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“....Vampire?”
“That’s a lazy answer. What kind?”
Little huff. “Not like I’ve been studying them all my life, Eskel.”
Amused smile. “But you have been studying, haven’t you?”
“Okay okay. Um….” Squinting. “Katakan…?”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“Because I’m not.”
“Come on, doctor you can do it.”
Shani squinted at Eskel, trying to look mad. It didn’t work. Her nose scrunched in a way that made his heart skip a lazy beat and she was far too cute sitting cross-legged next to him in their bed wearing only his shirt. He was comfortably naked, sheets barely draped over his waist and arm tucked behind his head. His other arm toyed with the hem of his shirt by her thigh, a playful smile on his lips as he watched her try to figure his scars out.
“What did I tell you about the spacing in the teeth?” he prompted, tapping her leg with his thumb.
“Spacing, spacing…” Shani muttered, frowning at the bite on his shoulder. “Katakan teeth have a narrower spacing than their cousins because they usually feed on smaller prey--cousin. Cousin to the Katakan is an….Ekimmara!” Her expression lit up with triumph and Eskel laughed, nodding.
“Good, yeah. That was an Ekimmara contract.”
“Hmm,” Shani hummed, kneading the muscle beneath the scar and running her thumb across it thoughtfully. “Must have been a rough fight if it bit you badly enough to leave a mark like that.” She glanced at him, and even though the scar was years old he could see a concern there that warmed him.
“It was but that bite saved my life, ultimately.”
“Really?” Shani frowned. “How?”
“Black blood. Think I actually have a vial around…” Eskel said, casting around and sitting up long enough to reach over the side of the bed and snag his pack off the floor where it was still laying from the night before. He’d been gone on a contract that had kept him from her for two weeks--the longest since they’d gotten married--and neither had been interested in being neat.
“Yeah, here,” he said, sorting through the bag and pulling out a vial full of shimmery, thick liquid. Shani twitched to touch it in her curiosity but Eskel closed it in his palm, stopping her.
“I’d rather you didn’t. Black blood isn’t as toxic by touch as some of my potions but it’s not going to do anything good for you.”
“Right, sometimes I forget what you brew them out of,” she admitted, wrinkling her nose again. “Hard to imagine stomaching most of it really, and I deal with boils.”
“Yeah,” Eskel agreed, grimacing as he opened his hand and contemplated the vial. “It’s different when you’re drinking what came out of the boil.”
“Oh, gods, Eskel!” Shani exclaimed, laughing and shaking her head in disgust. “Don’t ever say something like that again! I want to eat sometime this week.”
He grinned and shook the vial teasingly at her. “Don’t worry, this one is only made out of sewant mushrooms and ghoul blood. And a good alcoholic base, of course.”
“Delicious,” Shani deadpanned. “So what exactly does it do to you that a bite like that can save your life?” she asked, pointing to his shoulder. “How can it make you that toxic without killing you too?”
“Honestly black blood is one of the nastier potions when it comes to potential side-effects,” Eskel admitted, setting the vial aside and shifting his pack onto the dresser next to him. The other potions inside clinked softly. Thankfully this past contract he’d only needed one. “It burns like acid when you drink it and if you don’t keep track of what you drank and when it’s bad with other potions. Since the point is to make us toxic to necrophages and vampires, it targets what they feed on. Vampires drink blood because blood is full of nutrients and oxygen and basically everything a living body needs to function. Black blood thins those supply lines down to a trickle--which puts us on the edge of decay. The acidic base reacts poorly with necrophage saliva and creates its own poison but for vampires it’s just straight cheating. Vampires choke on dead blood. It’s horrible for them.”
Shani listened with a grimace that turned into a wide-eyed look of horrified fascination as the implications clicked. “Wait--so black blood works by thinning your circulatory system’s abilities so much that your blood begins to die?”
Eskel nodded, a look of resignation on his face. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“Gods,” Shani said softly, shifting and sitting back against the headboard next to him. Her expression was almost shell shock. “That’s awful.” She looked at him, brow furrowing as she brought her hand up to cup his cheek. “Incredible that you can survive that…” she murmured. The way she studied him made him wonder how often her understanding of things changed because he was around. She certainly turned his world over often enough.
“Still not sure how they came up with a balance that let us, and it is a last resort,” he said, shifting to slip his arm around her waist again. She responded to his unconscious request by shuffling closer and laying her head against him, tucking her body into his side and resting an arm across his stomach. He sighed contently.
“Your body must have some other way to store what it needs,” she mused, rubbing her thumb across his side absently. “Oxygen, nutrients, everything. If you didn't, you'd hardly survive. At least...not without damage. Damage like that and you'd barely live to your forties, never mind for several hundred years." She fell silent for a while, and he knew that she was listening to the completely undamaged pumping of his heart. "The detox for that must be awful…”
“It is, and it usually involves bloodletting, if the vampire didn’t take enough."
Shani glanced up at him, brow furrowed. “Really? Why?”
“Because we have to let the dead stuff out before making more is safe. An after effect of black blood is a trigger in the survival side of things and our bodies go into panic mode making more blood. Everything inside you wants water and salt and meat and to sleep, but if you start eating and don’t bleed some first, it gets even harder to breathe. Fluid builds up in the lungs,” he explained, gesturing at his chest. “Really, black blood is so nasty some schools quit teaching how to brew it. I think it was a Viper invention to begin with, and Vesimir always warned us about what it could do.”
Shani hummed, brow furrowed as she listened, tracing along his other scars with a lazy finger. “It doesn’t sound worth the consequences. None of your potions do, honestly.”
“Well when one of the consequences of not taking them is an early grave, you tend to do it anyway and hope for the best.”
Shani sighed, nodding against his shoulder and shifting a little so her foot was under the sheet. “I hate to say it, but after all my time on the battlefield that does make a painful amount of sense.” She looked across him at the bag, a troubled look in her eyes. “Do you have to keep them?” she asked at last, glancing up at him. “Just knowing you’re killing part of yourself for a contract…”
“I’m always careful with potions,” he promised, cupping her cheek and drawing her gaze away from his pack to look at him instead. His eyes were kind. “I couldn’t leave you like that.”
He kissed her and then brushed her cheek with a soft smile.
Shani sighed, the happiness back in her eyes. “No, you can’t,” she said, a mischievous glint coming into them. “And your brothers would never let you hear the end of it if you messed one up.”
Eskel groaned and his head fell back. “You know my secrets.”
She laughed and kissed him again before he rolled over on top of her and tangled them both in the sheets.