Chapter 18: Chapter 18: Back Alley Surgery

Valen felt his body move on its own, spurned by instinct and reflexes honed from years of martial arts. He sidestepped from the path of the crossbow bolt only to find out too late that he was never the intended target.

The bolt shot straight past him and into Clarence’s left shoulder.

For a moment he didn’t seem to have realised what had happened. Clarence looked confused for a moment. He didn’t appear to have noticed or felt the metal bolt sticking out of him. Then, in an instant his eyes widened in horror and the skin around his neck started to swell.

“Motherfucker!” Louise shouted, fixing her eyes on the attacker standing under the doorway.

Valen felt the air fill with magical static for a moment as Enid charged up for a spell only for it to abruptly disappear when Louise lunged at the hooded figure, cutting off her clean shot.

Louise grabbed the man by the side of his brown hood. She didn’t even have to jump or stand on her tip-toes with their similarly short heights. But before she could rear her other hand back to strike, the man pursed his lips and spat at her.

Instead of saliva or phlegm, either of which would’ve already been pretty gross by themselves, a short stream of clear viscous liquid shot from his puckered mouth.

The substance hit Louise between the eyes and hardened into a strong white web around the top half of her face like the world’s grossest blindfold. Was that supposed to be spider silk?

Startled, Louise let go of the man, who casually stepped back into the nightclub and slammed the door on her face.

“Oh, you are dead!” Louise ripped the sticky silk off of her yellow eyes that now saw only red.

“Wait!” Valen cried out, but it was already too late. Louise flew past the door with blinding speed after her new prey. He could’ve sworn he saw her foaming at the mouth. “Dammit Louise!”

Valen turned his attention to Clarence leaning against the wall. He was still as a statue safe for his mouth that opened and closed in a quiet, panicked rhythm like a fish struggling to breathe out of water. The crossbow bolt lodged in the left shoulder had been partially stopped by the thick leather jacket he wore, but judging by his rapidly swelling neck, it wasn’t the bleeding that was killing him.

Enid looked like she was about to run after Louise but turned to Valen before she did.

“What's your call?” she asked.

“Louise will be fine.” Valen gently grabbed Clarence by his sides and laid him flat on his back. “We have to save Clarence first.”

“We do?” asked Enid without hesitation. Valen silently glared at her, causing her to roll her eyes in exasperation. “Okay, fine. Do I have to shock him?”

“Not sure yet.” Valen bent down and put two fingers to Clarence's neck. His skin was hot to the touch and his pulse was quickly fading. Upon looking down his shirt, Valen saw a giant swollen lump that spread from the exact point where the crossbow bolt punctured his flesh. “Clarence, can you hear me? Can you talk?”

The sound of his wheezing, laboured breaths answered Valen’s question. His lips moved to mouth silent words that Valen guessed was “Can’t breathe.”

Valen turned to Enid.

“Go get me a bottle of vodka or whiskey and a straw,” he told her. “Quickly!”

“Alright.” Enid pushed the heavy metal door open and ran into the nightclub. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Back in the alleyway, crouched over a dying man, Valen whispered a quiet “Me too.”

The people within the nightclub still partied without a care in the world, oblivious to the attempted murder that had just happened and the would-be assassin making his escape in their midst. Wherever the assassin was, he was bound to have a hard time getting far with Louise and her hypersensitive nose on his arse.

Enid squinted through the flashing neon lights everyone else found so mesmerising. No point in calling for help. Most of the people here would either be too drunk to understand her or too apathetic to care, assuming they can even hear her through the mind numbing techno music being blasted from the giant speakers fixed onto the walls.

Remembering the bachelorette party that had been doing vodka shots when Valen stole their drug dealer from them, Enid stuck to the walls and traced it to the little corner where they still sat.

The bride-to-be and her maids of honour hadn’t moved an inch from their seats, except now they had some extra company with them too.

A human male stripper covered in more oil than an olive tree was in the middle of making out with the bride-to-be while grinding his thong-clad crotch against her. Whoever the groom was, he was either the most open minded person on the planet or in dire need of a good divorce lawyer.

Enid would usually ignore the shirtless bloke on account of him not being Valen but he was holding the bottle of expensive vodka that she needed. It was already opened, and she guessed that he intended to pour the stuff directly into the bride-to-be’s gullet once he got her worked up enough.

“Oy.” Enid tapped on the male stripper’s naked shoulder, adding in just a tiny bit of static to hopefully jolt him out of whatever horny trance he was in.

“Huh?!” The stripper shuddered at her electrified touch and turned around to face her, inadvertently holding the vodka bottle towards her as he did so.

Resisting her primal urge to exclaim ‘Yoink,’ Enid grabbed the bottle of vodka from him with little resistance. 

“I’ll be taking this.” Enid looked around the table and saw an empty cocktail glass with a bright pink straw lodged between the half melted ice. “I’ll be taking that too.”

The moment she touched the straw, the nearest bridesmaid, a human girl with long nails painted neon green, grabbed her by the wrist.

“Uhhh, excuse me?” The bridesmaid’s slurred upper class accent somehow sounded both posh and trashy at the same time. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Enid could smell the stink of booze still on her breath. It would probably be easier to just knock her out with a bit of static, but decided to take a page out of Valen’s book for once and be reasonable.

“It’s an emergency, a man’s dying outside. I need these for-” Enid realised at that moment that she in fact had no idea what the hell Valen intended to do with the straw and booze. “...something.”

“Um, bi-atch.” The girl moved her head side to side in a way that Enid assumed was supposed to be sassy but only gave her an uncanny resemblance to a chicken. “The only one dying is you if you don’t get yo bitch arse outta our faces!”

A chorus of drunken cheers erupted from the entire bachelorette party save the male stripper who just looked on awkwardly at what he must’ve thought was an impending cat fight.

Enid sighed. She could already imagine Valen desperately trying to calm Clarence while wondering what’s taking her so long.

“Look,” she said. “I really don’t have time for this. Just do me a favour and call a bloody ambulance.”

“Uh.” The bridesmaid grinned, looking awfully cocky for someone within headbutting distance. “Whatchu gonna do bout it biat-”

Enid reared her head back before slamming her forehead right into the bridesmaid’s nose.

A hoarse scream cut off her slurred speech and she let go of Enid’s wrist to staunch the flow of her bleeding nose. The rest of the bachelorette party recoiled into their seats.

“My daddy’s gonna kill you!” the bridesmaid with the now presumably broken nose screeched.

“I doubt it.” Enid grabbed the straw from the cocktail glass and made her exit, blending into the crowd before anyone could follow her.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the middle of the massive dance floor, a tiny white werewolf was looking for her prey.

“Where the fuck are you, motherfucker?!” she screamed into the air, her directionless words lost in the club’s blaring techno. Seriously, whoever chose the music for this place needed to be fired.

The damn wanker’s scent was still fresh in her head. She got a good noseful of it when he spat whatever that stuff was into her face. But now the invisible fog of boozy breaths and stinking sweat around her was starting to diminish the scent of her prey.

Struggling to focus amidst the sensory overload, she didn’t notice the sleazy eyes on her until she felt someone way taller than her was trying to grind against her back. Startled, Louise jumped away and turned around to see who it was.

A posh looking high elf bloke who reeked of hairspray and overpriced cocktails leered down at her, flashing a drunken smile that made him look supremely punchable for someone in a foul mood.

“Like what you see, little lady?” he asked.

Louise felt a vein in her head pop. She wasn’t sure what pissed her off more. That this dude came up trying to rub his junk against her like he was Valen or that he just called her ‘little.’ Either way, it wasn’t an offence that could be overlooked.

“Fuck off!” Louise shot her fist up in an uppercut aimed straight at the elf’s crotch-the closest thing he was going to get to a handjob that night.

The grin vanished from the man’s face, replaced by puckered lips and wide open eyes that quickly rolled into the back of their sockets. He fell cradling his family jewels, and in doing so revealed what had been hidden behind his fat skull.

With her gaze turned upwards, Louise saw a short man in a brown hoodie crawling on the metallic ceiling beams that hooked the nightclub’s flashing dance lights. He paused his crawl, as if able to sense that someone was watching him.

The man looked down at Louise.

Louise looked up at the man. 

Their eyes met, her half surprised but still very angry yellow eyes stared straight into the black shadows of the man’s hood.

“There you are bitch!” Louise looked around for something to climb on. How the fuck did he even get up there?

A strong tap on her shoulder snapped her attention away from her search.

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“Excuse me, miss?” said a woman’s voice. 

Louise turned around and saw a minotaur with tiny cow horns growing from her matted brown hair. She wore the same black bouncer uniform as the werebear guarding the door and she did not look happy with her.

“Is there a reason why you punched that poor man in the balls?” asked the minotaur lady.

“He was a creep!” exclaimed Louise. “But whatever. Look! There’s a motherfucker on the ceiling! He just killed-”

Louise looked back up at the ceiling and found no one there.

The minotaur bouncer narrowed her eyes at Louise. “Miss, how much have you had to drink today?”

“I quit drinking!” shouted Louise, though technically speaking she only did so like ten hours ago. “The guy was right there, I swear! He spat this sticky white stuff at me too!”

It wasn’t until the words were out of her mouth that Louise realised how wrong they sounded.

The minotaur bouncer looked unamused. “Miss, there’s a pharmacy nearby if you need a plan B.”

“I’m not bloody pregnant!”

Back in the alleyway behind the nightclub, Valen was trying to comfort Clarence as he was on the verge of a motionless panic.

“It’s going to be okay,” Valen lied.

To be entirely honest, he wasn’t sure if he could save him.

CPR was one thing. He’d actually learned how to do that during a first aid class. What he was about to do next he’d only learned through reading and online videos.

Valen forced his mind to push the self-doubt aside when Enid burst back into the alleyway with the items he requested.

“Here.” Enid handed Valen the vodka bottle and straw, the latter of which he held in his mouth while opening the former. “What are you even planning to do with these?”

“I have to perform an emergency tracheostomy,” Valen murmured through the straw in his mouth. “Have you called an ambulance?”

“Not yet,” said Enid. 

“Do so, then.”

Valen held the straw between his fingers and pulled out the butterfly knife Johan had given him. He flicked it open with one hand and brought it to Clarence’s neck.

“If I had a scali for every time I had to save a guy who attacked my best friend,” he thought to himself, “I’d have two scali. Which isn’t a lot but it’s pretty bloody weird to have happened twice.”

Before he could make the incision, he heard the nightclub door burst open.

Valen looked up expecting to see Louise back after a failed chase. Instead he saw a muscular human man in a black thong who grimaced at Enid, who was just about to dial the emergency number.

“Mam, you can’t just steal a-” His eyes widened in horror when he saw Valen hovering over Clarence with a knife in his hand.

“Call an ambulance!” Valen shouted. “And tell them to bring anti-” The male stripper slammed the door shut in his face. “-venin.”

Enid put her phone away. “Should I try to explain things to him?”

“No point,” said Valen. “Get back to calling that ambulance but stay close by. I might need to use you as a defibrillator.”

“Got it.” Enid dialled in the emergency number on her phone and started talking into it a few feet away from him.

Valen turned his attention back to Clarence. Though completely immobilised by the venom inside him, his eyes still stared in terror at the knife Valen held.

“I’m going to make a small incision into your throat and have you breathe through this straw, okay?” said Valen. “Don’t panic and don’t pass out.”

‘Gods, I hope you kept this thing sharp, Johan,’ he thought as he pressed the tip of the knife against the middle of Clarence’s lower throat, a little below his thyroid and cricothyroid cartilage.

The clipped point pierced through skin and muscle with little issue. There was a bit more resistance when it reached the tracheal cartilage, but Valen steeled himself and forced the knife through for Clarence’s sake.

Blood spurted seeped from the incision and rippled off the sides of the butterfly knife.

Valen grit his teeth. Despite his best efforts, he felt them elongate into full fangs inside his mouth.

He was naive to think he wouldn’t be tempted to drink blood after feeding from Louise. If anything, being reminded of the exquisite taste made him crave it even more.

Valen shook his head and prepared the pink straw for insertion.

With laserpoint focus, he pulled off the blade of the butterfly knife and inserted the pointy end of the pink straw into the tiny puncture wound it’d made in quick succession to minimise the bleeding.

A gurgling noise came from the pink straw sticking out of Clarence’s neck. Dark blood rose through the straw only to stop halfway through like an unfinished sip.

Valen cringed. He’d hoped that just inserting the straw would be enough to open up a new airway for him to breathe through. As it is, Clarence was drowning in his own blood caused by the incision. All that blood needed to be removed before he could start breathing again.

Valen took a deep breath, mustering every ounce of willpower he had left in preparation for the next step. With no time to waste, he put his mouth to the end of the straw and sucked up the blood that had pooled in Clarence’s throat. The venom still present in the blood lent it a slight bitter tinge, but that didn’t make it any less succulent.

The sound of Enid’s voice on the phone with emergency services faded away into the background of his consciousness. His mind grew cloudy, enraptured by the exquisite taste that flooded the neural pathways of his carnivorous brain with primal ecstasy.

He could almost hear his ancestral instincts calling to him. Shouting, pleading for him to keep drinking. To guzzle down every last drop of blood and absorb the plundered strength of the man who had once wronged him.

Valen’s black nails grew into claws that tore through the leather fingertips of his gloves. When he realised it, he curled his hand into fight fists that made his claws dig into the flesh of his pale palms.

Pain overcame instinct and he snapped out of his bloodlusting daze. He punched the concrete beside Clarence’s head for another jolt of pain that helped him pry his lips from the straw.

Not like this. Even if he was going to be a vampire who drank real blood now, he wasn’t going to do it like this.

Louise was one thing. She was someone he loved. Someone who offered him her blood out of her own free will.

Clarence was a stranger. He didn’t get a choice and was in no condition to give his consent. Feeding off him now when he was immobilised and on the brink of death would be tantamount to a doctor molesting his comatose patient.

His ancestors were probably cursing him for it, but Valen forced himself to spit the blood out of his mouth without swallowing a drop. The delicious ambrosia splattered against the alleyway floor, wasted. Its scent lingered in the air to remind him of his choice and he had to focus on the miniscule taste of bitter venom within the blood to steel his resolve.

When yet more blood filled up the straw, Valen dug his claws into the hard concrete until it left scratched on the alleyway floor before taking another long drag from the straw. 

The temptation to drink wasn’t any less strong, but he managed to overcome it much faster this time and spat the blood out at the wall.

Finally, mercifully, the blood had been emptied from Clarence’s throat. Long, soft croaks like the sound of someone trying to slurp from an empty cup blew from straw. Each painful croak provided another lifesaving breath Clarence, and the panic that had filled his eyes faded into a neutral calm.

Valen let out a sigh of relief. “Thank the gods that worked.”

He allowed his hypersensitive hearing to return and focused it entirely on Clarence’s heartbeat. It wasn’t quite as rapid as he would’ve expected from a man who’d just survived an attempted assassination and a back alley surgery, but he supposed that could be chalked up to the venom.

Enid crouched down beside him, having finished her call to emergency services. “How is he?”

“Stable for now.” Valen wiped the blood on his butterfly knife off on Clarence’s shirt and looked down at his bloodied hands with a sigh. Hopefully the stains will come off his gloves after a good wash. “Still, he needs some proper medical attention as soon as-”

A sharp pain pierced Valen in the back. For a split second he wondered what sort of insect was big enough to bite through four layers of clothing. 

The fifty thousand volts of electricity that shot through his body afterwards told him that that was definitely not an insect.

Every muscle in his body stiffened in an instant and he fell to one side, stunned. It was only when his cheek had already slammed onto the cold alleyway floor that he heard the voice of the person who did this to him echoing from all the way at the mouth of the alley, their words tinged by panicked fear that didn’t suit their profession.

“Police, get on the ground!”

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