Wölfin

Rachel acknowledged this by placing her tool kit on a surgical table. She clicked it open and pulled out a vial containing a lemon-yellow powder. She took out the small spoon and scooped out a small morsel.

Bauer crossed his arms and glowered. Schmidt watched her unemotively.

Rachel took a huge breath. Unlike the henbane she had used before, the vervain did not require her to cross into Limbo and subject her to the arcanic storm of that place, but it did induce a much more intense acute pain like a white-hot needle right into the brain as soon as the powder's magic took effect. The pain was only very momentary but nonetheless unpleasant. It was her least favorite of her potions.

She placed the miniscule spoon into her nostril and snorted the vervain powder. The pain came. Searing her. She let out a grunt of pain. Schmidt moved to grab her, perhaps expecting her to collapse again as she had with the henbane. She motioned for him to stay put as the pain began to clear. Arcanic energy began to roil in her mind. The vervain only lasted a few minutes, so she got to work at once. She leaned over the corpse, pressed her hands against each of Rauschenberg's temples, and allowed the arcanic energy of his memory to flow into her brain to start searching for the memory she was looking for -- the last moments of his life. The process can be likened to fishing for an object from a bag without being able to peer into it, so it could take, and she may not even find the memory in question. However, a dying memory was typically quite easy to reach. It always resided somewhere on the surface, and being the freshest memory, she never had trouble finding it.

She found it, sensing it, as she might sense her lipstick in her purse, and pulled it out. The thought flooded into her mind like water pouring from a jug, running through her mind in reverse as she pulled it out. Its colors were gray. Much of the scenery was blurred or burnt shadows and nothing more, but all the better to give focus to the details that mattered to her now.

It was hard, at first, to make sense of what she was seeing at first. Death memories were often filled with terror and confusion, which often obfuscated the details. There was a flurry of white. Rauschenberg's own screaming. Pain. Incredible pain. Slashing claws. Rauschenberg's eyes were wide and fixed in horror at his chest as the gory Nazi symbol from which hot blood crawled from the floor began to seal up. The memories always ran in reverse. This always disoriented her at first and required a concerted effort to make sense of. Rachel fixed her attention on the razor-sharp claws sinking deeply into his chest. After his chest fully sealed up, Rauschenberg sprung into a standing position. Screaming turned into heavy breathing and whimpering. Tears distorted his vision. He was in a small dark room. He was in a bathroom. He had run there from his bedroom. Chased there.

The bathroom door came open, and he flew back into his room through a dark hallway. Next, he was lying on his back on his bed staring up in a mix of awe and confused terror at a monster. In the gray and black shadows of Rauschenberg's memory, Rachel could not ascertain too great a detail of what sort of monster she observed, only sensing that the creature had rough white hair covering its body and that its eyes were wet with moonlight.

The creature disappeared as Rauschenberg's memory rewound farther. The sensation of terror disappeared, replaced instead with pleasure. Pleasure in the loins. Pleasure in the chest. In the creature's place atop the doomed Herr Doktor, sat a woman. The memory became too faded. The face was hard to ascertain. Rachel channeled all her arcanic might to render the details of the memory.  The woman was blonde. She had long flowing hair. Rachel drew more from her well of arcanic energy and the details continued to gain granularity. A pearlescent body wreathed in darkness. Lush red lips. Blue eyes. Rachel gasped as she recognized the rector's lobotomized daughter, Isolde, wearing a smile shaped like a glinting dagger. Pleasure in that smile drawn not from the sex, but from the anticipation of the gruesome death she was about to deliver.

Before being able to pull out anything else from the memory, Rachel's well of arcanic energy dried up. The memory vanishing like sand between her fingers.

She pulled her hands off Rauschenberg's temples, and once she found her balance and a stable constitution, she turned to Schmidt and Bauer and said, "I have a name."

Bauer had kept his glower. His growing consternation made his wrinkles deeper. "Do you, now?" he said skeptically.

Schmidt, on the other hand, seemed interested in what else she might have to say.

"Well?"

She glanced back at Bauer and deciding it would be counterproductive to say anything in his presence, turned back to Schmidt and said, "Memories can be quite flawed, as you very well may know, investigator. We should discuss it in private."

Bauer let out a haughty snort and rolled his eyes. "If you don't mind, Doctor Blake, Herr Schmidt, I have a meeting to attend and I would rather not have you perform any other unnecessary... procedures on Doctor Rauschenberg's body while I am not present, so if you please..."

Bauer pointed his hand with an emphatic insistence at the door. Rachel shut her briefcase and politely went along with Schmidt. After he locked up the morgue and disappeared from view, Rachel turned to Schmidt and said,

"Isolde Fischer was the woman in Rauschenberg's memory."

Schmidt stared at her.

"Though the memory might be flawed," Rachel conceded, seeing his expression. "They often are when muddied by trauma."

"Muddied indeed. It is quite impossible that Isolde Fischer murdered Rauschenberg."

Schmidt took out a cigarette and lit it. Rachel put out a hand for one, so he gave her one.

"Because she is lobotomized?" she asked.

Schmidt nodded. "Has been for years. I'm certain she is quite incapable of homicide."

Rachel nodded in agreement. But she was unsettled by the vividness of the memory, in particular which normally confers its veracity. She searched her own memory for all the times she had used the vervain on a corpse. The memories were more often than not, flawed, though often only in the details. A rape victim misremembering the color of her rapist's hair for instance, or a man mistaking his wife for his sister as the murderer. A young boy so certain that his murderer had fire-red eyes. In moments of trauma, people often tended to fill in the details in ways that drew on some fear or anxiety hidden in their shadows, but she had seen nothing quite as twisted as Rauschenberg's. Nothing as surreal and macabre as a lobotomized woman turning into a werewolf to claw the Nazi symbol into his chest. Rauschenberg's memory was nothing quite like she had ever experienced before. For that reason, as absurd as it appeared, she could not discount what his memory showed. One possibility that she was willing to entertain was that Rauschenberg might have supplanted some other woman's face with Isolde's. Perhaps as a figment of his sexual fantasy, and the monster that she had transformed into, a figment of his worst nightmare.

Regardless of the veracity of Rauschenberg's memory, what was fundamentally true was that Rauschenberg was murdered, and it had been Isolde he had imagined doing it. Even if she could not have possibly committed the murder, there must be a connection. Isolde was the place to start, then.

"Herr Schmidt, why was Isolde lobotomized?"

For the first time, she saw a look of discomfort twist his normally stoic face. He grimaced momentarily before saying, "She was a homosexual."

Rachel was taken aback. As repulsive as she found lobotomies to be generally, to have one performed for such a reason was beyond the pale, not the least because she too was so 'afflicted'. Her immediate response was to feel an intense compassion for the lobotomized woman, but she quickly buried that in her mind. She could not let emotions affect her job.

"Where was the lobotomy performed?"

Schmidt nodded, understanding the question to be one that might normally be asked by one probing for possible leads. He took a long drag of his cigarette, and if it were even possible, he grimaced harder. After blowing out the smoke, he replied, "Where does not matter as much as who."

"Then who, pray tell, performed the lobotomy?"

"Her mother."

The rain had stopped when Rachel and Schmidt stepped out of the morgue.

"It's getting quite late now, so I'm afraid this is where our investigation will end for the day. My wife will be wondering about me. Shall I walk you home?"

"No. That will not be necessary. I'd much rather have a lonely stroll."

"Very well, then I'll see you in the morning. Good night, Doctor Blake."

"Good night, Herr Schmidt."

All the lights were lit along the narrow medieval streets, and though the streetlamps were extinguished, the moon was full, so its illumination reflected brightly off the wet cobblestones, giving enough light to navigate through the dark April night. A thick mist masked the city like a wedding veil.

A cigarette helped thoughts roll through her head more smoothly. She let them roll, as she turned to walk down the Hauptstrasse, the main street that cut through the city, and down the lower street, below the gothic Heiliggeistkirche -- the Holy Spirit Church, around the last remaining indication of life in the city existed. University students and the American soldiers stationed at the nearby US Army 5th Corps garrison spilled out of the rows of alley bars. They were singing drinking songs. The revelry offended her, so she hurried along, avoiding eye contact with the young drunken men who turned their bright eyes her way. She crossed the Neckar River on the 'Old Bridge' to get to her apartment, pausing in the middle of the bridge, next to a young couple that held each other tightly as they gazed at the river. The couple paid her no mind. They were lost in their own world.

She finished her cigarette and lit another. The Neckar River flowed with the eternal calmness of the river Styx. The silver moonlight glinting on the inky water like souls glinting with effervescent permanence.

The thoughts ruminating in Rachel's mind centered around what Schmidt had said about Sabine Fischer. All the admiration she had shown her earlier, for her lofty position as rector of a prestigious university, and for her erudition -- whatever admiration there was left had all disappeared, replaced by nothing but ugly disdain. Rachel toyed with the notion that perhaps the rector was somehow involved with the murders, but quickly put that aside as a mere need to fulfill a newly acquired fantasy. After all, why hire her for this job? Why hire the witch renown to always catch her crook? After a half-day's work, she had more questions than answers but what she had was a good start. With the tools at her disposal, it was only a matter of time before she found her person. Only a matter of time before she could mark her last soul for the reaping and finally receive her most important payment -- the name of her sister's killer.

She finished her cigarette, then continued across the bridge to her apartment.

Normally reserved for visiting scholars, the apartment the Bundeskriminalamt boarded her in was a small nook in the corner attic of a building that was once a shoe factory. Small and utilitarian, it offered a dinette, a living room with a couch, and a comfortable bed that was larger than what she needed. The place smelled lightly of turpentine and pinewood, and the wallpaper had turned the color of sun-dried oranges. Otherwise, it was cozy. It had a bit of old-world charm, the best of which was the view of the Neckar River, the dark church steeples, and the large castle ruins that sat just above the sleepy city. For her purposes, it was more than adequate.

Rachel could not sleep that night. A storm poured heavily and shook her apartment with thunder. Even without the din, she was sure she wouldn't have been able to sleep. Her insomnia ravaged her.

She did the only thing she could think of doing to while away the sleepless hours. It was the first full moon after the Autumnal Equinox, which made it a perfect night to brew a batch of her shadow-shift potion, a potion made from deathly nightshade, that momentarily transformed her into a shadow. Useful for remaining hidden in dark places, this potion had gotten her both into and out of trouble on more than one occasion. Beneath her bed, she kept a small trunk of alchemical ingredients along with a mortar and pestle, an alembic still, a hessian crucible, an aludel subliming pot, and a sand bath. She set up the equipment at her small dinner table then put on a Julie London record that she picked out from the record cabinet. Julie London because it was the only music in the apartment with which she was even vaguely familiar. The music put her in a calm mood as she pulverized a mixture of dried deathly nightshade flower, the active ingredient, along with a stalk of houndstongue and a pinch of slowworm in a small stone mortar. Potions weren't particularly hard to brew, but it wasn't exactly a mindless activity either, as special attention was required to ensure the right size of the powder granules. Too large, and the granules would not dissolve in the arcanic diluent. Too fine, and the distillate would evaporate too quickly. She liked the attentiveness required because it kept out of her mind the thoughts that kept her insomnia engaged. Potion brewing was therapeutic.

After pulverizing the powder to the proper granularity, she set up her aludel to sublimate the arcanic diluent in the sand bath.

Just as she was about to begin heating the sand bath, a crackling energy, like lightning, filled the air, followed by a rush of a sharp sulfur smell. She didn't have to look up to know the cause of the disturbance -- the well-dressed demon who had just apparated into the armchair in her living room, deeply engrossed in a book, or at least, pretending to be.

"Good evening, Sam," Rachel greeted, keeping her eyes fixed on the volatile mixture of arcanic crystals and orpiment as she carefully lowered them into the aludel.

The demon who she addressed as Sam gave the appearance, as he always did in the mortal plane, as a handsome man with black slicked-back hair wearing a well-tailored pinstripe suit. He was humming along to Julie London while he read his book when Rachel greeted him. He faked a surprised jolt.

"Oh, the nine circles, you gave me a start." He clutched his heart or the place his heart would be if he had one.

"What are you doing here, Sam? It's late."

"Yes, I know. It is very late, and you're still up. You're not getting the rest you need, darling."

He snapped his book shut, and it vanished with a crackle into thin air.

He stood, came over, and leaned against the wall to watch Rachel set flame to the sand bath to start sublimating her arcanic crystal and orpiment mixture into diluent.

"I'm running low on shadow-shift potion."

Sam smirked. His blood-red eyes glistened in the soft dining room light. She could see pity in them, despite their menacing appearance, but she knew the look of pity was a deception, as were whatever compassionate words that would soon come dribbling like silky cream out of his mouth.

"I'd rather you get a good night's sleep. You look like a starved ghoul."

Rachel answered pointedly. "I appreciate your concern for my health, Sam, but you see, something is keeping me up. A pact that needs fulfilling, as it were. You might know something about that."

"I would never put that sort of pressure on you, Rachel. You put that on yourself. And killing yourself for it, well, I consider that to be quite counterproductive. Don't you think?"

He pulled out a dining chair and sat in it. He rested his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands to watch the heated crystals sublimate and fog up the inside of the aludel.

She scowled at him. She fumed as much as the crystals.

"You wanted souls Sam. This is how I get your souls, dammit. The last one should have counted for something. But he didn't. So here we are."

Sam tsked. "Of course, he counts, Rachel. Once he's in my possession, that is. As long as the souls are marinating in their meat vessels, they are of no use to me."

An impish grin curled onto his lips. "Of course, they don't have to. You can always take it upon yourself to do what the judge, in all his wisdom, could not."

He flicked his wrist and, in his hand, appeared a thin misericorde dagger. He twirled it deftly and then offered it to Rachel.

"And condemn my own soul to hell? Nice try Sammy boy," Rachel replied, ignoring the dagger.

The demon shrugged. He clenched his fist around the dagger, and it vanished. "Well, worth a try anyways."

He crossed his arms as he sat back in his chair. The crystals had stopped sublimating. Rachel extinguished the flame to allow the upper collection chamber to start cooling. The sublimate sweat that beaded along the inside of the glass began to drip into the bottom of the chamber. This fluid was what she would mix her powder with to imbue it with the desired properties.

"Now, tell me all about this new soul."

"Not much to say."

"Not at all?"

"Nothing I'm interested in telling you."

"Oh, Rachel, you vex me."

"Happy to hear I have that effect on you."

The demon chuckled. "You see? That's why you're my favorite witch. You're so darn prickly."

He stood again and went to lean against the frame of the window and began to trace aimless curlicue shapes into the fogged-up windowpane.

"I want to help you, Rachel. But you have to help me help you."

"That always seems to work out just swell for me," Rachel replied sardonically.

"More than you think," replied the demon quickly.

He dragged his palm across the windowpane to erase the aimless shapes he traced in the fog. The pale blue glow of lightning illuminated the window momentarily, and then shortly after, thunder rumbled.

"I want you to succeed."

"And I want you to tell me where my sister's killer is."

"You still owe me one soul."

Rachel stood abruptly. Her chair squealed against the wooden floor. Her hands were clenched into shaking fists.

"I gave you ten souls, dammit!" Rachel yelled.

"Nine. You gave me nine. They don't count unless they're dead. Shall we go over the fine print again?"

"It's always something with you, Sammael. You're screwing me over. You're making me do your dirty work for you for nothing, aren't you? I bet it was you who convinced that last judge against the death sentence. You sniveling son of a --"

Before she could finish, she was thrown violently to the wall by an invisible force. Sam apparated out of thin air right in front of her and, before she could catch her breath after having the wind knocked out of her, he clenched his hand around her throat to strangle her, sliding her up the side of the wall. Her feet kicked helplessly. She tried desperately to pry his hand off her neck, but it was hopeless. He easily overpowered her. He snarled, baring sharp canines and when he spoke, his voice echoed. "Now, now, you watch your mouth, young lady, or I might have to wash it out with soap."

He released her. She collapsed to all fours, gasping for air.

He held out a hand to help her up. Coughing, she took it, and he pulled her to her feet. He sighed and put on a cheery smile. "I suppose I know to leave well enough alone. So, I'm off."

He reached up to his head. A fedora popped into his hand just in time to fit snugly onto his head. In his other hand, appeared a bottle, which he placed on the kitchen counter. "This. Is a wonderful sherry. A strong Oloroso. Whenever I'm having a sleepless night, I'll have a glass. It knocks me right out. It'll do you some good. Need anything else?"