conrad said, without looking up.
Startled, Worth fumbled with the salt-line and had to retrace the wonky bit twice. "Dunno," he managed.
"I think he does," Conrad said. "I think he's trying to talk to it. There's something about him and ghosts…"
Worth made a noncommittal noise. He formed two open lines at the end of the salt line, pointing away from Hanna's head. An exit. Conrad handed him the herbs they'd carried into the house for an exorcism that hadn't had a chance to happen, and he crushed them and placed them strategically across the redhead's twitching chest. It was more difficult than it needed to be, since Worth had to use the same entrance/exit that he'd left for the spirit.
"Vamps were not meant ter perform exorcisms," he muttered.
"Who else has he got?" Conrad asked, faintly, his hands folded in his lap now that Hanna's body was cut off from his reach.
"Ya know the words?" Worth said, in lieu of answer.
The dark haired vampire nodded, licking his lips. "Although my Sumerian accent is terrible apparently."
"Couldn't just use latin like everybody else," Worth grumbled. "Hadda use the three thousand year old dead language. Awright, hop to. I'll keep the body from pullin' somethin'."
Conrad bent his head, eyes closing in concentration, and then the words started. It sounded like nonsense mostly, maybe a little bit like Hebrew. Worth had been to a bar mitzvah once or twice. The great thing about this rite was that it only ran a couple sentences maximum. They'd been told that the original text was a lot longer, but once you cut out all the references to dead gods it shortened up considerably.
Hanna's neck twitched, and Worth steeled his grip on either side of the magician's head.
Light flared up stronger than ever. Something horrible and airy hissed up from the vocal cords; random groups of muscles spasmed. The floorboards creaked, as if some terrible pressure was bearing down on them.
The light flickered, blinding and then black and as empty as an abyssal chasm, as if the sockets themselves had been hollowed out, and then Hanna's own voice waivered to life, panicked and unsteady.
"No," he moaned, sounds coming out muffled around the belt, "No, not yet…"
"Ferget it Hanna," Worth said from between clenched teeth, "Whatever yer up to in there you can wrap it the hell up."
Hanna's hands fluttered, twitched, and then with a terrible power that seemed to come from some impossible reserve of focus, he clutched at Worth's hands and tried to pry them off of his temples. Ragged nails scrabbled, cut into undead skin, left dark crescents that closed up almost instantaneously.
"Nice try," Worth growled. "Connie, finish it."
Conrad, whose eyes were still clenched shut, nodded once and flipped up one hand like a claw. The flesh melted off of it at the fingertips, revealing wickedly pointed spikes of bone, designed for piercing and tearing undead flesh. With one deep, unnecessary breath, Conrad sliced into the pale flesh of his left wrist.
Black droplets, colorless in the darkness, dripped onto the floorboards.
There was a roaring of wind, cold and damp, and the spirit let out a high pitched impossible keening sound as it ripped free of Hanna's corporeal form. Lights blinked out. Muscles stilled. The air swirled angrily in the little channel of salt, a flurry of dust particles, and then dissipated into the stillness of the room.
Below Conrad's rapidly healing arm, brackish black blood smeared wetly across the floor, as if a tongue had swept over it.
A faint sigh escaped Hanna's slack lips.
One eye cracked open, blue irises bright in the darkness—too bright, lit up with the last fading effects of spectral possession.
"…Hey guys?"
It is sufficient to say that if there had no been a salt line in place, Conrad's full-handed slap would have landed loudly against Hanna's face. As it was, the swing rebounded against the salt force field and Conrad let out an enraged howl.
Worth dug into his pocket and silently held up two orange pills.
"Uh," Hanna said. "Thanks?"
Worth dropped the pills and stood up, wobbling slightly as his knees failed to lock properly.
Hanna brushed away the salt line uncertainly. "You're, uh," he said, glancing back at Conrad, whose red eyes were furious and nearly glowing, "You're taking this surprisingly well."
Worth said nothing, gathering up their scattered supplies.
Hanna swallowed. "You're… you're not gonna tell Nergal about this, are you?"
"Oh," Worth said, "you just try 'n stop me."