The wizards split up. Abbott and his goat seemed to know what they were doing. Or maybe they were putting on a brave face. Sandy did not want to seriously consider the latter. He had done what he thought was the right thing at the time five or six years ago. It had ended in worse consequences. But this was a ghoul. Not a former school friend who had control of dementors. Which was worse? Depended how this turned out.

There were bad smells in healing and then there were these scarves. Sandy wiped the corner of his eye with a clean handkerchief. Considered conjuring a bubble round his head with fresh air. But he wanted to have all his wits about him. Clear hearing.

Lucky he did. The sound made the hairs on the back of his neck stick up. Like you took a spider and amplified it. As loud as a dog trying to get purchase with long claws on a wood floor. Only so so much worse. Sandy moved tentatively, lifting his wand. The end illuminating. Looking careful round. Then up.

Sandy's voice dried up in his throat as he gaped. It was worse than he had imagined.

Carrots turned out to be the answer to Vincent Van Goat’s reluctance. Well, he could have a wheelbarrow full of them after as a reward, Jules decided. As long as he didn’t somehow fart the ghoul out his goaty rear end.

“We splitting up?” Robin asked.
“Yeah, spread out,” Jules confirmed, taking up a central position in the morgue, glancing up and about him. He wasted no time, “charm Vinnie over here though, I’ll chuck him a couple of carrots to keep him occupied.”

As Robin secured the goat, Jules got to work with the ritualistic elements of the capture.

“Purification…” he announced to nobody in particular, or maybe himself and Vinnie, if he was truthful. He detatched one of his leather bags from his belt and began to pour a coherent and unbroken salt circle around the goat and the Spirit Division Head. For such a small pouch, a seemingly everlasting supply poured out of it.

Then from another pouched he produced rosemary, sage, vervain… and other herbs prepared in advance for their protective properties. For good measure he sprinkled some on Vinnie’s back like he was seasoning the goat. The majority however made a circle around them both, within the salt circle. As the other wizards with their foul-smelling scarves prowled the dark corners of the morgue, Jules lit several bunches of herbs with his wand, filling the morgue’s imposing atmosphere with the scents of juniper and wormwood. All in all, he and Vincent were smelling sweeter than they had all day.

“Invocation…” Jules muttered, and reached out with the foul-smelling scent to drizzle it beyond the salt.

He eyeballed sweet-smelling carrot-chomping Vinnie for a moment and chucked him another carrot. Then Jules flipped open the book to the page-long incantation. He brandished his wand, ready for binding and transfer.

“This better bloody work,” he told the goat, otherwise it and him were dinner.

There was a crash behind him, and Jules twisted on the spot, eyes wide.

Another carrot!!!

Vinnie Van Go was distracted by the carrots and pleased with himself. For some reason as long as he moved forward, they kept giving him treats, and a widening middle wasn't a concern for him. In fact, if he gained a little maybe that would mean the hoomans liked him! Adored him!

So long as Jules chucked, Vincent trotted happily.

Then he watched Jules do some weird thing with...what was it? Vinnie licked the salt on the ground and bristled, snorting. Jules replaced the licked salt and began putting something on his back. He twisted, walking in a circle and stomped around in the salt circle he was tethered to. He really wanted to know what it was that was put on his back, but he didn't feel comfortable enough to fall to the ground and bare his belly, to roll over.

It didn't matter that the same stuff was on the ground, Vincent wanted what was on his back.

He gave Jules a stink eye until another carrot was given. Vincent stopped mid-happy chomp when he heard the crash and spit out the half eaten carrot. His eyes bulged and he began screaming, kicking his back legs up. He was considering his escape.

The piercing much-to-long scream to find his herd suddenly stopped. Vincent fainted from the lack of oxygen going to his noggin, his joints froze up and the goat flopped over. His body hit the ground hard enough that it disturbed the carefully placed salt and herbs.

Clarence Gibbon

"Not just our noses Louvelle, 'course. I'd just rather have my full wits given the blighter can pop up anywhere." He was about to ask if, as a werewolf, Robin had any enhanced senses as a human but this wasn't the place to inquire about the healer's condition. Nor tangents to political activism, when there was a fiendish spirit inhabiting corpses and melting flesh off bones. Even the bones.

So splitting up to lure in the ghoul was the posse's course of action, as Abbott readied his ritual. Clarence had the strategy to patrol parallel rows to those on the search to keep aware of who was next to him. Splitting off from the circle, he saw Louvelle had taken the leftmost passage, Misslethorpe the rightmost. With the mediwix in the green scarf walking the center right passage. Presumably Clarence might catch sight of Louvelle on the cross aisles, although he could hear the steps of the Deputy Head nearby.

Not just footsteps, given that scuttling noise...

"Deputy Mis-" Clarence rounded the corner but didn't complete Sandy's name. Given what was along the ceiling between them where Sandy was pointing the light of his wand.

(TW: Gore)
You'd be hard pressed to tell whom the ghoul's vessel was prior, in the midst of its flesh warping. There was a chittering of its bones interlocking, muscles and sinews coming together in an elongated, grotesque caricature of the human form. Dead eyes in the skull, the head twisted the wrong way to peer below, skin only just covering bone in the midst of its chewing.

Some sort of internal organ leaking black bile, at this state of decay.

(End TW)
In the shock of the split second discovery, there wasn't time to really take in all of the details. The ghoul shrieked, or that was the goat, screams that echoed along the morgue along with a crashing noise.

"Sir!" Clarence cried out before the ghoul lashed out between him and Misslethorpe. Clarence's aim was off with his stunner spell, the ghoul's arm a diabolical rake of claws given the elongated flesh. A violent action from the creature as it latched onto another row of shelves to clamber away. Something dripped on Clarence's face and he felt his skin sizzle.

"Bloody hell!" he cried out, seizing forehead protectively. "It's heading Louvelle's direction!"

He had reluctantly left Vince with Jules, hoping that the goat got out of all this in good shape.

If Robin was being honest he could have used the company - slowly sauntering down his chosen passage, he detected that same feeling as when he had been down here with Arc. Funny how he spent most of his life traveling and alone, yet a few years settled in London had made solitude unbearable.

These were the thoughts running through his head when the ruckus started up. First a crash and then a very goatlike scream, which caused him to twist around with wand at the ready.

Vincent! Did they get it? Had the ritual started?

The goat scream stopped abruptly. Healer Gibbons was yelling. Having encountered it before, Robin was prepared when a glimpse of something raw and sinewy came scuttling along the ceiling. It was fast.

"Obex!" he threw up the physical shield just as the enlivened corpse lunged at him. It smacked against the shield, leaving behind a slurry of bile and putrefied flesh, and landed on all fours.

Robin dropped the shield as he dashed past it, unraveling the scarf at his neck.

"Jules!" he yelled. "Coming your way!"

The ghoul leapt at him and he was almost too late turning around to repel it with an infligo. It shrieked, knocked back, showing all its teeth through a lipless maw, and an almost human hatred in its chalky eyes.

It was hideous. The shock of it rendered Sandy mute. His jaw and lips moved. Making silent words. Healer Gibbon was there just in time. Red light. A bang. Sandy's body unfroze. The ghoul clambered away. Sandy saw Clarence clutch his forehead. Healing instinct kicked in. He prised the fingers away. Squirted water over the other healer's face with a wordless charm. Then quick as a flash produced a jar of salve from somewhere in his green robes. It was bright purple and thick as peanut butter.

"You good?" He asked. Finding his voice again. "Thanks." He added. "It's worse than I imagined." Sandy confessed. "We better help." He hoped he did not freeze up again. Every instinct was telling him to get out of there. But his healer senses knew he was needed. That was what he did in a crisis. Heal people. Not stun ghouls. Why were they doing this and not aurors or fighting wands? Surely they were owed a hundred favors from those wixes for healing them?

They hurried down the aisle towards the circle and the goat. Only the goat had fainted. Sandy totally understood where it was coming from. Luckily he had smelling salts for that in one of the other pockets of his robes. He thrust the eye-watering scent that was not coming from his scarf under Vincent's nose.

The fainted goat remained in an oblivious bliss of the chaos that erupted around them. Vinnie Van Goatie liked this. Liked not knowing what was going on, not having to think about anything but the field he'd spent his life at. He was mid-cud chew, sun bathing in his dream when Sandy woke him back up.

It took a few seconds for the goat to know he was on the ground, he hadn't remembered he'd fainted. Vincent nuzzled the offered hand with the strange smell. Blinking, the goat tucked his legs in and rolled back onto his legs to stand back up.

There was some delayed processing with the goat as came back into consciousness.

He looked around, heard noises from above of the ghoul coming out of hiding and the wix defending themselves from the magical creature. Vincent van Goat recalled he'd just been very very afraid. "WAHH!" His legs were back online and he bent them to make sure they were working. The now registered noises spooked Vincent and he tried to take off on the lead that Jules held, bumping into Sandy in his great escape.

He was going to go away from the noise, not closer!

“Jules! Coming your way!” Robin’s voice was clear but conveyed effort.

Vinnie bucked, screamed and then went stiff. The goat smacked down on the floor like he’d been stunned, half-eaten carrot slopping onto the tiled floor from his jaws. The force at which the animal had hit the deck disturbed the circle and the hairs on the back of Jules’ neck stood up so hard they could have been trying to escape the situation independently.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Jules uttered running forward awkwardly in a crouch towards Vincent. The Deputy Head Healer appeared out of nowhere, shoving something under the goat’s nose that roused him near instantly. Merlin, Jules had to get some of that stuff. Typical for a goat, he’d been stubborn, food motivated and fainted, so he was adding bolting to the list.

“Oh no you don’t…” Much as Jules appreciated goats had rights as creatures, Vinnie had a very important job, and it wasn’t possible to reason with a goat like a human being. With a crack, the lead tethered itself magically to the middle of the circle and each of Vinnie’s hooves bound themselves to the floor too.

“Got to seal the circle again!” Jules exclaimed, more as an instruction to Sandy as the ghoul traversed over and above them, a blur of vile abomination, not yet crossing the line of salt and herbs, but definitely interested in the goat now.

Or at least it better be Vinnie and not Jules and Sandy.

Clarence Gibbon

"Thank you Sir," Clarence said to Sandy from the hurried first aid. The paste was causing the burning along his face to subside, although Clarence briefly wondered if he'd be sporting some scars after this encounter. He wasn't traditionally handsome, as even before the rigors of the Second War his face had been pock-marked with acne spots when he'd been a teenager.

Louvelle called out that he had the ghoul on route towards the ritual circle. Clarence followed behind Misslethorpe, regarding his fortunes and why that barmy pale-faced Canterbury witch had loaned him her parasol in the first place. She mentioned a protective canopy, friendly fire ammunition that disintegrated before hitting living targets...

He opened the parasol, surprised that he could still peer through the interior freely even as his eyes began to sting. In the chaos Misslethorpe and Abbot were rousing the goat. The intricacies of exorcism were not his forte, although as a mediwix Clarence could recognize a state of emergency.

"We’ll try to keep it contained. Heads down!" Clarence warned, finding the trigger as the ghoul swung around those in the circle. A silvery metallic Terminal Terminating Bolt shot out of the tip of the parasol, piercing the ghoul and pinning it to a corner of wall.

"The bolts only strike what's already dead," Clarence surmised, reloading. "That should buy a few seconds!" After the shock wore off, already the ghoul's flesh was beginning to part around the crossbow bolt embedding it to the wall.

He didn't, this time, have pity to spare on poor Vincent the Goat. The ghoul was upon them and relatively undeterred by Gibson's methods - to say nothing of the foul-smelling scarf still clenched in Robin's fist.

"Is it always like this?" he called out in a harried voice, mostly rhetorically, and flung the scarf at Vincent so as to tempt their prey further.

Robin turned in time to cast another Obex, deflecting the shrieking ghoul so that it didn't cross the salt line before the line was redrawn. "Guys!" he exclaimed, almost laughing in his panic as the shield dissipated. "Can we get this fucking show on the road?"

By now he was more than happy for Jules to work his magic on that poor goat.

The goat revived. It was put back in position. In the middle of the circle. The hairs on the back of Sandy's neck were on end. Much more and they might pluck themselves out root and all.

Sandy tried to focus on the circle. Following the orders of Jules Abbott. With his wand it was simple enough to rearrange the salt and herbs. Even if it did feel like an elaborate way to cook goat. Louvelle's scarf caught on the goat's horns. The stench was almost as unbearable as the sight of the ghoul.

"R-Ready!" Stuttered Sandy. Throwing his stinking scarf over the goat's back. He balanced on the balls of his feet. Poised to dodge or jump as the ghoul threw itself towards them. Hell. There it was. Sandy's legs sprinted. Running for exercise was to great advantage right now. But he did not want to look back.

"This b-better b-bloody work."

Still.

Vinnie couldn't move his legs, he couldn't move his body. He tried to turn his body, but it didn't work. He tried to scream, but his jaw was slack. All he could do was breath heavy and hope that whatever it was that was scaring the humans wouldn't consume him.

He wanted to live.

The noise around him frightened him, from his peripheral vision he saw the ghoul get pierced by something. It kept moving! Then Sandy betrayed Vinnie by throwing the gag worthy stinky scarf on his back. He wanted to tear the scarf off and hide, but he couldn't!

So Vinnie laid there. Hoping. Hoping for life.