Three Immortals Walk Into A Bar...

Clyde

I rise into the air as mist, and quickly scan the surrounding area to locate Jacob. Just as Gregor described, he is staggering along, one leg bent unnaturally, and I have no idea how he is doing it. That has to be incredibly painful, and although I know that werewolves are strong and durable, I didn’t realize they could power through this kind of injury. Interesting.

But Gregor said to stop him from making it worse, so I quickly waft myself over there and materialize. But I do it behind him, not wanting to startle him by suddenly appearing out of thin air right in front of his eyes. He’s seen me do it, but not as frequently as Fernando has, and under these circumstances it’d probably give him a heart attack.

I assume my physical form about ten feet behind him, and call out, “Jacob!”

He spins around, startled anyway. He is unbalanced with his injury and starts falling over. I lunge forward, using vampire speed, and am able to catch him before he hits the ground. “Easy there,” I tell him, lowering him onto a short wall that is still standing amidst the destruction.

“Where did you…?” he asks, then stops, too flabbergasted to form a full sentence.

“After the tornado passed, I came out looking for you and Fernando,” I tell him, completely truthfully.

He looks worriedly around him. “I don’t know where he ended up,” he says, and starts lifting himself off the wall, clearly intending to continue his search.

I put my hand on his shoulder to hold him down. “Don’t worry, he’s right over there,” I tell him, pointing towards where I left Gregor trying to help Fernando.

He pushes against my hand, surprisingly strong. Maybe I have been underestimating the abilities of werewolves this whole time. I always knew that they are remarkably powerful in their shifted form, almost as strong as a vampire, but I didn’t really understand that even in their human form they possess this much strength.

“No, really, stay here, Jacob. I left a couple of people over there with him, and they’re helping him. I think they’ll be heading over here soon.”

He finally settles down, and I peer up in the direction I know they are, although I can’t see it from this vantage point. I am considering shifting back into mist to go find out what they are up to, when I see Gregor coming around a corner from behind a partially destroyed building.

In a moment, behind him appears Levant, carrying Fernando cradled in his arms.

Ha! That is absolutely wild! How on earth did Gregor convince him to do that? Levant made it perfectly clear how much he loathes werewolves, and I never in a thousand years would have expected him to be actually helping by carrying one.

“What the hell?” Jacob asks, and I glance down at him with a grin on my face, enjoying his surprise. He’s as shocked as I am.

We watch the little trio approach, and I am worried that Fernando is still obviously unconscious, dangling in Levant’s arms, so enormous that the sight of him being carried like a baby is ridiculous.

Then suddenly, when they are half a block away from us, Fernando obviously wakes up, and I have to assume that he is alarmed to find himself being held by a vampire. I think he panics, and I see him scramble down.

What a relief, I’m glad he is awake and obviously healthy. Gregor’s healing abilities really do seem to work.

Ack! Rather than continue walking, though, Fernando immediately spins and clobbers Levant right in the head, making him go flying into a car.

Oh shit!

“Wait here,” I tell Jacob, and turn myself into mist to get over there as fast as I can to break up their scuffle. At least Gregor isn’t trying to dive into the fray, that’d not turn out well for anybody.

By the time I get there, Fernando has managed to pick up a motorcycle and fling it at Levant, and as I am materializing it is crashing into him and bowling him over with the force of its velocity.

Fernando is trying to go after him still, and I dive onto him to hold him back. “Stop, stop!” I say, trying not to laugh. It isn’t funny, really, but, well, yes it is. “He wasn’t trying to hurt you, Fernando, I expect he was just carrying you since you were unconscious.” I need him to calm down, the last thing I need is some werewolf/vampire battle scene going on.

He is snarling, trying to get back out of my grip, clearly being driven by instinct, but Gregor comes up on his other side and lays his hand on Fernando’s arm, probably trying to calm him down.

Two things immediately happen. It works, Fernando calms down, and straightens up, looking around as though waking up. He appears to lose any interest in continuing his attack on Levant.

Thank goodness, because at the same moment that Gregor touches him while I am still holding Fernando by the other arm, I feel the shadows fleeing away from me again. Not as strongly as when I touched him directly, either physically or with a ribbon of darkness. But it definitely happens, and I stagger backwards, weakened, astonished.

He is so powerful that he can drain my darkness even through the body of the werewolf? Holy shit.

His jaw drops, his eyes widen, and he begins apologizing profusely, even as he keeps his hand against Fernando’s arm, probably trying to keep him calm. “Oh, no, Clyde, I am so sorry! I had no idea that…” He stops himself. He probably doesn’t want Fernando to know what happened, and I don’t really either. I would prefer nobody to realize that I have a weakness.

I wave my hand at him, dismissively, then bend down, leaning both hands against my knees, recovering like I am a human who just ran a race. The darkness gathers within again.

The sound of an engine roaring to life distracts all three of us, and we turn to stare as Levant leaps onto the motorcycle that had just plowed him into the ground. We see that, true to form, he is flipping us off as he speeds away.

Gregor

Clyde and I turn to each other, astonishment instantly dissolving into mirth. We erupt into uproarious laughter, watching poor Levant finally reach his threshold of tolerance and leave us all behind. I don’t think that Fernando knows what to make of our hysteria, and he stares back and forth between the two of us, while we try to regain control.

I have often observed that laughter can sometimes be more powerful than just about any other force in the world.

Clyde was still recovering from my unintended assault, and this is too much for him. He actually plonks down onto his ass on the ground, laughing and holding his sides. I’m leaning against Fernando, knowing that he still needs a bit of healing, especially after his little brawl with Levant, and hope that howling with laughter doesn’t interfere with my healing touch.

Even Wolk is laughing, having resumed his wolf form, his canine face split into a hilarious grin.

I sure hope that the sound of the motorcycle’s engine was too loud for Levant to hear all of this as he sped away. I feel bad about being so amused by his crotchety personality, but I really can’t help it.

“Jacob is tired of waiting,” Wolk says, and that sobers me. I turn around, wiping tears from my eyes, and see the other werewolf trying to stand up from where he has been resting on a low wall, probably staring at us like we are all a bunch of blithering idiots.

He wouldn’t be wrong.

“Wait, wait!” I call out to him. “We’re coming to you!”

Clyde appears recovered from both his depletion of darkness and his attack of mirth, and he begins moving towards Jacob, accompanied by Fernando. I follow behind, both to stay a respectable distance away from Clyde, and because apparently humans just aren’t as fast as other creatures. Who knew?

While I am approaching, Wolk evaluates Jacob’s condition for me. “Like his friend, his body is healing far more rapidly than a human body could. He has fractured ribs which are already on the mend. His femur is fractured as well, and it is trying to heal, but the bone is displaced and if the healing goes on much further it will actually cause more damage, by healing crookedly. Again, it is good you are here.”

When I get there a minute or so behind them, Clyde is standing close to Jacob. He looks over at me, and says, “Jacob, this is my friend Gregor, he is a… um… medic. Let him take a look at you.”

I hesitate for a moment, jerking my head to the side to communicate to Clyde that he should move aside. I really don’t want to hurt him again. His eyebrows lift and he quickly steps away. I kneel on the ground in front of Jacob, and ask him, “Where do you have pain?”

I already know, of course, Wolk has described the broken ribs and leg to me, but I can’t just start treating Jacob without having any excuse for knowing where he is hurt. His injuries are not as visible as Fernando’s had been, and furthermore Fernando was conveniently unconscious when I laid my hands on him.

I reach around with my hands to Jacob’s ribcage, touching directly over where two of the bones are fractured, but they are not out of place. With Wolk’s healing energy flowing through me, I can sense that he immediately begins to feel some relief from the pain as the inflammation eases and the bones begin to knit back together.

His leg will be more complex, as the femur bone in his upper thigh is not only fractured, but has shifted out of place. It somehow did not break the skin as he walked along. Werewolves must be incredibly tough. I can’t try to heal the bone in this position, it has to be reset first. I look over at Clyde, who I would like to ask to help me, but I just demonstrated accidentally but quite clearly that we should not both be touching a third person at the same time. I look up at the other werewolf. “Fernando, can you help me?”

He and Jacob lock eyes for a moment, then Fernando nods at me. “What do you need?”

I look at Jacob while I speak, my hands lightly probing the broken leg. “Your leg bone is broken, here, and it has slipped out of place. Fernando and I can try to shift it back to where it belongs, that way it will heal straight. All right?”

He nods. “Yeah, go for it.”

“I have to warn you, it will be painful, but you’ll feel better after we do it.”

He shrugs, and I remember that he was just walking all over on this broken leg, so I have to believe that pain is not really a big problem for him. “Okay, let’s get you down on the ground. This’ll be easier if you’re lying down.”

We shift him off the low wall and onto a level area nearby, while Clyde watches from several feet away, visibly frustrated not to be able to participate. I’m sorry about that, but I need to focus on Jacob.

“Okay, Fernando, I want you to hold his leg here above the fracture, with both of your hands, and don’t let it move at all. It has to stay completely still while I’m doing this.” I show him where to put his hands on Jacob’s upper thigh, and he leans over Jacob to wrap his big hands around his leg.

“Jacob, I have to pull the bone down for a second before I can get it back in place. This is the part that’s going to hurt. Ready?”

He nods, I look at Fernando to make sure that he is ready, and he nods as well. “Okay, here I go.”

I take Jacob’s leg above the knee in both my hands, and pull down firmly and steadily, until the broken ends of the bone are no longer in contact. Jacob hisses, but otherwise remains perfectly still, and Fernando’s hands are rock steady as he holds the leg in place. Wolk guides me as I delicately position the two ends of the bone back into the right spot, his healing power flowing through me the whole time. Within a few minutes, the bone is reset, the ends meeting in the proper place.

I lean back. “Okay Fernando, you can let go, thank you. That was perfect.” I keep my hands on Jacob’s leg. “Let’s splint it up before we get going,” I suggest, more to have an excuse to keep my hands on his leg for several more minutes than anything else. Wolk tells me that the bone is already knitting itself back together as I continue laying my hands on him. I direct Fernando to go find some supplies, and by the time he comes back with what I need, the break is mostly healed. But they don’t really need to know that.

I carefully wrap up the leg with some sticks and cloth that Fernando obtained, ostensibly to keep the bone in place while we walk. Jacob is scarcely feeling any pain now, and I hope that he’ll just assume that the splint is keeping it still so it doesn’t hurt. I’m sure he’ll be seen by a doctor in a day or two who will probably think it was not actually broken and that whoever the medic was who treated him was an idiot for believing a splint was needed.

Not my problem. Besides, Jacob will probably assume that the lack of evidence about his injury is caused by his own innate healing abilities, not by anything that I did.

We get him on his feet, and he tests out the injured leg by putting some weight on it. “Do you think you can walk?” I ask him, knowing perfectly well that he should be able to now.

Surprise is reflected in his face, with the strong features and creased forehead that I now understand are characteristics of his species. “Um, yeah,” he says.

I look over to Clyde. “Okay then,” he says, “let’s get back.” He looks at his men. “Um, I don’t know how much you saw, but I should warn you, there isn’t much left. All the guests are still waiting in the basement. I don’t know how much longer it will be before rescue crews arrive. But let’s return so we can take care of them until then.”

I follow along behind the vampire and the two werewolves, and wonder how Levant is getting along. I hope he is okay.

“I don’t know,” Wolk tells me, “he has gone beyond my range of awareness. Last I could tell, he was very relieved to be away from you.”

No doubt!