Three Immortals Walk Into A Bar...

Clyde

I refrain from questioning Gregor until we get upstairs. I want to be hospitable, not make him feel like he is being cross-examined. I hear him chuckle behind me as we approach the door to my suite.

I’m almost sure that he is a telepath. He keeps reacting to unspoken thoughts. But how does that explain his power over darkness? I haven’t been this eager to solve a mystery in decades.

I use the door key and usher him inside. He enters, hands in pockets, and looks around with interest at the suite. These are my private lodgings at the Adabelle, used only for myself and my personal guests. And of course I keep the vault downstairs, which is maintained in case of emergency. I am very glad that we were able to get Levant to accept that room. As entertaining as it would have been for him to join us for our conversation here and tease him to watch him continue scowling, I suspect that our talk would have been less productive than I hope for it to be. There’s only so much information you can get out of somebody whose primary method of communication appears to be growling.

I wave my hand at the comfortable couches and chairs in the main room. “Please, have a seat,” I invite. “May I offer you a beverage? Or a meal? I can have room service send up anything you like.”

He settles into an armchair and says, “A drink would be nice, thank you.”

I move to the fully-stocked bar, and am about to list off the available choices, when he says, “A brandy, please.”

That saves time. I pour him a glass, and another for myself, and sit down next to him. I indicate the doors leading off the main room. “That leads to a bathroom, and the other two are bedrooms. Help yourself to anything you need. Let me know if you want dinner, or to go to sleep.”

He takes a sip of his brandy, smiling over the glass, then says, “I’m fine, thank you.”

I can tell he is waiting for me to start our conversation. So I do it directly, asking the question that has been foremost in my mind.

“So, what are you?”

He laughs. “I’m human,” he says, shrugging, and I pointedly stare at his forehead, where not two hours ago he had suffered a bleeding gash, and which now barely shows a red line on his skin.

He grins. “That is to say, I’m not a supernatural creature like a vampire or a werewolf. Which, I must add, I had no idea existed until today. I very much want to hear about you.”

I raise my glass to him. “Fine, but I asked first. You can’t expect me to take ‘I’m human’ as a valid answer after what you did to me today.”

He nods. “No, of course not. I am human, it is true, but an unusual one. I am a Seer.”

I raise my eyebrows at him. I’m not sure this really provides me with any additional information. I’ve heard the word applied to various kinds of mystics over the years, but I am not aware of it being a specific category of human. “I don’t know what that means,” I say.

He takes another sip. “I’m not surprised. Almost nobody does.”

“Soooo, are you going to explain it to me?”

“Well,” he says, “I tried telling Levant, and he didn’t believe me, then he spent the next several hours trying to figure out how to murder me. So it didn’t go very well last time.”

I laugh and hold my hands up. “I promise not to murder you. Or even try. I won’t suck your blood, or toss you out a window, or anything.” I know he isn’t really scared of me, so I say this all in a joking tone, and he grins.

Then he sighs. “I don’t normally share information about myself with others, but I had offered to exchange secrets with Levant, since we both obviously had them.” He takes a large swallow of brandy, and says, “All right, I’ll give it a go.”

But then he is distracted for a moment by a blazing flash of lightning outside the window, followed in a few seconds by a crash of thunder. He watches me with open curiosity as I wince slightly, and have to pull shadows back to myself, since they were somewhat dispelled by the shock of light. It is strangely difficult to readjust, presumably due to the presence of this Seer. Whatever that is.

“Does that hurt?” he asks. “Do you need to draw the curtains?”

I tilt my head sideways. “I’m not sure it would help. Not with you in here.” Then I pretend to growl, imitating Levant as best I can, and it makes him laugh. “Now stop distracting me! I’m still waiting to hear what a Seer is.”

He takes another sip of brandy, appearing to savor it. It is the finest available. “Okay,” he says, appearing to brace himself. “I am a Seer because I can see my guardian angel.”

That is definitely not what I was expecting. “Um, guardian angel?” That sounds awfully biblical. In all my years, I have never come across any angel or devil or demon or god or ghost, nothing that would make me believe that any type of spirit creature exists. Vampires such as myself and Levant are formerly human creatures of shadow, and werewolves appear to be a subspecies of homo sapiens. But those are both physical beings, not some esoteric concept. I wonder if he is being straight with me, or if he is trying to conceal the truth.

I sense his eyes on me as I consider. It is as though he is following along with my thoughts, patiently waiting for me to untangle the puzzle.

Well, I’m willing to entertain this idea. “All right, let’s say that’s true. You can see your guardian angel. How does that explain everything I saw today?”

He nods and shrugs, as though he thinks that’s a fair question. “Well, maybe if I give you a little background,” he suggests.

“By all means.”

“Every human has a guardian angel. They are here to watch over our souls. But nobody can see or speak to their Guardian, except very rare people. Seers.”

Huh.

He continues. “I have always been able to communicate with mine, since I was born. He is in constant contact with me, telling me what is happening nearby. That is how I appear to hear your thoughts. I’m not a telepath,” he says, as though he had heard my earlier speculation, “but technically I guess he is, and he often tells me what people around me are thinking.”

Well, okay. I guess that would account for his strange reactions to my unvoiced thoughts, and I suspect Levant’s as well. But what about the other things? His healed wound? And of course the way that he flattened two powerful vampires with a mere touch?

He nods as though I had asked the questions out loud. “My Guardian thinks it is all related. Something about my physiology allows me to see him, and also has certain other effects. Such as accelerated healing, and a few other unusual physical characteristics.”

He doesn’t go into more detail. Hopefully we’ll get to it later. I don’t know how much I believe about this guardian angel story, but I feel insatiably curious about the tangible signs of whatever condition he has.

“And what about what happened when you touched me? And him?”

“That surprised me as much as it surprised you,” he says. I doubt that. Nothing remotely like that has ever happened to me before. “No, really,” he says, “me neither. It’s never happened before.” It’s clear that he is following along with my thoughts, through one method or another. He goes on, “Normally when I touch anyone, it helps them. I can help heal them. Maybe the healing ability of my own body can be transmitted through my touch to others. It’s another thing that I’ve never truly understood, but I do it a lot.”

There is another flash of lightning, and it takes me a moment to recover. “Really,” he says, “let’s draw the curtains. Maybe it’ll help.”

“Okay, fine,” I say, and we both leave our seats to move to the windows and draw down the light blocking shades.

As we are resuming our seats, there is another flash of lightning, but the shades keep most of the light out. As the thunder rumbles, I tell him, “That is better, thank you.”

He nods, and picks up his drink from the side table next to his chair, and carries it to the far end of the couch. I see that he is trying to keep his distance from me, and I appreciate it.

“Are you always this considerate?” I ask him with a little smirk. There are things about him that seem unusual, but unrelated to his strange physiology. I do not often encounter people clearly concerned about my own comfort.

He chuckles a little. “I suppose so.”

“Okay, back to business,” I say, looking at him from across the room. I think it does feel better, just to be a bit farther away from him. “What did you do to us?”

“Well, again, it must be related. Apparently my aura is very bright.” He sees me look dubiously at him. “All humans have an aura,” he explains, “it is the reflection of the soul in their body. The aura of a Seer is very bright, at least that’s what my Guardian has told me. He said that the moment that I first touched Levant, my aura flared, and Levant’s shadows were scattered.”

Oh.

“You didn’t do it deliberately?”

“Not at all. I thought I could touch him to help him feel a little better. He was -” he grins “-a bit cranky when I first approached him.”

Ha! I can imagine.

“So,” he goes on, “after that I was trying to keep away from him, but I was dying to learn more about what he was. My Guardian had told me he was a vampire, and where he was sitting, and I couldn’t resist trying to meet him. He wasn’t as friendly as I had hoped. And your arrival didn’t cheer him up at all.”

I laugh. “I know! What a surly fellow he is!”

He looks at me curiously. “Why did you come to the bar?”

“Ah. I saw the darkness shifting in the airport from overhead, and I knew it must be a vampire. The shadows were behaving very strangely - I think I must have been observing when you scattered them. I came to investigate. I try to remain aware of any threats that might present themselves, and an unknown vampire definitely counts as a threat.”

His eyes gleam. “You were flying over the airport? In your mist? How does that work? Can all vampires do it? Levant seemed very surprised by that. Could -”

I cut him off. “No no no. You first, friend. You keep trying to divert me, and I won’t have it. Continue your explanation.”

He laughs. “Very well. Let’s see… you arrived, Levant was extremely grumpy, and you pushed me.” He inclines his head towards me. “Thank you for that, by the way, I can’t imagine what sort of damage that cup would have done if it hit me. A fractured skull would have been a lot harder to recover from than a little cut.”

“Could you have? Recovered?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve managed to do it so far, with whatever life has thrown my way.”

I nod, and get the brandy decanter to refill our glasses.

He continues. “When you pushed me, Wolk told me the same thing happened - my aura flared, and scattered your shadows. Not as severely as Levant’s had been, and I don’t know if that is only because the touch was so brief, or because your abilities are different.” Then he looks at me curiously. “How did it feel to you?”

I sniff. “Very peculiar. I haven’t had anyone interfere with my mastery of shadows like that for quite some time. I had no time to recover before Levant was on me.”

He smiles. “Poor Levant. Wolk said that he attacked you because he was sure that you and I were in league together, planning to ambush him.”

“Paranoid vampires are the worst,” I comment. “You’ve said that name twice now - Wolk, is it?”

“Ah, yes, that is what I call my Guardian.”

“You’re really serious about this guardian angel thing? You aren’t saying that as some kind of metaphor for something else?”

“I am quite serious. Wolk has been my constant companion my entire life.”

“All right, I will have to believe you. I don’t know why you’d be lying about just that one part of your story.”

He shrugs and smiles. “Anyway, to continue my explanation, by the time I got up from being pushed, you two were fighting, and since I had learned that touching me made you each weak, I tried it again. I really did not want to end up having the three of us hauled out of there in handcuffs.”

I huff. As if that could happen. To Gregor maybe, but not to me. Presumably not to Levant. I see him start to question me, but I say, “No. Wait. Finish your part first.”

He nods. “I was shocked at how effective it was. You both crashed to the floor like lead balloons. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so surprising. You know everything else, I think.”

This is incredibly fascinating. His aura can combat my shadows? I want to know more about this. Much more. I’m sure he has a thousand questions to ask me, but I can’t move on yet. “Gregor, would you be willing to participate in a little experiment?”