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Chapter Text

Leonie, Horst and Johannes were on a train.

This of itself was a feat, but that they were all sitting comfortably- and more importantly- in a civilized, calm manner, gave all the more weight to the moment. Dare one say it- the trio even looked relaxed, to some degree or another.

Previously-Vampire currently Not-Quite-Certain-What Horst Cabal had draped himself languidly across a patterned gold-on-red chaise-longue, speaking avidly with Miss Barrow. A certain rosy-cheeked, cheery air had returned to him in the months following the Five Ways, and Johannes would certainly shoot the person who dared point out that the “younger” brother seemed relieved by this development. Whether the statement was truthful or not was none of their business, anyway.

Johannes was not relieved, really. His brother was a nuisance and had prevented him time and time again from continuing his research. Horst had also vehemently insisted on buying overly-cheery, canary yellow curtains for their sitting room (once their house had been rebuilt), but that was another story entirely, one which Cabal was not bitter about, not in the least.

Across from the Not-quite-Human, Miss Leonie Barrow was as equally comfortable in an overly large armchair that matched the chaise-longue in all but elegance. A fleecy blanket covered her legs, which were tucked up under her on the cushion. Between sips from her half-filled mug of black coffee, she answered most all the elder Cabal’s questions and laughed at stories from Johannes’ youth, though the misadventures thereof.

The man himself wanted no part in the conversation. He was reading some newspaper or another, one picked up in passing from the station, sat across from both his associates in such a way as to form a triangle. A trinity of unlikely people together due to unlikely circumstances. Really. Johannes didn’t even seem to be reading the paper, if anything he was using the smudged, greyish, poorly printed, smelly thing as a wall between him and the others. No sense looking at them anymore then necessary, was there? They were already sharing a cabin. Instead he preoccupied himself with thoughts of a higher scientific nature. That is, until somehow the conversation he was only somewhat paying attention to turned from the fairly innocent subject of culinary expertise to something… altogether less tasteful (but still plenty tasty, depending on who or what was asked).

It all started with a question- one posed by none-other than Leonie Barrow- but it could be argued the matter itself began long before this evening.  

“Do you miss drinking blood?”

To which Horst answered, with little debate.

“Mm, not so much the need for it, or the act of it, or really anything about it- but certainly the taste.” A small frown twitched his lips, as if the truth troubled him to admit.

“The taste?” One quirked eyebrow, disappearing under a strand of wild golden curls.

“Oh yes, it had… something to it that most foods lack. I know the whole affair was terrible, but, just…” He struggled a moment, hand making vague waving motions in the air in front of him. Similar to a deranged chicken, Johannes observed. “Once it was down, it was delicious? I can’t speak for the rest of it-” It being the human unfortunate enough to catch a bad case of the vamps, “But blood was decent. It was warm . I mean, it kept me alive for a while, didn’t it?” Horst grimaced, gaze far away, looking back on his time as an undead coffin-craving creature with some distaste. Remembering a castle, not that long ago but seeming so, surrounded by disappointedly unimpressive were-beasts and a certain glorious monster-hunting spit-fire. He almost sighed at the wave of nostalgia. Good times. “Not that I liked the act of it. Again.” Horst added, maybe as some afterthought, considering his audience.

“Maybe your vampiric nature made it taste decent, I wouldn’t think blood would be very appealing to the normal everyday Joe, is all. I can’t image human flesh must taste good, either.” Leonie contemplated, a little disgruntled but not in any way one would expect her to be in such company. It was more in the manner of a scientist working out a theory, grappling with how to set it to experiment and not quite able to figure it out.

Or perhaps, not a scientist- but a detective.

Horst shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, my job was to suck the blood out as fast as possible, not mind my manners (however regretfully) and take time to chew. Though it must be said, my self-control was decent enough to allow some…chosen… victims … to live.” He seemed to regret the term, his words coming with difficulty and face falling into the expression of someone having enjoyed something that left a terrible after-taste and was now thinking twice about certain life decisions. The man, sitting not too far from Horst’s left, who had been one of those regretful ‘victims’ tutted some choice specimens of the German lexicon under his breath, going unheard or ignored by all other parties present.

Leonie’s lip quirked in a sympathetic smile, and both almost considered the conversation closed. A moment, or maybe a minute, passed in contemplative silence, the lion-maned detective turning to watch the passing of a distant village’s lights in the semi-darkness outside the train car’s windows.

“General, deceased human flesh has a certain sweetness to it. Can not comment on the living specimen, but everyone considered I would rate the experience 8.78 out of 10, would possibly eat again.”

Almost , until the silent third party decided he didn’t want to be silent any longer. His companions looked to him with expressions ranging from mild surprise to utter bafflement, if one looked from the speaker’s left to his right. There were a few moments of silence, during which Johannes Cabal looked over the edge of his paper and scowled. Something like regret wormed into his chest, and the scowl deepened into a snarl. For some reason he’d been possessed to speak, and he sorely wished he hadn’t.

“Horst, you are not a codfish, close your mouth.” Horst did not. “Honestly,” Johannes looked between Leonie and his brother, now irritated, “What did I say to garner such reaction?”

It hadn’t occurred to him until very recently that they mightn’t know of the events that had led up to his consumption and his appreciation thereafter of all kinds of human flesh in all manner of states of decay. Although, the sudden quiet was quite a  rare and welcomed commodity, so the Necromancer of Some Little Infamy went back to his reading. Safe to say his peace did not last long.

“…Johannes! You can’t just- How did you- What??” Horst hadn’t quite managed to collect all his wits about him.

“This being you we’re talking about; I can’t say I didn’t expect it, somewhat.” Leonie said eventually, when the Not-Quite-a-Vampire failed to offer a cohesive response. Johannes drew up and lowered his paper, brows knit as if about to speak to defend his honor. “There must be a story behind it, then.” Leonie cut him off, peering at the man in the sofa to her right with curiosity- he didn’t seem too pleased about it.

Johannes was further irritated- only a tad bit affronted- and now thoroughly regretting his input into the conversation altogether. The Necromancer didn’t know why he’d spoken up in the first place, really. He was getting tired of them and the exchange, but moreover he was beginning to become annoyed with himself, and that just wouldn’t do. The truth of the matter was that the “younger” Cabal was just now starting to realize he hadn’t told anybody about his stint as a Ghoul- here his mind interjected with a small flash of fondness, which showed on his face as a small, very small, gentle , almost microscopic  upwards twitch of a scowl, that had Horst instantly alarmed- and he intended to keep it that way.

Fate was not, however, in his favor.

For Horst had suddenly recalled, upon thorough reflection and intense baffled staring, an instance where he had come home to his dear brother slumped outside the gate bordering the Garden, blood dribbling down his chin, eyes unfocused and glazed over like the pools of the dead, breath but a faint wheeze between chapped, parted lips and pulse non-existent to the touch. Horst had only known his brother was alive due to his vampiric talents, and the elder’s fear in that moment had been extreme and remained indescribable. He honestly rather not revisit the scene at all. Despite this- he remembered, as he hoisted his sibling up over his shoulder and snarled at the Garden in warning, as he ran upstairs and rushed to save Johannes- faint sensations and scents that had until thus been tossed aside in favor of more pressing matters. Small things that Horst had dismissed like crawl of the Johannes’s skin over his flesh as Horst held him, the smell of blood that was not his brother’s own, coppery tangs of meat and the sickly sweet scent of decay on the younger Cabal’s breath. Horst had picked it all up and assumed it had to do with whatever necromantic business put his brother in such a state in the first place.

He wasn’t wrong, not entirely. Everything that had transpired could be directly traced back to Johannes going about ‘whatever necromantic business’ he had deemed fit of his attention, namely the doomed Fear Institute’s commissioned expedition into the Dreamlands, not that Horst knew about it. The assumption did however mean that Horst hadn’t thought twice about his brother’s general state of wrongness . Hadn’t thought twice about the way his brother’s eyes caught the light in a strange way, or the way his teeth flashed awkwardly between his usual drawn lips and disdainful snarls, as if deformed just enough to not quite fit a human jaw in proportion nor shape (this later assessment being just recent and thoroughly startling, as the Not-Quite-a-Vampire watched his brother closely from the chaise-longue).

Horst was starting to think he should have been thorough initially, especially when he had asked Johannes what in the hell had happened a week after and been expertly (to his annoyance) deflected. He was cursing his acceptance and haste at the time, where but a few days later they had been thrust into L’Affaire Ninuka, gaining yet another talking head along the way.

Johannes, for his part, had catalogued and examined the extent of the effects of prolonged Ghoulishness on his person the moment he scared himself passing a mirror on the way to the loo in the grave-robbing hours of morning, two reflective orbs that were his eyes catching him completely off-guard. Sharp teeth, the eye-shine and strutting further from vegetarianism and omnivorous kind everyday were of little consequence on him (his wallet may disagree, meat is expensive in today’s economy) but a few other… details were of nobody else’s business but his own. He therefor saw no need to continue with his tale, returning instead to his dull but distracting newspaper and therefor completely missing Horst’s sudden change in disposition.

Leonie did not miss it and tilted her head to one side and curiously examined the pair. For the most part, she had no idea what was going on, having only been present for the tail-end of L’Affaire Ninuka- the Five Ways- and the resolution thereof.

When Horst spoke again, it was with renewed determination and the kind of careful wariness one would use when addressing a cornered wolf, or a particularly hissy domesticated feline. “Johannes… What happened before I came and scrapped you off the Garden gate? What were you doing?”

“I am sure I have precisely no idea what you are talking about, Horst.” The newspaper was promptly drawn between them, paper rustling crisply as it moved, but like a bloodhound- Horst was on a trail. A case was afoot. Leonie watched the exchange with rapt curiosity, brows furrowed with slight smirk to her lips. She didn’t know what the Not-Quite-Vampire was referring to, but it was an opportunity to learn more about what Johannes got up to when he wasn’t terrorizing the English countryside or dragging her into other hellish dimensions.

“Before our lovely lady aircrew showed up with the Entomopters, Johannes. When you were past out by the Garden post about to become hobgoblin food and-” Horst paused when his brother’s eyes flashed above the newspaper’s edge- quite literally with the light from a passing lamppost. A moment later the train passed another post, but Johannes had turned his gaze away and thus, no eerie eye-shine reflection was to be had in the dim-light of the lounge car.

“We must be pulling up to the station.” The blond took Horst lapse as an opportunity to close the discussion. “If you’ll excuse me then, I’ll be in the cabin collecting my affairs.” With a series of crisp, clinical movements the newspaper was folded and replaced on the coffee table, the man himself up and walking away, death-head cane in hand.

Leonie, who had been silent during the confrontation, steepled her fingers and rested her chin on her thumbs, watching the Necromancer stalk away to eventually disappear in the shadows and out of sight. The car door clicked after a few moments, and he was gone. She hummed in contemplation, flicking her golden gaze once more to the Not-Vampire now sulking in his chair.

“This isn’t our station.” She stated simply, watching Horst’s troubled, lopsided frown morph into a pout.

“It isn’t?”

“No, it isn’t. We have the rest of the night left before we reach Penlow-on-Thurse. The train isn’t even stopping here.”

Horst’s pout turned sour, resenting his past-self’s disregard of their itinerary. “Bother. He just completely dodged me then, didn’t he.”

Leonie considered the not-vampire, then shrugged. “Yes, he did, quite succinctly.”

The brunette sighed, breath passing fang until it was all but a hiss. “I don’t understand Leonie! I’m his older brother, I watch out for him, but he won’t tell me anything! Remember that little job he mentioned a month past?”

Leonie nodded. Something about a rare tome or another. The usual.

“He came back injured! I smelt it,” Horst tapped his nose, as if his companion, the detective, needed that kind of cue. “But he refused to tell me where, or what or who. After the fact I discovered it was a gunshot wound- merely a graze- but still!” He huffed, crossing his arms in exasperation. “I know we don’t have the best sibling relationship, but I was hoping to work on that. Regain what we had, once. Y’know?” He looked out the window as another post past, and the lights of the station came into view. It took Leonie a moment, but she came to realize Horst was genuinely concerned and saddened. He had a habit of being a tad melodramatic, so Leonie had developed the ability to look past that and determine what he was actually feeling. It worked sometimes, but more often than not Horst hid behind ‘charming’ smiles and salacious words too well for her to discern the truth.

“You know Johannes is a stubborn mule on the best of days, Horst. Give it some time-” Horst turned back to his companion, an eyebrow cocked up with disbelief. Leonie scuffed, “Don’t give me that, we’re still going to poke around. Just, with subtility. Now,” the detective leaned forward, propping herself up on her knees and resting her chin on her knuckles, “Tell me more about this time you scraped near-death Cabal off the Garden post.”

The train passed the station and the forest beyond broke into rolling fields. Soon the pair were the only two left in the car, the darkness beyond making the lounge even dimmer. Clouds had covered the moon, and Johannes Cabal did not make a reappearance. By the end of the night, when Leonie and Horst- mostly Leonie- went to bed, they had figured out a plan of action. They would discover what Johannes was hiding and what had happened, and they would get their answers- slowly. The necromancer was a clever man, he wouldn’t have survived so long if he wasn’t, and if they were going to wiggle any information from him, they’d have to keep their wits about them.

Chapter Text

Johannes knew something was not quite right about a minute or two into consciousness. For starters, he was in a bed- his own bed, in fact, in his room in his house. He supposed for a moment that being awake was a small miracle, let alone waking in his bed. If only that wakefulness was not accompanied by one of the most brutal headaches the necromancer had ever known, then he would be sincerely appreciative. 

As it was, he screwed his aching eyes shut against the blinding light of the room- who the hell had drawn the curtains?- and set about trying to recall the events leading up until this point. The exercise amounted to the mental equivalent of thumbling around a dark room at ungodly hours in the morning, in search of a light switch that was certainly not where it was supposed to be. Cabal could not remember much besides resigning himself to the inevitable: he had been about to die. He had been slumped against the Garden’s gate without the energy to lift a pinky. Dummkopf . Nur ein Dummkopf. He had stupidly miscalculated how his body would react to the break-neck transformation. The shift to ghoul had occurred over time, a lot of time, suddenly snapping back to Human Cabal after wer wie ß… 

Johannes scowled, eyes screwing ever-tighter shut, and brought a hand to rest against his forehead. His skin felt clammy and warm, as if he had just broken from fever. Under the shade of his hand on his brow he tried again to crack an eye open. The attempt succeeded this time around, and the necromancer cast a wary glance around until his gaze fell upon a glass of water left on his bedside table. With a huff, he drew himself up into a semi-seated position- observing with an  increasingly creased brow as his arms shivered and joints ached under such miniscule strain- and slowly moved to pick up the glass. The more he progressed into wakefulness the more he became acutely aware that he was, in fact, abysmally parched. Actually, he felt abysmal in general, so, there was that. The glass shook in his grip, and it took him a moment to process that it was not the glass but his hand that was shaking. He scuffed, and focused on bringing it to his lips with only the minimum of spillage. Johannes was not as satisfied with the result as he would of liked, but it would have to be a work in progress. If anything, his body was still in shock, which was also entirely the reason why the sunlight flooding his room like raging seawater in a doomed vessel was still making his eyes sting. 

But who had brought him in? The necromancer had a distinct feeling he had been carried, the memory- if it was indeed a memory and not some fever dream- was a fuzzy,  indistinct, pain-hazed mess of sensations. The ghost-feelings haunted him now: the tickle of blood dribbling down his chin and running as feather-light tears down his cheeks, dripping from his ringing ears- He held the glass in his lap, enclosing it with both hands to steady it. Or to steady his hands? He was not sure, and did not want to dwell on it, either. The water had brought him some relief, and now he found he could actually focus on some outside observations. 

Like, for example, someone was in his kitchen. Now granted, the kitchen was two stories down and across the house from where he lay, but he swore someone was moving down there. He could sense it. This was not normal, in any sense really: he highly doubted he had been able to do that before his fateful departure into the Dreamlands- because ah, yes, that’s where he’d been, of course - but Johannes decided it was something to mark down in his notebook for later, when he managed to figure out just who had been his caretaker for the (undoubtedly lengthy) amount of time he had been feverishly comatose. Granted, the puzzle was a quick one to solve. Very few beings across very few dimensions would see a sick necromancer and decide to nurse them back to health instead of just taking the miracle as it was handed to them and finishing the job. 

Which left him with three options, really, in order of increasing unlikeliness: Zarenyia, the Devil of the Outer reaches who needed to be summoned in order to interact with this dimensional plane. Or Horst, his dead and dusted vampiric brother, or again- and he could not fathom this ever being the case- a certain Miss Leonie Barrow, Detective. He favoured the Devil option, but her idea of self-care would have been a brothel and, despite his bitter wishing- the thing downstairs did not sound like a large, 8-legged she-devil wearing cashmere. He would likely already be dead, too. And since he was not, at least he sincerely believed he was not, that left a Detective he had dropped off on the border of Mirkarvia to be found by a rescue team, or his deceased sibling who hated him. His eye twitched, Johannes’ scowl deepened.  

Then suddenly his shoulders tensed and the grip on his glass tightened, instinctively. The sound of footsteps had- blinked? Out of the kitchen and reappeared in another room, interspaced with the sound of more curtains being drawn sharply. The sharp, crisp screech of metal against metal- most likely the curtain hooks and rods that had rusted in place from disuse- made his ears ring once more. Johannes set his jaw against the pain, and listened carefully as the steps blinked back into the kitchen (and picked up on a flurry of other sounds that he could not even begin to process, making it hard to concentrate on just one-) , paused with the faint jing of utensils, and then- to his great alarm- creaked up the stairs at an inhuman speed. Which could only mean-

Both Cabal siblings blinked simultaneously, staring each other in the face for the first time in months as the former all but burst into the room. The elder Cabal held a plate of scrambled eggs with utensils in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other. His eyes were blown wide, mouth agape as he sputtered, “Y-you’re awake!!”

-Horst . Of course, he was alive. Johannes could not understand the strange bolt that constricted his heart and rendered his throat a tight, dry ball- so he ignored it in favor of cocking an eyebrow and taking in his very-much-still-corporeal brother’s appearance. The vampire was a mess, to sum it up. His usually coiffed black locks were in disarray, and for an immortal-being-twice-revived, he looked like death reheated. Before Johannes could test how awful his voice was, Horst recovered his wits. 

“Johannes! Guten tag, mein bruder. How do you feel?”

The necromancer’s gaze narrowed. 

“Alive. The sun’s out, how are you here? ”

Johannes voice was little more than a croak. Right after, he could hear the sharp breath that Horst did not need, air brushing past too-sharp canines and making a whispered shush that was disturbingly audible. He tried not to let that disgruntle him more than it already did. Not quite right. Something was Not Quite right here . The necromancer would be damned if it was not some kind of ghoulish side-effect, and it seemed he had some of his work cut-out for him in the future. 

Ah well, there was no rest for the wicked. 

“Well, don’t just stand there with your mouth gaping Horst, we are not cod fish. C’mere with that breakfast, I am famished.” Because he really was, and Johannes refused to even begin to tackle the issue at hand on an empty stomach. 

Chapter Text

Johannes knew when someone traveled between the train’s rickety coaches. Dusty, stagnant air that clogged his now-sensitive nose would blow past him, chased out by the bittingingly crisp and cool wind that rushed along outside. It carried with it fresh scents of the countryside- rich earthy fields and the stench of livestock, or the tantalizing, confusing brew of aromas from the forest. Layers upon layers of things, living and dead things, pleasant and absolutely revolting things- created a dizzying soup he could not even begin to pick apart that would hit him all at once like a wave. 

The necromancer was not a dog, nor had he been something resembling one for long enough to truly grasp everything his nose could suddenly now pick up- he figured it was a skill that would come with time and experience. However, he knew the distinct difference between something alive and something dead . One smelt putrid, the most unappetizing of bitternesses flooding his tongue and clinging like an unwanted house guest to his palette- and it was not the scent of death. No, rather (and this he theorized to be a trait of the Ghoulish kind specifically) life smelt off in a way that often deterred him from running errands into town unless emergency begged it of him. Johannes did not think himself a dramatic man, even if  his mannerisms often bid otherwise (only crowds and dense populations of the living caused any physically noticeable adverse effects) but he really rather not have a weird taste in his mouth all day everyday. 

As it was, coincidentally, now. Being cooped up in a train with many living passengers did nothing for him, especially when every pass between the tottering coaches taunted him with a breeze of gloriously fresh air. This going doubly so as he made his way through the shadowy sleeping cars, the occasional light outside slicing through the darkness. Johannes paused on the outside pass in-between his own car and the one he had just traversed, letting the dewy chill of the forest at midnight wash over him and cleanse his nose. 

It could be worse. It really could be. 

He could not shake the unease from his stiff shoulders. He had never really been close to humanity, nor the living. 

With one notable exception, perhaps. 

Yet, somehow, this ‘new’ repulsion at the smell of anything with a pulse was off-putting. Humans were dumb creatures, and most had a horribly repugnant personality anyway. It could be said the large majority of his own race irked him terribly and had so for decades. But never… Never had the very smell of life pushed him away so, and never had the sickly-sweet scent of rot and decay danced tantalizingly upon his tongue. 

It was not even a matter of simply smelling it either. 

Johannes quickly turned away and opened the door into the next car, the din of wheels running along the track quieting to a vibrating thrum as he stepped inside and shut it behind him. 

No, the necromancer had believed more was at play almost immediately upon first wake all those months ago- and few well-planned experiments proved it quickly enough. He was predisposed to Death, which made a lot of sense logically. Ghouls fed on the dead and rotting corpses of man and beast alike, so why would they care much about the living? In fact the living were dangerous to them- so the stench proved a natural repellent or, in fact, a defense. 

He had often wondered in the last few months what would happen if he were to bite into something living- which thankfully would not happen- and hypothesized the effect would be similar to food poisoning. Like it had been when he first came too after the Dreamlands, where he had had trouble stomaching ‘human’ food for 52.5 days following the event. Not that Horst had known of course.

On the matter of Horst, the irony was not lost on Johannes. He was effectively a reverse vampire, and he was sure his brother would have found much humor in that. 

The blast of fresh air that had followed Johannes as he had entered quickly died in the stagnant pools of his sleeping car’s vents, prickling at his nose. He couldn’t help but sigh, resigning himself to the small discomfort. Nothing could be done to help it, afterall. By this point Leonie had probably told Horst that Johannes had hoodwinked him to escape, but he knew the Somewhat-Vampire would not follow him- at least, not until morning. He would cursed himself later for his loose lips, but now he was just tired, drawing out the key to their shared cabin with a careful hand. Nothing on the subject of ‘meat’ should have been spoken, and yet he had made the mistake of doing exactly so. The conversation should have died, had died, but true to his profession he’d sparked life where it did not belong. Too bad such amazing results were not to be had in his actual work. 

Johannes replayed that night’s conversation as he absentmindedly grabbed for the door handle, glancing up when another gust of fresh air tickled his nose. No one came his way- the creak of the door opposite to the one Johannes had entered and the fading footsteps beyond (quickly covered by the train’s cacophony itself) the only clue as to whoever had been shielded in the gloom. No one came around the bend, so he assumed someone had left. Curious , Johannes could have sworn all passengers still on-board this far into the journey had been in the lounge car as he had made his way through. 

Curiouser still, the handle turned smoothly under his fingers and opened with a cheery click , despite the other hand- holding the key- having yet to approach it. 

“Ah Scheiße,” he muttered. Johannes had been the last to leave and had locked the door behind him. For certain. No one had been back to the room since and as he stood, frozen stiff and silent- he could not hear anything moving inside.

However, he could smell.

And Someone had been in their cabin. 

Chapter Text

It had to be said that he’d known something was different from the start. To be entirely accurate, many things had been different. Cataloging each one, however, had taken far too long in his highly esteemed opinion. The delay was in large part due to a certain Mirkarvian disturbance that really did not need revisiting. He had not been able, after all,  to properly test the limits of, nor experiment with his new and-or improved physiological characteristics until he and Horst had returned to the house. Much of the initial discoveries had, as such, happened on the fly in the field. It was not the Necromancer’s preferred method, and it had often left him reeling in the aftermath of any such experience.

The scent of werecreatures had been one of those unforgettable and viscerally repugnant disturbances, both for its pure pungency and Johannes’ inability to escape it, even after the Ministerium Tenebrae  had been dealt with and the dust had settled. The saccharine odor clung to their very clothes, and in a fit of desperate frustration Johannes’ burnt the lot- including Horst’s garments, much to the later’s consternation. In a small miracle (because Johannes was at the end of his proverbial rope, and it was either the clothes or his nose, and he did not fancy much losing the later) the Then-Proper Vampire had not complained too much, considering his nose had likewise been assaulted- even if he had not, at the time, understood why his supposedly olfactory-challenged human brother had been so insistent.

Germs, Horst had figured. He was not that off the mark- that had also been a concern, albeit a minor one. Who knows if one could catch rabies off an ugly black coat? 

Initially, (and embarrassingly in retrospect) it had taken Johannes an uncomfortable couple of days to realize what was constantly irritating him so- especially when the members of Miss Virginia Montgomery’s Flying Circus & Co did not particularly seem bothered. Why he had not realized his olfactory sense had remained in its heightened ghoulish capacity earlier in the series of events post-Dreamland Nyarlathotep? Well that, he could only chalk up to distraction and lack of anything that would properly register with it. Something like a drove of questionably-sourced, flea-bitten, lunar-enabled, bipedal mutts- or a ragtag group of fairly lively humans, admittedly accompanied also by a decently large concentration of undead ones. His theories on the ghoulish sense of smell had been put on a the back-burner at the time, understandably, annoyingly, due to the circumstances. 

Now, however, he had the time to experiment and now , he could be thorough . It was a sunny morning, warm but the breeze fresh and cool. Birds sang a horribly pitchy tune as the necromancer set to work, glancing upwards with a disdainful grimace. No kronk taunted him from the treetops. Dennis and Denzil had been set free from their shed-ish confines early the evening before, a perfect in-between moment when the sun just barely set and Horst had yet to rise- the oaf liked to sleep in after all. Johannes had been careful to plan around his brother’s schedule so as to not stir suspicion, and so far the scheming was paying off. As it usually did. 

He tried not to compare himself to a mongrel scenthound, though the damned thought nipped at his heels as he set off yet again into the woods surrounding the house.  Following the disturbingly-inviting-yet-faint scent of flesh long past its sell-by date was fairly easy, almost unnervingly so, and he often paused to jot a few notes as a not-distraction. After a moment’s pondering on one such breaks, Johannes was struck with the thought that the trail was faint not because it was old, necessarily, but rather because there was barely any flesh still attached to the frames of those shambling scarecrows to begin with. The realization did not reassure him, and he marked it down in his book, framed in two question marks, for ‘later’. If this was skewing his results, he would have to acquire newer… baits? Lures? Whatever they were, it would not be fun. The trip 5 or 6 towns over to get what he needed would be a hassle- he suspected most townsfolk were getting wise to his habits (as daft as they were, it had been years, and they were bound to realize at some point). Horst would not be too pleased either. He very much doubted his brother would be a willingly recruited bit of muscle to dig up a grave. With a sigh and a stretch that popped his back, the necromancer put the matter away for now and continued on, deeper into the woods. 

Johannes ducked under a fallen tree trunk and paused again in a clearing not long after, reveling despite himself at the sheer amount of things he could smell with one deep, drawn out breath. The earthy scents of life and green-things around him, however, seemed almost like a dull, boorish and unattractive background to the pair of undeads’ trail. His focus was naturally pulled to that trail, and he let it do so- attempting and somewhat failing to push the confusing nausea of everything else to the back of his mind. Another scrawled note in the book, a moment to look around the strangely silent woods- and then he went on his way, eager to get back to the house and move on. After he had corralled Dennis and Denzil back into their shed and the mounting headache at his temple subsided, of course. 

The second part of his experiment, as it happened, also ended in a painfully nauseating headache that lasted far longer into the night then Johannes would have liked. He did not want nor need Horst’s pestering, he just needed some silence to think and ponder over the day’s findings in peace. When the other finally left, the house was already blanketed by the silence of night. Cabal passed a hand through his hair, briefly considering simply turning in and continuing in the morning. However, he doubted he could even if he tried- between the headache and the off-putting implications of this day’s results, sleep would evade him until the early hours of the morning. Might as well cut his loses and spend that time productively, instead of staring at his ceiling and guessing at what stupidly reckless creature had to have wandered beyond the fence for the Garden to make a sound like that . So, he made his way to his desk in the attic and set to work. 

Usually, Johannes kept his trips into the neighboring village to a minimum on a good year, and it was now evident that he would be cutting back on those misadventures even further, if he could help it. The impact had been something to the effect of the woods earlier, but much more potent and, to a degree painful . He let out a sigh, dragging a hand down his face as he leaned back in his chair, letting the pen he’d been using to meticulously copy his field notes into a sturdier book drop from his hand unto the desk. 

“I can’t just avoid people forever” Johannes muttered under his breath, rubbing at his temple as he slouched back over the likely-ink-stained desktop. No matter how much he wanted to avoid it, his work required trips to civilization, and he had to build up a tolerance to the newly-repulsive scent of humanity if he was to spend any amount of time in a city. He would either get used to it or find something to help him manage it, like he did with every other curveball he’d been thrown in the last couple of months. However, the thought of keeping a vial of pseudo-smelling-salts in his breast pocket like some melodramatic theater louse trying too hard in a cheap production of Pygmalion, with a bit too much of the director’s personal ‘flare’- well. That simply irked him further. 

That left Johannes with few choices, and he knew with a bitter loathing exactly what needed to be done. Until he got a handle on his thrice-damned nose at least. 

The town’s folk had no idea what had happened, and they were not keen on finding out either. Very quickly, the bench by the small planter garden marking the townsquare became something to be avoided, at all costs. Which was impractical on the best of days, you had to walk by it to get anything done. The villagesquare was not that spacious after all. He was there when they least expected him, at any hour of the day, on random days- gone before anyone could get Sergeant Parkins to handle it as if he knew when someone chimed the bell to the station’s door. He was like a shadow breathing down the necks of the town’s people- just sitting there and ready a newspaper. People feared even the barest of glances his way, the risk of catching sight of unsettling eyes too great. 

The plague lasted for months, or what seemed like it. Sometimes a week would pass without a single sighting, a horrid visit. Sometimes only a few hours. 

Until, all of a sudden in the mid-summer heat, the visits stopped altogether. 

The Sergeant said he hadn’t done a thing, but no one quite believed him. The Christmas bribes were well-known, afterall. In anycase, the priest had his work cut out for him, with requests from all over the countryside- as gossip traveled quickly, you see- to come bless the homes of every shaken soul in the district.