Bambi and the Duke

"Huh, he did turn to a human," harrumphed the doctor, with a little tch, he said, "Let me release him," Leonard raised his hand wanting him to stop unbelting the man from the table. 

"Keep him here."

Now that the man had turned successfully back to a human with all the signs of being under a witch's transformation gone, the doctor had no more interest in this one. 

Murk asked, "What do I do with him? He is of no use to me," Leonard sent a small glare making the average vampire shut up instantly, "Murk," the doctor straightened his back, leaning closer towards the Duke to listen better to what the senior councilman had to say.

"There are chances of him resurfacing and I need him under your observation. You have taken his blood samples," the doctor nodded his head, "Run the tests and see what was put inside his body to turn him. If something happens to him, I will have your neck put under the sawing machine. I need the man in once piece no matter what. ," Murk gave the Duke a shocked expression.

Murk gave a nervous laugh, saying, "Duke Leonard, I will look after him well. Just like my pet hamster but then if something happens to him as you said about this resurfacing. You cannot put it on me," he said waiting for the Duke to respond who was staring at the test subject. Murk was older than Leo in decades yet the man was somehow scared of Leonard which made Vivian wonder why. 

"Aren't you the renowned doctor Murk. Fix him if something goes wrong. I will come back to look at the tests later," the way Leonard said it gravely, Vivian felt her heart flip in her chest. 

But before they could leave, they heard footsteps approach in the cell rooms to indicate that a new cellmate was being added in the building for breaking the law. Turning back, Vivian was about to peek when the councilman named Creed appeared next to her inside the room. 

His black eye-patch was in pace to cover one of his eyes, his body built quite well for his age as he looked somewhere in his mid-forties. The last time Vivian hadn't noticed he was tall during the time of their examination but now she could tell that he was a tall man. Unlike Lionel who always had his eyes narrowed at every and anyone which sometimes had included his rank of councilman, this one appeared to be held with much knowledge with enough maturity. 

His red eye which was in view looked at the man down on the table and then went to meet Leonard's eyes to greet him, "Good day, Duke Leonard. I see you finished your field trip."

Leonard offered the elder man with a slight bow of his head which didn't go deep but only sending a small gesture, to greet him, "It went well councilman Creed."

"That's good to hear," Creed responded with a smile on his lips, his eyes crinkling at the side ends. When his eyes fell on the box of bottles where the doctor was holding one of the bottles in his hand, he commented, "Murk is using the gift well."

The doctor bowed his head deep which could have compensated Leo's lack of bow in it, "This lowly vampire is thankful for your gift," he said lifting his head. 

"It is good to see it put in use. It would be such a waste to not let someone as wise as yourself to make use of it," Creed responded back with a happy smile. And as the man turned around he caught sight of Vivian who gave a bow to him. The man having nothing to say to her, returned her bow with a smile and then left the cell room which had fallen a little tense since the elder councilman's short visit.

"We'll be leaving as well," Leonard informed, leaving the doctors side to walk towards the grilled door. 

"Where will you be going?" Murk had thought he would stay a little longer.

"Do I need to give you my schedule? She's my wife, not you, Murk," came the clipped tone and the doctor smiled this time a little smug. The Duke didn't have to proclaim it over and over again that she was his wife. Not like he was trying to steal her, "Get your test results ready. I will need them."

Vivian had spent a short time in here looking at the doctor working but she was intrigued with the changes of what she had seen that somewhere she wanted to stay behind and see how the tests where being performed. Nonetheless, when Leo readied himself to leave she did the same and followed him out of the building. 

On her way back, she didn't make eye contact with the cell members and kept her eyes ahead of her while making sure to walk right at the center of the passage. Once they were out, Vivian asked,

"The bottle which the doctor had with him. The white one. Can't it be used on the vampires who are undergoing corruption?" she had been curious to ask this since she had seen the human from the village change back to his human self. 

"It doesn't work," he replied back.

"Why not?"

"The potion is made from the white witches bones. You negate a positive and negative occurrence as they are starkly different from black witches. Their essence can be used to heal. It is one of the many reasons why the white witches have gone to hiding now. A decade or two ago white witches were hunted unlike now where the rule has been made after one of the renounced witches. You must already know that they were used by the councilmen themselves to find and understand what they could do. That is one of the many ways how Creed came in the possession of the box which he handed down to the council which went to Murk," explained Leonard.

"A new edict was found stating no one was allowed to take a white witch for experiments or anything remotely close. But then there are people who will still continue to do behind our back. We have put most of the white witches in the church in the hope that not only will they get employment but also that we can have a headcount to make sure everyone is alive and no one breaks the law." 

Vivian tried to understand what he conveyed to her as they walked through the trees, "Who was the owner of it?"

"Owner?"

"Yes," she answered him, "The owner of the box which councilman Creed came to get hold of it."

"I don't know about that, Vivi. I heard from one of the councilmen that he found it before the Edict for the safety of the white witches were made," he replied back. Vivian saw that they were not heading towards the building but near the shed were some of the carriages were stationed. 

"Are we going home?" she asked Leonard. He had told the doctor vampire that he would return in the evening but if they went home how would he return back home? Was he planning to send her back while he would stay here? Ready to voice her choice of wanting to stay here with him she opened her mouth before she heard Leo speak to someone behind them,

"Did you bring it?" 

Vivian's face snapped around to see who Leo was speaking to when her eyes fell on to the electric blue eyes man. It was Maximillian Gibbs. 

"Here it is. This is something very odd. Is it for Murk?" Maxmillian asked and then greeted the lady, "Good evening, Lady Vivian. How is the council treating you so far?" 

Vivian wondered how it was going. Apart from having to see a dead body, a deranged vampire going berserk and killed in front of her, a doctor who was crazy, she went to answer him, "It's been going well."

"Everyone says the same. I was hoping for another answer," Maximillian replied back to get a small glare to be sent by his friend Leonard, "Really it is hard to know that Nicholas was your mentor. He being one also didn't put a lid to that temper of yours," he smiled. 

Rolling his eyes, Leonard asked, "How many sticks are these?" 

"Five. Finding them in the market is very hard. You should have asked Damien. He has better connections than I," the man gave a wide smile which let out the fangs to be protruded out of his lips. Vivian wondered what they were as Leonard took hold of the sticks which the blue-eyed man had taken out from his pocket. 

"Damien has been working near the city. Told he had something to take care of," since the man had taken the slave into his mansion, the man was more than necessary on edge, "Lionel isn't here yet but if he does come let him know that I have stationed Dutan and Heuren at the village."

"Oh? Why is that?" Maximilian raised his perfectly shaped thick eyebrow in question, "Black witch? I would like to go there."

"They have eradicated the black witches that are in the vicinity. The last order passed wasn't full proofed or rather was fool proofed allowing the black witches to pass through again and infiltrate," answered Leonard, his lips set into a thin unpleased line. 

"You think it is the switcher?" his friend asked but Leo shook his head. 

"Hmm. It must be someone from the council. A switcher who is currently following and working with the black witch."

"That's gotta suck," laughed Maximillian, "Well, I would like to stay and come along but work calls. I will see you later. Miss," he bowed again and then headed towards the mansion building. 

With Maximillian away from their sight. Vivian saw Leo looking at the sticks, she asked him, "Why hasn't anyone done anything of the switcher?" Clearly, it was a big deal now that the infiltration had taken there was no saying how the law could be misused and by whom. 

"It will cause more than a commotion in there. An imbalance in the hierarchy that currently exists which could overthrow all the possible laws that have been followed until now. As much as we call ourselves councilmen's, the nature of stupidity will always continue," frowned Leonard, putting the sticks in his coat he started to walk and she followed to walk next to him, "We don't know who is the one posing to be whom and if the switcher feels we are on his tracks, there are possibilities that he will kill the next person and get back here. The councilmen's have their respective jobs which are stationed and changed every now and then so doing a headcount isn't exactly going to help." 

He saw Vivian eye his coat where he had placed the sticks, "This is for Nicholas."

"What are they?" They looked like any ordinary sticks but after hearing from Maximillian that they were rare and hard to find, like many other things she was curious about it. 

"You would really like to know?" he asked in confirmation to get a quick nod, "They are rare because they are grown around the cemetery."

Cemetery? "Graveyard?" she asked him. 

"Yes, same. If you pick your usual plants, they make use of normal soil along with animal manure and other little things which you will often see. But these, these make use of the dead to grow. Two years ago it was found that a man was going to the graves, disturbing the dead to which the villagers protested about what was going on until it was finally put under the category of not to be grown."

"What's wrong with it being grown?"

"These sticks are highly nutritious when it comes in healing but in Nick's case it is a snack for the ghouls," Vivian passed him an incredulous look making him laugh, "Yeah, they are like sweet treats to them. I need Nick's ghoul to check something for me but the man is too stingy when it comes to loaning his ghouls."

Thinking about it, Vivian suggested, "I can speak to Everest if you need help."

"I don't know what to make of your and the ghoul's...friendship."

She smiled hearing this, "Are you jealous, Leo?"

"It's a messed up soul, there's nothing to be jealous of."

"True," she sang, "Maybe the next time he visits me, I will ask him for your favour. You give him the sticks directly."

Leonard and Vivian had made a trip back to the cell room where the man had been held. Seeing that he had completely returned back to normal, they left the council to head back to the Carmichael mansion. 

But what the doctor and the others failed to notice was that by the end of the day, the nails on the man's feet had started to discolour where his shoes had been put back in place, from a perfect white to a shade of yellow which by the time of midnight had begun to turn green.

During the time the villager whose nails had begun to discolour to green, at the same time a man entered the cell building where the criminals were kept in the cells who had fallen asleep. The man walked towards the doctor's cell room and picked out the key from his pocket which he had borrowed or rather had stolen so that he could enter this place which was not allowed to be entered by anyone. 

The man stepping inside stealthily closed the bars and went to walk towards the man who looked peacefully asleep. 

"Some of the witches sure know how to up their game," he murmured to no one in the room, talking to himself, he stared at the man for a long time and then went to take a look a the box of potions that had been given to the doctor, "So many treasures if one knew how to use it."

The man read through the reports which the doctor had written down as observations. It seemed like another failure from the witches but it was good to see that they weren't succeeding. As much as he was helping the black witches in a certain way to get the humans under control, he wasn't going to let some measly black witches take over their race.

The body still looked like one of a human but the discolouration had already started to spread from the bottom which like the infection was conquering every part internally. The man left without noticing it either. 

By the time the morning arrived, the doctor entered the cell room to see a body which he hadn't left last evening. The man's body looked dry and sucked out of air and water as if it had been preserved using salt for years now. The complexion wasn't far from the black witches which had meant that the man's body had again tried to transform over the night which had been unsuccessful. 

He looked in horror-struck at his face. Not because the body had been turned to a half-witch but because he remembered what the Duke had said to him before leaving the cell room last time. He didn't want to have his head through to be crushed and be killed. Wanting to see what could have happened, he started to operate on the body but when he went to remove the boot so that he could remove the rest of clothes, the feet broke away from the body like an iced snowman.

After having that little mishap, he forbid his assistants to close to the body. 

Murk walked back and forth in the room, his steps being counted by his assistants to see their superior in a fix while also seeing the body that laid on the table. What happened in the medical cell room was extremely confidential. Like this room, there were four more, two in the upper ground and one in the basement which was a place where no one even himself was allowed to enter. 

When the pair of Carmichael's back, Murk put on his best face and ready to explain to the Duke on how he had broken the man's leg when he had not meant it to happen. 

Seeing the body, the lady was the first one to speak, "It is the same."

"Murk," upon the Duke calling his name, the vampire doctor quickly went to his side with his head slightly bowed at the misfortune that took place, "Did you give him anything after we left?"

"Nothing, Sir. Not a drop of water either."

"He turned to a human but turned back again. Any answers to why it might have happened?" asked Leonard with a deep frown. He had expected the white witch's bone potion would have made a difference but apparently, it had no effect or had only prolonged the time of being a human before turning back its course to where it was previously headed. 

"I made the last few tests before leaving and he seemed absolutely fine, Duke Leonard. In perfect pink health with no signs of turning again," Murkh answered confused himself as to what had happened, "And about the half leg," Leo glanced at the feet with the shoe which laid on the floor rather broken.

Leo said, "It is an unsuccessful transition. The body will crumble to dust soon. Make another report and send it over to the Lord of Bonelake."

"Yes, Sir. What do I do with the body?" Vivian who had been staring at the man whom she had seen very much alive but now in the process of decomposition heard Leo say,

"You can clean him up. There's no use of him unless you have the ability to revive him?" the doctor shook his head. Leonard gave it some thought, thinking if they could get anything from it before turning to ask Vivian, "Do you want to check him?"