Vampire Hunter: Corey Crowgarden's guide to killing vampires for fun and profit.

Lesson 5 part 3

Everyone was quiet in the car.
"Let's get some lunch," Bobby said, driving North to the intersection where a relatively quiet Aqueduct Street, met a much busier and louder Niagara Street. They waited at the red light. A right turn would have taken them North to the comfort and banality of the Seaway Mall, a left hand turn would have directed them back downtown to the half empty collection of shops that used to have businesses and coffee shops that used to be banks.
The years had not been kind to downtown Welland, and even the most ardent supporters of the Rose city, the ones with the Rose coloured glasses, could not deny that simple fact.
Straight through the intersection would lead to a McDonald's and that was good enough for them.
Corey always ordered the same thing, two cheeseburgers, small fries and small Diet Coke. The breakfast of ex-champions, but you could actually get breakfast still.
The restaurant was empty so there wasn't much competition for the row of screens that you could order on. Corey thought of how handy these screens had been at the Nanjing train station, how he only had to remember the receipt number in Chinese to get his food.
Numbers was the first thing he learned in Chinese.
After they collected their food they sat away from the counter at the plastic tables where you could see out the window, across the exit for the drive through and to the old KFC restaurant, another favourite of his in China, that had been refurbished into another cannabis store.
This is progress, Corey thought as he sat with a view out the window.
"I'm sorry," he said, looking at the burgers waiting to be unwrapped on his tray. "I'm a fucking coward."
"Don't," Bobby said. "It's an impossible situation."
"I didn't get very far into... I don't know, what I am going to term "the recovery process". Tim said, then took a long pull of his Orange soda. "The body is dead, but the sentience is still very much here. I was thinking about transferring the essence, the sentience to another object, then kick starting the body, then returning the sentience back to the body.."
"Could you do that?" Bobby asked as a glob of ketchup slid from the burger and fell on the wrapping paper.
"Fucked if I know," Tim said.
"Well, let's break it down," Corey said, "can you transfer the essence to another object?"
"Probably." Tim said. "I mean I have done it with pets... animals. A lot less complicated..."
"And morally ambiguous" said Bobby.
"True, but we are talking about could it be done. Should it be done is another question all together."
"What was the object that you used?" Corey asked.
Tim showed them the ring he wore on the middle finger of his right hand. It was a black quartz on a simple single band.
"Nice ring," Bobby said, "but how do we know that it has ..." and Bobby paused a moment... or pawsed if you will.
"Ringo, my old spaniel," said Tim.
"How do we know it has Ringo's essence in it?"
"He warns me about dangers."
Bobby thought for a moment, "would it work for anyone else? I'm not trying to challenge you, but do we know if that would work?"
"It's magic," Corey said. "We don't know if.. or how any of it works."
"I did the ritual's and it seems to work. She warned me about the tainted coming to burn down the house," Tim said. "But I can see what you mean."
"Okay, if we go from the premise that you could do it... what would you need?" Corey asked.
Tim sat back for a moment and started to slurp the straw of his orange soda, "I would need to return to the pump house and my library."
"Can we use the trod?" Corey asked.
"Yes, it has limitations, but we can use it."
"What limits?" Bobby asked.
"No tainted, no undead."
"What happens if they try?" Corey asked, sipping at the Diet Coke.
"The entrance appears to be a mirror that hangs on the back of a door in the basement under the pump house," Tim said.
"Can we all use it," Corey asked, "at once?"
"We should be able to," Tim replied. "It's a hub. We can go to a few places. I've never taken a group in before."