Snappy fashion accessories

"Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction."

A couple of hours of testing later and Morrow's mood had not improved. If anything the small dial in his head that went from calm to annoyed had bypassed frustration and went to explosive outbursts. None of the results made sense to him.

The physiological ones yes but any bog standard guy in a white coat with an MD could see those. The metaphysical results however were infuriating. The etheric volume imager had spat out coloured nonsense at him when he had put Harry inside and ran the first series of scans.

Despite the fact he had seen two distinct auras during his campaign to keep her alive it was as though he had imagined it. There was only one aura now. It was strong but that wasn't uncommon in someone with power like the girl had demonstrated. Yet to treat the underlying condition he needed to be able to find the Demon and at the moment he could not do that nor had he gained any inclination how to summon it.

The normal treatment, like he had used on Captain circus freak, was the holy grail injection which though painful worked 9 times out of 10. With this girl it hadn't succeeded in ripping the infecting demon away at all and had nearly killed her. Thinking perhaps the case was similar to the boy Daniel from a few months back he had brought in Penny.

Just like the boy's case all Penny could tell him is that it wasn't a demon or a host of demons as it had been with Daniel. Then, surprisingly as Morrow kneaded his forehead and tried to work out what she meant Penny began to gently brush the other girl's hair! What that was all about he couldn't even fathom. And when he had asked her to explain herself all she would tell him was that "it hurts".

He had examined Penny thoroughly and with the oculus after that. Checked everything but she didn't seem to be talking about herself. She allowed this without any issue which was in of itself unusual but did snap when he had tried to remove her from the room. Very reluctant to leave the sleeping girl's side meant he had had to conduct his examination of Penny with her perched as she did on one of the countertops beside Harry as she slept.

Eric found this amusing but for Morrow it was just strange and unsettling. He had sent the eldritch creature back to her room to rest, for all the help she was being. She had gone but had bared her teeth and hissed at him as though irritated.

Eventually on the fourth run of tests and just as he was thinking out loud of gaining some tangible results by taking more blood Eric had caught him by the arm.

"No point in replacing the blood lost if you're going to just pull it all back out again. You're tired and not thinking straight." Eric had said and reluctantly Morrow agreed. Afterall he was still waiting for the results from the first draws and it wasn't her physical existence that bothered him, so he was willing to concede that point. However, when the doctor had decided he needed a lumbar puncture Eric had put his foot down and sent him to nap.

Now, Vincent Morrow lay on the cot in his office and stared at the ceiling. So much running through his head, the creatures, the tendril, the girl Penny's weird behavior. So many questions and so little in the way of answers. At some point he must have drifted off because he gave a start and opened his eyes when an alarm went off somewhere on his desk. The alarm that told him Penny's door had been opened. He lay listening intently but when no sounds of screaming or other such indication that some horror had befallen the rest of the clinic he surmised it was Eric going to feed her and relaxed.

He sat up, stretched, yawned and cricked his neck. 11:30 pm...Two hours since he had been sent to nap. Rising from the cot he pulled a face as his lower back twinged. He needed to get a proper mattress on that thing if he was going to spend so much time sleeping on it. Placing a hand over the area to brace it slightly he stumbled to the coffee pot near his desk and finally his chair.

Bringing the bitter black liquid up to his mouth Morrow flicked through the file he had made for Harry again and considered the colors once more.

On some scans the girl's Aura was a brilliant white, that was rare but not something he hadn't seen before in other powerful creatures and people. On others, when he had shifted the parameters, it was a spectrum of all colors, Rainbow style. That one was weird. Something in the back of his mind rang like a bell. Now that his brain had been given shutdown privileges for a few hours it appeared that it was clearer thinking on startup.

Standing he moved to the book cases and began to skim back through the many tomes. It didn't take long before he found what he was looking for. A leather bound copy of 'Visible and Invisible' by Charles Webster Leadbeater. He traced a hand over the spine a moment before pulling it down and blowing dust off of it. He hadn't had to open this book in some time. Leafing through it he paused at an old diagram very similar to the one he was looking at in the file. In his tired state he had been so sure that the results from the tests were nonsense that he hadn't thought to check it against any reference texts. With another mouthful of coffee he began to read.

'The rainbow aura is one of the rarest auras an individual can possess…distinctly positive in nature…manifests as a constant drive to aid those in need around them … passionate about every decision they make..not easily swayed….live a life of service at all times…psychic abilities and spiritual connection is significantly higher than average...'

Well duh. Morrow drank deeper from his coffee mug as his eyes flicked across the page. He compared the diagram in the book with the one in his file again. There were differences, slight changes but he doubted that Leadbeater had a functioning Etheric Imager or a CT scanner when he had written the book and drawn the thing so it stood to reason the version Morrow now had would be slightly more detailed and crisp at the edges. What did this tell him about the girl however? What did he actually know about her?

Leaning back in his chair the doctor steepled his fingers and considered. He pulled the recorder from his drawer, slotted in a new tape and hit the button.

"Adolescent Female, Caucasian of slim build, emergent presentation to the clinic with trauma, internal injuries and blood loss. Reacted negatively to grail treatment. Epinephrine given to treat the systemic reaction. Internal bleeding from a splenic rupture required surgery to correct. Repair successfully completed and the organ was salvaged. Surgical exploration and repair attempts for the metaphysical damage were unsuccessful however. Spiked fevers on both systems. Modified binding spell used when patient continued to decline. Patient responded to treatment. Vitals began stabilising and chakra vitals returned to detectable parameters.''

Morrow paused a moment as he went back through the notes in his head and added "Patient class mammalia mystica, however claims to be from a species I had thought mythical. There are little to no records discussing the venator de gerhman. No indication of where they are endemic or their general physiology. Appearance is of bipedal human, yet EEG and EKG show results beyond parameters for a normal mortal. Obs also are out with normal parameters. In addition, the blood work shows a higher than normal clotting factor, and the patient is currently displaying an unconscious, low level accelerated healing." He frowned and pulled on his bottom lip a moment, she would need more treatment before being fully well of course but in less time than he had anticipated she would be gaining her strength back.

What else did he know? She was a fairly powerful weirder of magic, she could still cast from within the protection circle he himself had placed around her and while unconscious. Granted the circle hadn't been a very strong one but still, her magic wasn't exactly like any he had encountered before, she used banned practices, he had nearly killed her with the holy grail water… which had allowed him to see two distinct spirits within her astral body, two halves he had been forced to patch back together, saving her from his mistake.

He clicked the stop button and placed the recorder on the desk before closing his eyes. However, despite the fact he knew she was infected…none of the test results were consistent with that fact, there was no demon or other form of diablosis that he was familiar with.

Morrow ran his hands through his hair, sending the already wild mop into further array. "But what does it mean!?" He yelled at the room around him. Between the girl and the mysterious metal tendril he found himself with lots of parts of information but nowhere closer to an answer. Ideally he needed to choose one of them and focus on that mystery for a while. Splitting his attention was not going to work.

He paused again mid thought process, maybe…he wouldn't have to, the girl…she had been down there hunting these things too. She had knelt down to examine the unconscious one with him when they had first met her. They had attacked her just as they had attacked himself, Penny and Eric. That meant she was a victim of these creatures too. She Had told Eric they exhibited a pattern of behaviour like bees, meaning she had been observing them for at least a period of time before they turned on her…

…And put her observations into a notebook!

Immediately he sat upright and got to his feet. The notebook would be with her possessions! Giddy with excitement, he almost wrenched the door open and didn't bother picking up his lab coat on the way out.

The corridors were dimly lit and everything was quiet. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, as it always did when he came to walk the halls of his facility late at night. Yet he had no reason to be afraid, everything in the asylum was well contained and nothing untoward would get past his enchantments. At least not without warning him of their impending arrival.

Reaching the procedure room he was mildly surprised to find that beyond the circular glass potholes in the double door the room was dark. Pushing inside he turned the lights on to find his patient was gone. A brief wave of panic clenched at him but then he realised that the bed and monitoring equipment was also missing. So unless she was rolling around still attached to it Eric had likely moved her to another room for the night.

Morrow made a mental note to yell at Eric for moving patients without his knowledge later and began hunting the room for the items they had removed from the girl when they had brought her in. They shouldn't have been too hard to find. Eric had a way of ensuring patients' worldly possessions always got back to them. Sure enough, after a few moments on his hands and knees at the side of the room Morrow found a white plastic bag with the girl's boots, bandolier and the clothing that they had cut off of her. Her staff was missing, currently under a blocking spell in Morrow's office.

Taking the bag in hand the Doctor exited the room and headed back to his office. He emptied the contents onto his desk and began to sort through it. The shirt and trousers, cut up and covered in dried blood, were stuffed back into the bag after a few seconds closely followed by the socks and underwear. This left him with the bandoleer and the boots. Both made of leather and well-loved by the looks of them. The former drew his attention first, it had three empty slots for what he assumed were vials on the upper section, followed by three small pouches on the lower, ending with a singular, larger pouch that hung over the hip. A second band formed a belt and had another large pouch at the rear and another set of three smaller ones on the side. The notebook could only fit in one of the two larger pouches and so without further thought, Morrow undid the buckle on the first one, reached inside and…

"AHHHH!" Vincent yelled as, all of a sudden, the pouch closed on his fingers like a bear trap and just as sharp.

Frantically, the fingers of his free hand began to claw at the flap, as blood began to trickle down the worn leather. "Sonofa! Sonofa! Sonofa!" he cursed loudly. It took him a few painfully long seconds to prise the pouch open enough so that he could free his fingers and he could see clearly that the area around the pouch that should have been stitching, somehow, now had formed rows of leather teeth. These were apparently also razor sharp it seemed.

Glowering at the thing on his desk, He cradled his right hand to his chest for a few moments, trying to determine if it would stay or leap up in another attack. It didn't move and he instead turned his attention to his fingers. The lacerations were not too deep but they would require bandages and they hurt like hell. Any longer and he would probably have needed stitches. He gawked at the unassuming leather once more, using a handkerchief from his waist coat pocket to stem the blood flow. That bandoleer just bit me… that bandoleer just f-ing bit me! Feeling exceptionally indignant about the fact he'd almost lost his fingers to an accessory, Morrow picked up a tongue depressor from his desktop and gave the thing a disgruntled prod.

The pouch snapped at the wooden stick, biting it in half with a crunching sound. Vincent hastily withdrew his hand to the safety of his chest. "Her damn bandoleer is feral!" He said then did a double take, as for a brief moment, he could have sworn that the two metal studs on the flap had just looked at him, as though they were eyes, watching him. He stared at them for a moment, but they did not move. Just as he relaxed again, telling himself he was imagining it, the pocket gave what he could only describe as a burp and spat out a small lot of splinters. The buckle then closed itself.

At this display of stickicide, Morrow decided that it would be in the best interests of his fingers if he did not try to open any of the bandoleer's other pouches. However he did find himself saying aloud to it in a stern tone "Don't think for a second that you're going to harbor that notebook and get away with it."

The doctor moved to his drawers to begin patching up his wounds then paused. Bringing a hand over his eyes he rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Oh, well this is just great…now I'm talking to belts."