The massage therapist looked at me as soon as I entered. I was in a noticeably better condition but still bad off, especially compared to the others. Most of the other vampires waiting had a few bruises or a broken arm or something small but I had cracked ribs, I could still feel my insides filling with blood from whatever ruptured even after having it drained twice.
She motioned me over after making her current patient get up and wait. After looking at me, the vampire did not even seem upset. Even he could tell I was in a bad spot physically. Every breath hurt and thinking about the incoming pain made it worse. When I lied on my stomach, I was immediately instructed to flip over. She was going to take care of my ribs before my organ(s).
I waited on the bed as she heated the cups before dousing them in her healing liquid. My ribs were setting wrong so she had to break them before healing them. With a stiff elbow, she re cracked all four of my ribs. The pain was intense but bearable. The cups were another story.
Compared to last time, this pain was negligible. Instead of being excruciating the pain was a moderately bad burn. It was similar to picking up a hot pan handle. I was relieved to not experience that unbearable agony from the last time. After ten minutes of this cup healing, I was turned over to work on my organs. This was going to be much worse than the cups.
After running her hands down my back, she pinpointed what was bleeding.
"Your liver has been ruptured. We have to heal it now. If you were human, you would long be dead." The woman said before cutting along my back where my liver was. I could not see her but it sounded like she was rubbing something along her hands. She dug her hand directly inside before massaging the organ. The massage was excruciating yet felt amazing at the same time. Everything around her hand was screaming for help but my liver itself felt like it was regenerating on the spot.
Without realizing, I dug through the bed in agony. As she continued massaging my liver, I started to scream. I was transforming and could not stop it. Before long, it went from a scream of agony to a monstrous roar of anger.
"We will take a break here. Lie and relax for a while and we will continue in five minutes. Seems your body cannot handle anymore." The old woman said drying her hands from blood and oil.
I was beginning to lose all reasoning skills. The anger was overtaking me.
'Calm down. She is only doing this to help you.' I thought to myself trying to calm down. After repeating it a few dozen times, I transformed back to my barren form. When my breathing was back to normal, she returned.
This went on for three more transformations before she took her hand out and said we were done. My body felt lighter on account of the absence of loose blood. Even though everything hurt, my liver felt good. It was not quite back to normal but certainly felt better. I got up to take my exit so I did not take up any more time than I already had. As I walked through the halls stretching my shoulder, I could feel someone following.
After turning a corner towards the medical wing, I vaulted onto the ceiling to see who it was. It was expressly forbidden to fly or use any method besides walking while in the base but being as I seemed to be the golden child of the clan I figured I could be forgiven.
To my dismay, it was Kristine. She must have wanted to talk some more but I was not ready to hear her. When she lost me and got frustrated, she turned to leave. Even though it was a sea of vampires, it was relatively easy to track one out of the rest. It was especially easy to track me since I was different than the rest and had a noticeably different scent.
I dropped back into the sea before making my way to Diach. He was pacing when I got to him. I was not sure if it was nerves or excitement although they both seemed strange at the time.
"Skytel, finally. You must have been really banged up. I can finally show you the samples requests." Diach said looking towards the door. When we entered instead of going to the left where the gurneys were, we went to the right. There was a sign that said 'requests' we were walking towards.
When we got to the room, there was a glass wall with a small slot open. The people on the other side seemed to be doctors of some kind.
'Glass is not going to do much to stop vampires, especially me.' I thought to myself with a small laugh. The doctors looked up towards me when I laughed. Without paying much attention, they looked back towards their keyboards.
"Thinking the glass could not stop a vampire, aren't you?" The doctor looking at the clipboard said. It was strange having a stranger practically read my mind.
"...yes..." I said in half shock. Diach laughed at my answer. Then it clicked it was my laugh he guessed from.
'I guess these guys are not the entertainment types.' I thought to myself laughing again.
Without skipping a beat, the doctor spoke up again, "We are not the entertainment type?" I was genuinely shocked then. It must have been a common occurrence if they were guessing what I was thinking word for word. The antics from the doctor were quickly becoming annoying.
"Go ahead and strike the glass as hard as you can." The doctor said tapping on the glass separating us. That was a challenge and it would not go unanswered. Diach took a step back as I transformed and started breathing on a rhythm. With one powerful strike, the glass had an ever so small crack but still stood solid. I was expecting to break it with little resistance but it was very strong.
"Wow, no one has ever cracked the glass before. You must be the new one; Skytel if I recall correctly." The doctor said now looking up at me. My fist was throbbing but I still answered the question proud of myself.
"That would be me." I said pridefully. It must have made sense how I cracked it then because all the doctors were looking directly at my fist and my body in general.
"You came to drop off a sample?" One of the other doctors asked as they stared. Diach put the hair and skin into a small bag and slid it through the opening in the glass.
"Correct." I said changing back. Even though I was relatively short compared to most of the others, in my other form I was much more toned and darker than everyone else. The vampire race was generally a pretty pale species but I had a dark, almost black, skin color when I transformed. My wings were different as well but I attributed it to being a different breed and did not think much of it after.
"Stay after we finish with your sample so we can run some tests on you as well, if you please." The clipboard doctor said looking back down. I was not expecting the request but I did not see a problem with it.
We sat in the chairs to wait but there were monitors we could see that had varying information from blood type, to a numbered scale of strength and speed. Everything possible physically was on one of the monitors.
After an hour of waiting, the doctor stood up and motioned us over. Diach was told to report to the princes after the results were electronically sent. I stayed for testing. The doctors seemed to be in a rush telling us what to do so Diach did not wait for my tests before leaving.
The doctors ran me through a plethora of physical testing with everything from a treadmill to swimming to punching a small drone. They ran everything from my top speed to my strength and blood samples.
The most interesting test was when they were testing my wing strength and speed. I hovered and flapped my wings at maximum strength before taking off after a small hologram of a human. I caught the hologram after a few moments but it was not a small task. The image was moving extremely fast but not too fast that I could not catch it.
The doctors asked me what kind of blood I wanted as I had worked up a sweat from all the tests. They wrote down my answer when I told them O-. It must have been an unusual answer as it was a rather common blood type. After gulping it down, I was sent on my way. I never saw what they did with the results but I could not see what the princes would do with the info so I assumed it was put in a file cabinet somewhere.
I walked back to the bar after I was finished but Diach was nowhere to be found. He was still with the princes I guessed but I was not going to let that ruin my time. I laughed the night away with the bartender as usual. After talking to him a few times, I found he was a good guy and had quite a lot of funny stories about his past.
He was a showman in his human life so he had plenty of stories about his acts and the audience. The man was around six-hundred years old from what I could tell and the world six-hundred years ago was a very different place. He was from around the time the humans first got the plague that would drive them to the brink of destruction before they came back stronger than ever.