Page 8 of Hospital for Immortal Creatures

“Humans are harmless, Vik!”

“You can’t be sure.”

“Witches and nymphs don’t have a secondary form, and they’re doing quite well.”

“Witches have magic and nymphs have poison. I wouldn’t exactly call them helpless.”

“And you think I’m helpless?!”

Grigor chose that moment to barge into the room. He resembled his sister, except where she was petite, his shape was tall and strong as a bull. Alex frowned at his sly smile and T-shirt half-bunched up around the waistband of his jeans.

Responding to her grimace, Grigor tucked the rest of his shirt in. “I think I stumbled onto something interesting.”

“The practical mechanisms of chlamydia infection transmission are hardly interesting,” Alex bit back.

“Are you angry because you can’t find yourself a boyfriend, little sis? And for your information, we can’t contract chlamydia. You should know that, Ms. Smarty-Pants, but I guess you’re not that smart, after all.”

“Of course, I knew that!”

Viktor returned to his book. Over the years, he had developed the incredible ability of tuning out the twins when they quarrelled. This came in handy most days, but even more so when he had to focus on the potion he’d been brewing the past few days. A stupid witcher had enraged a young nymph, and she had pierced his chest with her nails, releasing the infamous nymph poison into his bloodstream. If he was to survive it, his only hope was some unseen magic. Or a miraculous potion.

“Korovin went to the Oracle again,” Grigor announced.

Alex puffed. “So? He goes every ten years.”

“Yes, but this time she may have actually told him something important.”

“May have?”

“This morning, he left the Hospital early and seemed… different.”

“Quit it with the suspense, already!”

Grigor couldn’t contain his smile. “You have no idea the things you can learn on the fifteenth floor after… um… offering something in return…” He cleared his throat. “So, a vampire told me that a friend of hers saw Korovin on the thirteenth floor as he was exiting the Oracle’s room. And then a guard at the gate—”

“Let’s get back to work!” Viktor interrupted, pointing to the potion. Wasting time on assumptions could lead to losing lives. Besides, if anything of consequence had occurred, Mikhail would have told him.

Grigor obeyed, grabbing his lab coat from the hook in the corner. Soon, a pleasant silence settled over the laboratory. Alex was stirring, and her brother attempted to catch up, reading all the newly added ingredients from the piece of paper Viktor had used to write down each step.

“We doubled the wolfsbane dose, although your sister didn’t agree with that.”

“Typical for the omniscient Alex.” Grigor smirked.

She bared her teeth. “Get out!”

Viktor intervened before another scandal brewed inside his lab. “Do you know what the symptoms of wolfsbane poisoning are, Grigor?”

The boy turned to his sister, expecting her to answer in his stead. When he realised Alex had no such intentions, he muttered, “Yes, I do… Well… Loss of vision?”

***

“Good day, sir.” The balding medical orderly who greeted him was one of the very few humans in the Hospital.

Mikhail nodded and headed towards the reception. The corridor bubbled with chatter as creatures of all types waited to be summoned for their check-ups. In the early days of the Hospital’s existence, these gatherings in the waiting room had been a rare event because the patients hadn’t been in any condition to speak, and their companions had been too worried to venture into conversation.

As the years passed, the panic around the impaired regeneration had increased with the number of treated medical conditions. Immortals feared death so much that any minor injury like a broken bone, a cut finger, a thorn in the eye, indigestion or a fallen tooth brought them straight to the Hospital from all over the world. These lesser injuries had paved the way for a sense of community and companionship among all manner of patients.

A worried mother of two caught Mikhail’s eye. The little boy in her lap wept while waving his bandaged hand in the air. A girl sat quietly on the chair next to them with an expression that was a mixture of guilt and satisfaction. Mikhail didn’t need to smell their typical vampire scent to know what had happened. Vampire children grew sharp canine teeth even before they became immortal, and they never shied away from using them to punish their younger siblings. It was a sight he had grown accustomed to.

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