Three Immortals Walk Into A Bar...

Gregor

“So,” Clyde says, leaning forward, heedless of his blond hair falling into his brilliant blue eyes, “you don’t eat or sleep? Are you sure you’re really human?”

“No, I do, both, sometimes,” I tell him, “I just seem to need them less and less.”

He opens his mouth eagerly to ask more questions, but I cut him off. “Hold on, there, I have questions too. It isn’t fair for you to be interrogating me but not answering anything yourself.” I pretend to pout.

“Okay, okay, fine,” he says. “Let’s take turns.”

I incline my head. “Thank you. My turn now?”

He waves his hand magnanimously to indicate that I may proceed, and it makes me chuckle. Goodness I’m having fun. “Okay,” I think back to one of the questions he didn’t answer before. “How old are you?”

“I was born about twenty-five years before the Civil War started,” he answers forthrightly.

“And when did you -”

“Nope! My turn!” I have to laugh. He goes on, “Let’s see. You say you’re human, but you barely eat or sleep, you heal very rapidly, and your aura drives away darkness. Do you have any other strange physical characteristics?”

Hm. I have to think about this. Do I? Wolk says, “You don’t age.” Well, that’s true, but I’m not sure that not changing really counts as a strange physical characteristic. “Well,” he offers, “you have an unusually high sex drive.”

A laugh bursts out of me. Clyde apparently has caught on to the signs that I am conversing with Wolk. “Spill it,” he says, “what did your guardian angel just say?”

I shrug and grin. “He says I have an unusually high sex drive.”

Clyde guffaws. “Really? How so?”

I wave my hands. “I doubt it is entirely outside of the realm of human norms, though. Besides, that is two questions. My turn.”

He lifts his eyebrows expectantly. I think he’s having as much fun as I am.

“I want to know more about your ability to turn into mist.”

“Hm,” he says, “that’s a rather open-ended query. Have we switched from short answer questions to essay questions?”

I grin. “Sure.”

“Okay,” he says. “I have a, well, let’s say an ‘unusually high’ level of control over shadows. More than a vampire like Levant has. This allows me to actually convert my physical body into shadows for a time, and travel within them. It is not an ability that is shared by other vampires - yes, I remember you asked that before.” He leans back with a smile. “Is that answer to your satisfaction?”

I nod. “For now. Okay, your turn.”

His question is similar to mine. “I want to know more about your ability to talk to your guardian angel.”

“All right.” I turn and regard Wolk contemplatively. He watches me in silence, curious to know what I am going to say. “He is my constant companion,” I say, looking at him fondly. “We love each other deeply. It is a relationship unlike any other. We are tied together by the same soul, and he has spent my entire life helping me however he can. Giving me support, or suggestions, or love, or warnings. I always feel quite sorry for everyone else, knowing that they can’t perceive their Guardians.”

“And everyone has one?” he asks, and I don’t chide him for asking a second question.

“Every human does,” I clarify. “Wolk says that you and Levant do not. He suspects that when you became vampires, your Guardian took your soul back, as happens at the end of every human life.”

His face falls, and I am surprised at how sad this appears to make him.

“I didn’t ask for this, you should know,” he says quietly. “I didn’t want this. It was forced upon me. If I had had any choice in the matter, I would have lived out my human life, apparently with my human soul intact. I would have been long gone, many decades ago.”

I nod sympathetically, and don’t ask another question, because he just answered an unspoken one. He appears lost in thought for a moment, then says, “So if I don’t have a soul, what happens to me if I ever… die?”

I look to Wolk. “I have no way of knowing. However, he might take comfort in remembering that I have to assume that his soul has already rejoined all the others, so his humanity is preserved in the same way that it is for all humans after their death.”

“He doesn’t know, exactly,” I tell Clyde. “But he points out that your soul has already gone where all human souls go. It is presumably right where it belongs, where it would be even if you had never become a vampire.”

“Where is that?” he asks.

“You realize that you’ve asked about three questions in a row now, right?” I chide him.

“Oh, come on,” he wheedles, and I concede.

“The way I understand it,” I tell him, “when a human dies, the Guardian takes their soul back, then rejoins the other Guardians, who are holding all the souls of everyone they have ever Guarded. So it is like the souls and Guardians are together, forming one giant entity, consisting of every memory contained within all the souls of each human who has ever lived.”

His eyes are wide under a furrowed brow. “That’s…” he clearly doesn’t know what to say. “I’ve never heard of the afterlife described quite like that before,” he finally manages. “Not a bit like anything I ever heard in church back in the day.”

I nod. “I know, but it’s the simple truth.”

“That could lead to a whole new philosophy,” he says. “A new religion.”

“I know,” I say rather darkly. “It’s been tried. It never works very well.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asks.

“Nope! You’ve had like five questions in a row. Totally unfair confiscation of this entire process. My turn.”

It makes him laugh. I want to move away from the esoteric. “Do you drink blood?” I ask. That’s a nice standard creepy vampire trope, unlike all this business with shadows.

He grins. “I do. It is delicious, and it has healing properties. Like you, though, I seem to need less and less as time goes on. And my mist can heal me anyway, so I don’t really need blood so much. There, I gave about five answers in a row right there, so we’re even.”

I smile and incline my head. “Your turn then.”

“What does he look like?” he asks. “Your guardian angel?”

It makes me laugh. “Well, anything I want him to look like. He changes form easily. Normally he looks like a wolf. At the moment he looks like a college professor from about 1950.”

“What?” he laughs out. “I wasn’t expecting that! I thought it’d be all flowing robes and angel wings! A wolf? Ha! Why?”

I shake my head. “My turn. Does sunlight harm you?”

“Yes, but only in my physical form. If I am mist it does not. Convenient, that.”

I don’t even try to ask a follow-up question, I know he’d object. He asks, “What exactly can your guardian angel do? Hear other people’s thoughts and dreams, I know. Can he know other things? You said he can give you warnings. Of what?”

“He can keep track of everything happening nearby. He usually tells me if anything is happening that would interest me, or that I should know about in case there is any danger. That’s why I went into that bar to talk to Levant - Wolk had told me there was a vampire in there, and I HAD to see that!”

He chuckles, and waits for my next question. “What is the deal with werewolves?” I ask. “It was enough to find out that vampires exist, but werewolves too? You and Levant seem to have different opinions about them, I noticed. He hates them, you employ them. Can they seriously turn into wolves?”

“Who’s asking five questions now?” he says mockingly, and I shrug sheepishly. “They turn into sort of half-wolf, half-human creatures, large and scary, and incredibly strong and vicious, but fully aware of who they are and what they are doing. They are a subspecies of humans, I believe, and I employ them because they are very strong and capable, good at tasks like security. I have no idea why Levant has his panties in a bunch over them. I suppose he must have tangled with them in the past. It’s been known to happen. Vampires and werewolves are not generally fond of each other.”

I know that he is about to ask me another question, but Wolk interrupts urgently. “Darling,” he says, “you should know that the weather service is about to issue a tornado warning for this area. The hotel is in a region that is at risk of severe storm damage.”

Clyde sees me listening to Wolk, and when I say, “Oh!” his eyes widen.

“What?” he asks.

“A warning,” I tell him. “There is about to be a tornado alert here.” I realize now that we have been utterly ignoring the increasing gale outside the windows, behind the black-out curtains.

“Oh shit,” he says, and reaches behind himself to pull his smartphone out of his back pocket. Just as he does so, an emergency alert tone sounds on the device.

He looks up at me, eyes wide.

“Well, party’s over,” he says, standing up and moving over to the door.

“What are we doing?” I ask him, getting up as well, ready to assist in any way I can.

“Evacuating the guests to the basement,” he says.

Oh dear, Levant is going to hate that! I think maybe I should warn him. I ask Wolk, “Does he have a cell phone with him?”

“Yes,” he says, and tells me the number.

I pull out my own phone, and while I am following Clyde down the hallway, I text Levant to warn him that the basement is about to be full of people. I wouldn’t want him to unexpectedly exit his vault and be shocked to tumble straight into a crowd.

Who knows, maybe he’ll be able to sleep straight through the whole thing. One can hope.