Primum Non Nocere

Summary

Dr. Kurt Łaska’s boss is killing him, literally. And it’s not just him, it’s also every patient that gets put under his care. In a last ditch effort he attempts to summon a demon to finally put an end to the murders, but is that really the solution he’s looking for?

Chapter 1

There were supposed to be candles right? In all the movies Kurt had seen people usually set up candles before they summoned a demon. From what he’d found online it didn’t seem like they actually did very much from an arcane perspective, but he figured it was best to be safe and had set one each at the points where the points of the triangular sigil he’d drawn hit the edges of the summoning circle. He’d tried his best with google translate to find the sigils he needed to find the right demon for the job, but he still wasn’t sure this would work. He wasn’t a magician after all, he’d never had the aptitude, but it had to work. If it didn’t he was worried he wouldn’t last the month. He took a chef’s knife, meticulously cleaned before he started, and looked away as he slit his palm.

Nothing happened. Kurt dropped the knife. He felt like throwing up. He should’ve known he couldn’t do it, things never worked out this well for him, but he couldn’t face dressing the wound on his hand. His own blood disgusted him. The smell of it brought back memories of teeth at his neck. Memories he desperately wanted to bury. He was beginning to work up the courage to at least dress the wound when the lights from the candles flickered and went out. Quickly, he stumbled back from the edge of the circle. That was one thing he knew for sure, he didn’t want to be anywhere near the outer edge when something entered that circle. It was hard to see in the darkness now that the candles were out, but he could tell whatever it was he’d summoned was big. It was well over six feet tall and he could faintly see the outline of several arms and wings as it stretched. It turned its head looking around before letting out a low whistle.

“These are some old school bindings. Where the hell did you dig these up, your grandma’s grimoire?” A deep voice asked.

“I- uh. Google.”

“Fucking Google? Holy shit dude, there’s easier ways to fucking kill yourself.”

“I well- I figured if it didn’t work it would be faster than the alternative.” He laughed nervously.

“Well, you actually did manage to find a pretty good binding. Like I said it’s old school, but not because it doesn’t work, it’s just needlessly complex for the class of demon your average Warlock is going to try to contact, but if you’re going to ask somebody like me, this isn’t a bad beginner’s circle.”

“S-someone like you?” The lights suddenly went on and Kurt blinked, shielding his eyes from the sudden brightness. The demon in the center of the circle was tall and muscular, with a healthy layer of fat softening his figure. He had a mane of wild gray hair that fell past his shoulders and a short beard. Kurt could also see thick hair peeking from the unbuttoned collar and rolled up sleeves of his shirt. His snake headed tail twisted through the air behind him, looking around at the room and tasting the air. He folded all three sets of wings behind him.

“I’m He Who Boils the Blood of the Exploited, Prince of Retribution, though you can just call me Aestuo if that’s easier.” His green cat-like eyes fell on Kurt’s hand. “Oh shit are you alright?” He knew he’d cut himself more deeply than he’d probably intended but he didn't want to look.

“H-how bad is it?”

“It doesn’t look too deep, it's just jagged. You’re probably going to end up with a scar.”

“Can you…” he trailed off not wanting to admit he couldn’t dress it himself.

“You’re new to this right? You have to bind me to a contract before I can leave the circle.” The demon prompted gently. “Tell me what’s wrong, and then once we agree on a solution and a price I can get you fixed up, okay?”

“O-okay.” Kurt took a breath to steady himself. “It’s my boss.”

“Ain’t it always.” The demon grinned. “What’ve they done?”

“So I’m a doctor, I work in the trauma unit in the hospital two blocks down from here. Ever since I started there’s been a weird pattern with patients, no matter how they come in, no matter how sure we are that they’ll make it, if the unit supervisor is assigned to their care, they all eventually decline and die. I started asking around to see if anybody else had noticed but I kept getting waved off, so I started investigating on my own. At first I thought he was just an Angel of Mercy.” He laughed, “God, just an Angel of Mercy, as if that wouldn’t be bad enough.” Kurt took a shuddering breath. “I found him one night a month ago drinking from a patient. She had been in a car accident. The other driver had an electric and the battery caught fire. When you’ve seen enough accidents like that, you start wanting to run every Tesla you see off the road. The poor thing had burns on 75% of her body and had to be airlifted to the hospital. She needed every advantage that we could give her and there he was just taking it from her.” Bitter tears pricked at the edges of his eyes. “If he was just raiding the blood banks I might’ve looked the other way, Vampires need blood to live just as much as the patients do, but I couldn’t just stand there and let him kill her.”

“I don’t imagine you won that fight.”

“No I didn’t. He was much stronger than me, but he did offer me a deal. Apparently the blood of the healthy tastes better than the blood of the sick.” He spat.

“How many times.” The doctor scratched his neck.

“I think we’re coming up on sixteen now?”

“Shit, no wonder you look like death warmed up.” Kurt knew he looked like shit, but it still hurt to hear someone else say it. His sandy hair had gone completely limp and his blue eyes were constantly ringed with dark circles now. Despite his hard work over the years, playing rugby in college and taking boxing lessons at the gym whenever he had time off, he constantly felt weak and light headed from blood loss. At the rate Doctor Hall was taking his blood though, he probably wouldn’t be feeling much of anything in a few weeks.

“Please, can you help me kill him?” The demon grinned even wider than before.

“You want me to do it, or do you want to kill him with your own hands.” It would make more sense to just let Aestuo do it. There would be less risk, less chance that he could be incriminated if his disappearance was investigated, but the cruel voice he kept buried inside of him whispered for him to do it. To feel the life drain from the bloodsucker like he’d drained the life from so many vulnerable people.

“I want to do it myself.”

“Alright then!” The demon rubbed his hands together. “So here’s my offer, I lend you my power and expertise in exchange for one corporeal alteration.”

“Will I still be able to do my job?”

“Yeah, I’ll let you pick so it aligns with your hospital’s tattoo and piercing policy. Of course you could always go more or less extreme than that if you want. I could have you do something as minor as turning your hair blue or as major as growing an extra limb, your call.”

“Can I have some time to think?”

“Yeah, you don’t have to decide what it is until services have been rendered, but if you decide you want to pay in advance just let me know.” Kurt still wasn’t sure if he was alright with that, but what choice did he really have.

“I accept your terms.” The demon stepped out of the circle.

“Where do you keep your first aid kit?”

“Bathroom, top shelf in the closet.” The demon ran off and then came back with some bandages, gauze and disinfectant.

“Here let me see that.” He held out two of his hands and the doctor extended his. “Christ, I hope you’re not a surgeon.” Kurt laughed for a second before hissing as the demon disinfected the wound. Aestuo looked skeptically at the knife he’d used. “I’m going to guess you’ve had all your shots, right?”

“I’m up to date on tetanus. It was a clean blade.” He placed a sheet of gauze over the doctor’s palm and began to wrap.

“How are you going to explain this?”

“I’ve been fainting a lot recently. I’ll say I passed out while I was cooking and cut myself on the way down.”

“Good. Is there any time you’re going to be alone with him?”

“He’s been arranging it so that we’re the only two on the floor during the night shift. The residents have never been happier.”

“Any thoughts yet on how you want to do it?”

“Slowly.” Kurt grimaced. “If I’m going to have to pay a price that steep I want my money’s worth.”

Kurt was happy with himself, there wasn’t anything about how he looked that he wanted to change. So as he went about his day getting groceries while the demon waited around in his apartment he started considering things he could live with. He didn’t like the look of tattoos and piercings, at least on himself. They looked alright on other people, but he didn’t have the personality to pull one off. Same with dying his hair. Colorful hair would be wearing him instead of the other way around. That left him only with the more extreme options. He supposed he might be okay with an extra finger on each hand. Ordering gloves separate from the rest of the team would be a hassle, but at least it wouldn’t be immediately noticeable. Of course then he would have to come up with a way to explain it. He rubbed his temples as he reached for a can of tomatoes. It was probably better that this was difficult for him. Even if he was ending the life of someone who was killing him, he didn’t think doing so should be easy. Hell, he would’ve done it without Aestuo’s help if he was capable of it. But that was the root of the problem, he was completely incapable of doing it himself. It was driven home every time he felt Doctor Hall’s cold, unbreakable grip on his throat, he was completely and utterly powerless. He couldn’t save himself and he wouldn’t be able to save his patients once he was gone.

There’s a theory in medicine that any cure is justifiable provided it isn’t worse than the disease. Chemotherapy wreaks havoc on a patient’s body. It takes out the immune system, it upsets digestion, it can cause fertility issues, and to add insult to injury it causes the patient to lose their hair. To perform it on a healthy person would be an unconscionable act, in fact it would probably even be considered torture. However, doctors still perform it every day, because no matter how debilitating the side effects are, it keeps cancer patients alive. Even if it was terrible and difficult and he came out of the experience a different or even a worse man, Kurt still had to kill Doctor Hall. Killing one man was better than sitting by and letting more die by his hand and being changed, even in a way that made him miserable, was better than dying.

He also was not going to start crying in the canned food aisle. No matter how horrible he still felt about all of this and how dazed he was from blood loss, he was not going to start crying in public. He definitely did not surreptitiously wipe eyes on his sleeve before he walked up to the cash registers to pay.

Aestuo was still there when Kurt got back to his apartment. He had half convinced himself that he had hallucinated the entire thing from stress on the walk back from the grocery store. The fact that the demon in question was sitting on his couch watching some anime did not serve to completely eliminate that possibility.

“You didn’t just buy me a subscription to something did you?”

“No, I've got my own account. I'm not an asshole.”

“Yeah… okay…” He started putting away his groceries and trying not to think too hard about the interaction.

“What, you got a problem with Lucky Star?”

“No it’s just, I never considered that demons might watch tv.”

“We watch tv, read books, play video games, listen to music, a lot of us even make our own art when we can be bothered to. Some of it even ends up being distributed around here on the arcane bootlegging market. It’s just not something that anyone other than mages really considers I guess.” He yawned, showing his fangs. “Don’t go trying to anthropomorphize me though, it’ll only get you in trouble in the long run.” Kurt looked at his injured hand, nervously opening and closing his fingers. “Just ask what you wanna ask.” Aestuo looked at him over his shoulder, those cat-like eyes piercing through him.

“How exactly is this going to work?”

“When you leave to go on your shift, you’ll give me a lift inside your body. I won’t take control or anything, I’ll just be in the back seat so to speak. While I’m there though, you’ll share my strength and my innate abilities. I’ll walk you through how to use them when you need them. At some point during the shift, preferably before he gets his fangs in you, we use my abilities to kill your boss and then I take care of the body and get paid, how does that sound?”

“You promise you won’t try to assert control at any point.”

“I promise.”

“Alright. It’s better for me to get acclimated first then right?” Aestuo switched off the tv and stood over the doctor and Kurt shuffled nervously, unused to being looked down at. Then the demon lowered his face until their foreheads were touching. Something seemed to give after a moment and the demon was gone and Kurt was alone in his apartment.

“Hey,” he heard the demon’s voice in his head. “Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” Kurt said out loud. He didn’t feel weak anymore. Not only had the strength returned to his muscles, but he also felt something else extending past himself from somewhere deep within his chest. Was that what magic felt like?

“I’m going to show you how to use two of my abilities, okay?”

“Just two?”

“I don’t think you want me to have to start talking about particle physics.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’m going to move your arm, are you alright with that?” The Doctor took a deep breath.

“Yes, go ahead.” He felt his arm raise without his input. It felt almost like a reflex test, strange but not in the same nausea inducing way as having his blood drained.

“Remember how this feels.” He felt himself tug on one of those strings extending out into the world. At first he didn’t think anything was happening, but then he noticed something, there was something shiny gathering above the center of his palm. It slowly gathered more mass and then resolved into the shape of a scalpel. The demon let it float for a moment before grabbing it out of the air by the handle. “Your turn.” Kurt opened his hand letting the scalpel float above his palm before crushing it into a smooth sphere. He experimented with its form molding it in the air like clay before wrapping it around his wrist like a bracelet.

“What’s next?” He was becoming more comfortable now. Having the demon outside of his line of sight was helpful.

“This one I’m not going to be able to demonstrate for you, but if you do this,” he tugged on a different thread. “You can make yourself more desirable to other people. Be careful though, the effect is pretty fucking strong.”

“How strong are we talking?”

“I’ve only ever used it on people that already had a thing for me so that might skew the results, but...” Aestuo stepped outside of him again. “Do you mind?”

“No, I should know how it feels before I use it on someone else.”

“Alright then, you asked for it.” A pleasant fog came over Kurt’s mind. Suddenly all he could think about was burying his face in the demon’s tits. Aestuo let out a small noise of surprise as the doctor indulged the impulse and then the fog was gone. Kurt hurriedly backed away. “Sorry, I should've lifted it sooner, I didn’t realize you’d do that.” Kurt hadn’t realized he’d do that either. Though now that he thought of it, past the terror that lurked in the back of his mind every second he was around Aestuo, the demon was insanely attractive.

“No, no you’re fine.” The tips of his ears burned red. “I’ll make sure to be careful with it.”

As Kurt changed into his scrubs before he started his shift, he noticed Doctor Maldonado do a double take out of the corner of his eye. He was a diagnostic oracle, he could probably see what was happening. Oh god he was going to be caught. He was going to be sent to prison and Doctor Hall would still be free to hurt more people. Doctor Maldonado continued to put on his scrubs like he hadn’t noticed anything, but on the way out, he touched Kurt’s arm. “I’m sorry it was allowed to come to this. Good luck, Doctor Łaska.” He breathed a sigh of relief. There might not be anyone willing to help him, but at least no one wanted to stop him either.

Kurt got a few more double takes on his way to the floor, but no one said anything. It was getting frustrating now rather than heartening. So many people were willing to just look the other way while he walked around the halls with a bomb strapped to his chest. This was how Doctor Hall had gotten away with it for so long, it wasn’t that nobody saw what he was doing, it was that they were too cowardly to do anything about it. It made his blood boil. As best as he tried to suppress it, Kurt was a man with a temper. It simmered low and quiet and took a long time and a lot of abuse to set him off, but when that heat finally boiled over, it erupted with the force of a nuclear bomb.

“Hey,” Aestuo whispered. “Quit clenching your fist so hard, you’re going to reopen your cut.” Kurt forced his hands to relax at his sides. “I get that you’re pissed and you have every right to be, but you need to calm down. Remember you’re supposed to be half dead with anemia.” He let his posture stoop and his eyes fall to the ground, projecting the awful heavy misery that had slowly crushed him over the course of the past month and hopefully hiding the bomb inside him that was about to go off.

Kurt didn’t see Doctor Hall until around one in the morning. The trauma ward became strange that late at night. There was always a chill in the air that made the doctors and nurses want to travel in tight, silent groups. You’d occasionally see what you thought was a patient wandering around out of bed, but then when you went to ask them who they were or if they were alright, they’d disappear leaving a pool of blood and nothing else in their wake. Tonight he felt tingles constantly on the edges of one of those strings that extended out from him into the distance and the demon inside him shuddered.

“H-hey, you can’t see them can you?”

“See who?”

“This place is haunted. Like severely fucking haunted. You’ve got maybe fifteen on you right now. They’re freaking me the fuck out.” Kurt felt a chill run down his spine. “Ah! One of them touched me! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”

“Could you keep it down in there? You’re giving me a headache.”

“What was that Doctor Łaska?” Kurt turned around to see Doctor Hall standing behind him. Even though he knew he had the upper hand this time, he still had to fight the urge to run. He wasn’t a very intimidating looking man on the surface, he was pale and wiry with neat platinum blond hair and light gray eyes. The only thing odd about him were his fingers, long and thin like the legs of a spider.

“Nothing, just talking to myself.” Doctor Hall looked at the space behind him, his eyes landing on something that Kurt couldn’t see, but he felt a more intense shiver wrack his body while the demon shouted in alarm.

“Hm, two o’clock then.” The vampire skulked away to proceed with his rounds.

“What happened?” The Doctor asked under his breath.

“They really don’t like your boss.” The demon shivered. Kurt turned around towards the empty hallway behind him.

“Am I facing them?”

“Yeah you’re looking right at them.”

“I promise you all, it ends tonight.” The hair on the back of his hand stood up. Through the weave of the demon’s magic Kurt could just barely make out the shape of ghostly hands on his own.

At two Kurt waited by the equipment storage room, their usual meeting place. “You know how to kill a vampire right?” Kurt touched his chest and scratched his neck to try and communicate a stake through the heart and decapitation. “Yeah that or any other method of draining his blood. Like hooking him up to a dialysis machine without connecting the tube that puts the blood back in.” He scratched his head trying to indicate that he’d clearly spent a lot of time thinking about this. “Just doing my job.” The demon suddenly went quiet as Doctor Hall stalked towards them.

He didn’t bother to hide his fangs anymore. Both of them knew why he was here and it wasn’t as if there had been anything Kurt could do about it before. Of course he didn’t know that he was more than capable of doing something now. He paused for a moment again looking at the space behind Kurt, nervously this time. “There’s more ghosts.” The demon whispered. “I think they came to watch.” Let them. Let the last thing the bastard saw be the faces of his victims.

“Doctor Hall, I was wondering something.” The vampire’s expression quickly returned to its neutral, half-bored state.

“What?” He asked impatiently, barely gratifying the implied question.

“You know I’ve always admired you a little bit, but I feel like lately I’ve seen a whole different side of you.” Bile rose in his throat as he forced himself to sound seductive. “A much more dangerous, much more sexy side. I was wondering” he plucked at the thread that would fog the vampire’s mind and smiled as his eyes glazed over. “Before you feed from me today, would you mind…” Doctor Hall practically tackled him into the storage closet. They ended up on the floor with Kurt on top and the vampire breathing heavily beneath him. The doctor reached out and an IV pile rolled towards him. He gently held the vampire’s hands down with one hand as he shaped three metal staples from the pole with the other. Kurt took his time, his touch lingering on the vampire’s skin as he pinned his wrists and ankles to the floor. Then, he shaped the remaining metal of the IV pole into a stake and released the vampire from the fog. Doctor Hall blinked in confusion for a moment before his lips curled into a snarl.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He pulled his hands free from the floor but the metal bindings stayed wrapped around his wrists. While he looked at them in confusion Kurt grabbed his hands again and forced them to the ground with the strength of three of Aestuo’s arms. He tightened the bonds until he heard bones snap and the vampire screamed beneath him. Before Doctor Hall could react he drove the stake into his heart pinning him even harder to the ground. The vampire sobbed in pain, screaming for help that Kurt knew would never come.

“No one is coming to save you.” He forced the stake deeper as Doctor Hall writhed. “They looked the other way for their patients, the people they were sworn to help, do you think anyone here is going to come help you, murderer?” The vampire choked and the doctor summoned a mass of scalpels to his hand before forming them into a cleaver. He finally had the bloodsucker on the ropes.

But no, he didn’t, did he. Aestuo’s power had him on the ropes. If something like this ever happened again he’d be just as powerless to stop it. Or once again, he’d have to sell himself to a demon in a last ditch effort to save his life. No, he couldn’t allow that to happen again. He dropped the cleaver and instead, wrenched Doctor Hall’s head to the side, exposing his neck. It’s a common misconception that vampirism is spread by the saliva of the infected entering another person’s bloodstream. It isn’t, it’s almost the opposite actually. It’s spread when an uninfected person ingests the blood of a vampire.

“Aestuo,”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“I’m ready to offer payment.”

“I’ll take it, but are you sure you want to do this? You’ll have way longer to regret it than you would’ve for a shit tattoo.” Kurt reverted the cleaver into scalpels and removed one from the pile. The metal of it bent and separated into two blobs of steel, which he then guided into his mouth. The metal coated his canines turning them into fangs.

“I’m sure.” He licked Doctor Hall’s neck before biting down just like the vampire had every single time he took Kurt’s blood. “I want him to know how it feels.” He bit down hard and the taste of the Vampire’s blood filled his mouth. Kurt knew what blood tasted like, he’d been hit in the mouth a few times, salt and iron coating his tongue and making him gag. This didn’t taste like that at all. It was still salty but it was rich and heavy, with a smoothness that dulled the metallic undertones. He moaned reflexively as it hit his tongue, but he was far beyond embarrassment now, he just needed more of it. The vampire struggled weakly as he tore his neck open further and Kurt was beginning to hear voices clamoring over each other.

“Yeah! Kill him!”

“Tear his throat out!”

“Fuck him up Doc!”

Suddenly, Doctor Hall stopped struggling. Kurt managed to suck just a little more blood from the wound before his mouth was filled with ash. He spat it out looking at the vaguely Doctor Hall shaped pile of dust on the floor. Blood still covered his mouth and coated his tongue. He had done that. Hurriedly he wiped his mouth trying to get some of the blood off before he went to go find a vacuum. When he turned around his eyes widened and he stumbled back into the pile of Doctor Hall, kicking dust everywhere.

“See I told you this place was haunted!”

“It’s not like I didn’t believe you!” He’d expected there would be ghosts. He just hadn’t expected the sheer number of them that had crammed themselves into the storage closet. There had to be around twenty to thirty people half phased into each other, all in clothes from varying eras and in various states of horrific injury. The second they realized Kurt could see them they swarmed him all trying to talk at once. “Hey. Hey! Pick a representative or something! I can’t understand a word any of you are saying!” He shouted over the din. The ghosts discussed amongst themselves for a moment and then a young woman, with burns on about 75% of her body, stepped forward.

“All of us wanted to thank you for avenging us. Some of us were here for decades and had completely given up the hope of being able to move on. Also, I personally wanted to thank you for trying. It wasn’t your fault I died, it was his.” Kurt grabbed her hand.

“And I promise it won’t happen to anyone else ever again. Not on my watch.” She smiled, her burns fading away.

“Thanks and good luck!” She faded away and the rest of them followed, leaving only a man in a cheap pinstripe suit riddled with bullet holes. They stared at each other for a moment.

“So are you going to move on or…”

“You crazy or something? I’d rather be stuck here forever than in hell.”

Aestuo stepped out of Kurt’s body. “I can’t blame him. The profit-driven-murder division down there is pretty fucking ruthless.” The ghost very quickly dove through the wall at the demon’s appearance. Kurt suddenly felt light headed. The metal fangs fell out of his mouth and he grabbed onto a shelf for support. Aestuo put an arm under him for support. “We don’t have much time. Where do you guys keep the vacuum?”

“Janitor’s closet down the hall.” He was sweating bullets now, but he felt freezing cold. “I still have to sterilize-“ his knees buckled underneath him.

“You don’t have to do shit okay? You’re dying.” Kurt clawed at the demon’s arm in panic. “Trust me it’s going to be okay, you’re going to be fine. We just need to put you somewhere somebody will find you.” Aestuo opened the door to the storage closet. Doctor Maldonado stood outside holding a vacuum. He took one look at Kurt, blood still covering the neckline of his scrubs and the pile of dust inside the closet and handed the demon the vacuum. He looked up at Aestuo, his hands shaking, but he didn’t run away.

“I’ll take Doctor Łaska. Once the bag is full, detach it and put it in a black biohazard bin. Then take the blades out of all those scalpels and put them in a red container marked sharps. There should be a bin for the handles nearby.”

“Got it.” The demon handed Kurt off to the other doctor. The last thing he heard before he passed out was Doctor Maldonado whispering again, “I’m so sorry.”

Kurt woke up again to a loud annoying tone. It wasn’t his alarm clock, even in his addled state he knew he wasn’t at home. As he shook himself awake a nurse he recognized but didn’t know rushed into the room and stared at him in shock. He didn’t know what she was so worked up about but hopefully she could stop that annoying-

Kurt noticed the electrodes stuck to his chest. Slowly he turned to look at the EKG machine set up next to his bed. No heartbeat. Hesitantly he put two fingers to his neck just under his chin. Nothing. He was completely cold. As he began to speak, Kurt felt the unfamiliar length of fangs in his mouth. “I think you can call it. I’m pretty sure I have a DNR on file.” He reached over and turned off the monitor. “Though I’d appreciate it if you could hold off on harvesting my organs, I don’t think they’re eligible for donation.”

It turns out there’s a lot of paperwork involved in being dead. Kurt had to sign as his own informant on his death certificate, and was stuck on the phone for an hour trying to explain to the health department why his date of cremation/burial was marked “n/a”. That wasn’t the end of the phone calls either, he had to call the bank (yes he had submitted documentation of his death, yes he still wanted to keep the account open, yes still under his name, no he was not a beneficiary of his own will), his landlord, and the IRS (yes he was dead, yes he'd like to keep paying taxes, no he was serious). After that he had to deal with submitting declaration of species change paperwork for work. It wasn’t mandatory, but it was best practice for him to have vampirism added to his records. That way, he could establish adequate quarentine procedures to prevent infecting patients, and he would receive accommodations for things like nose plugs to use in particularly bloody situations, since those weren’t exactly uncommon in a trauma ward. However, importantly, it also ensured that his colleagues understood exactly what he was.

Not all vampires were like Doctor Hall. Kurt never wanted to become anything like Doctor Hall, but he didn’t know where he’d be in fifty years. Hall had clearly been around awhile. Tony Switchblade, as the ghost that had stayed behind had introduced himself, had told Kurt he’d been killed in 1932, but that Doctor Hall had been killing long before that. Tony hadn’t even died here, he’d followed the vampire from Chicago, apparently yelling obscenities at him the whole way. Kurt wanted there to be as much documentation following him as possible. It was something to keep him from going down the same dark path, or at least make sure somebody put a stake in him the second he did.

Nobody submitted a missing persons report for Doctor Hall, and nobody asked how Kurt was turned. Everybody seemed to know exactly what happened, some people quietly offering thanks and condolences when they came to visit, others jumping if he so much as looked at him. They were right to of course, he hadn’t just killed a man, he had, fully human at the time, pinned a man down and drank his blood until he felt the life leave his body. It was an unconscionable act, but the patient survival statistics in the trauma ward were at an all time high and now he was capable of keeping it that way. It still turned his stomach though. Every time someone jumped at the sight of him he wanted to shout “Do something! If you think I’m dangerous kill me or at least fucking talk to me!” He was watching the same dangerous pattern repeat itself all over again.

He was stewing over a shitty paperback romance novel Doctor Maldonado had brought him from the hospital gift shop. When he received a knock at his door. “Doctor Łaska, you have annother visitor.” It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

“They can come in.” Kurt only half recognized the man that entered. He was tall and heavy set with long dark hair tied back into a ponytail. “You look different without the extra arms.”

“Couldn’t exactly come in here looking like that, could I? I’d give the receptionist a heart attack. I brought flowers.” Aestuo put a bouquet of yellow roses on the doctor’s bedside table.

“I would’ve thought you’d have gone home already.”

“Not yet, it would be irresponsible if I didn’t do a follow up.” He sat down. “So, how are you feeling? You look much better at least.”

Kurt had been receiving regular blood transfusions since he’d been hospitalized and the symptoms of anemia had finally started to recede. His hair had returned to its natural curls, the dark circles had left his eyes, and he was finally starting to feel stronger again, even during the day when the supernatural strength he felt at night faded. “They’re discharging me soon. They think I’m well enough to go home.”

“That’s good, didn’t really answer my question though.”

“You want to know how I feel? I’m pissed off, that’s how I feel.”

“About being a vampire or something else.”

“Everybody around me is just carrying on like nothing happened! It would be one thing if they didn’t know, but all of them either seem to know exactly what was happening and what I did or at least have their suspicions. I don’t want to go to jail, it’s not some guilty conscience thing, I just feel like people are making the exact same choices that let Doctor Hall keep killing people in the first place!” He slammed his fist into the railing on the side of his bed accidentally bending it. “God damn it!”

The demon extended his hand and bent the railing back into place. “Right, you never studied magic.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Magicians come across this kind of stuff more often in their day to day, to the point where it stops bothering a lot of them. Most people tend to want to turn away from anything supernatural. It scares the hell out of people, for good reason most of the time, but fear can pretty easily become a prison. It makes people more willing to look the other way when they see something blatantly wrong, because they’re afraid it’s their head on the chopping block next if they do anything. You’re a rare breed doc, most people don’t stick their neck out again after the first time their head gets cut off.”

“Well then what the hell am I supposed to do?” The demon shrugged.

“People are less afraid of things they can understand. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but you don’t seem to have too many friends around here. Which is a shame, you seem like a nice guy.”

“Everything with Doctor Hall happened fairly close to when I started. I didn’t really have time to make friends.”

“Well the way I figure it, maybe if more people around here get to know you, learn what kind of a guy you were, maybe even have a few public disagreements with you without getting drained within an inch of their lives, they’ll be less inclined to be afraid. It’ll certainly do more than crawling into your coffin and being silently angry at all your co-workers.” Aestuo adjusted himself in his seat, shifting his invisible wings to keep them from falling asleep. “That magician, Doctor Maldonado, he seems to like you.”

“Not in the way you’re clearly thinking.”

“I never told you what I was thinking, you just jumped to a conclusion.”

“Quit trying to psychoanalyze me.”

“Just part of the job.” The demon held up his hands. “By the way, here’s my number if you need anything.” The demon handed him a piece of paper. “I also put the username and password for my Crunchyroll account on there. You should check out Black Jack, I think you’d like it. Would give you something to do at least.” The demon waved before melting into the floor.

A second knock came at his hospital room door. “Doctor Łaska?” He recognized Doctor Maldonado’s voice.

“Come in.” He opened the door and looked around.

“Oh I thought you had a visitor.”

“He just left.”

“Hey,” “Hey,” both of them tried to speak at the same time.

“Sorry, you go first,” Kurt said.

“I just wanted to see how you were holding up after…” his eyes drifted to the yellow roses.

“I paid the night it happened.”

“Oh, is that why you ended up here?” Kurt could hear the concern in his voice.

“No it isn’t. He let me choose. I did what I did because I wanted to, not because anyone forced me.”

“Why then?”

“So I never have to go through that again. Even if I have to live like this until the sun goes out, I don’t regret doing it to save lives, but I never want to be put in a position where I’m asked to pay a cost that steep again. I couldn’t protect my patients without having to sacrifice a piece of myself as a human, but as a vampire, I don’t think I’m ever going to have the same problem.

“I hear you’re being discharged.”

“Yeah.” Doctor Maldonado shifted nervously, but Kurt didn’t think it was from fear. If he was Aestuo, he would have told him to “ask what he wanted to ask” but instead he said. “You know I can still eat and drink normally without getting sick, it just can’t keep me alive. When I get out of here, do you want to go out for drinks some time?”

“Hey, I’m watching your doctor cartoon.”

“what do you think? it’s good right?”

“Frustratingly so.”

“I’ll figure out a way to lend you a copy of the manga. it’s even better.”

“Hey.”

“yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“np”