Client from Hell

by R. J. Blain

  “That leaves the matter of the lycanthropy virus.” Marie went to the door with the clipboard for the doctors to reference, pulled it out of its holder, and brought it over along with a pen. “If you don’t want an unknown strain, we can attempt to find a donor for you.”

  “Sign me up for some mystery. If I live, I’ll get a surprise down the road. Generally, I enjoy surprises, especially if I’m alive to enjoy them. Is there really a bad strain of lycanthropy?”

  “Not particularly, but you won’t be a wolf. I am allowed to disclose that much.”

  “I’d guessed it wouldn’t be a wolf strain,” I replied, as I’d been essentially bludgeoned with the warning they didn’t have a wolf donor. “I’d like verification I won’t become a spider, though. I do not like spiders, and I’d probably try to swat myself with a rolled-up newspaper were I to become a spider. It’d just be bad, doc.”

  “I can request verification you won’t become a spider. Are there any other species you would have severe issue with?”

  “I wouldn’t mind becoming a unicorn, because there’s something highly appealing about stabbing somebody with a horn if they annoy me. I could cope with being a fierce sabretooth tiger, too. But as far as creepy-crawlies go, please no spiders. No flying cockroaches, either. You know what? Let’s just skip bugs.”

  “Considering there are no known strains of insect or arachnid lycanthropes, you are likely safe, but I will inquire.” Marie flipped through the papers and pulled out three sheets, which she handed to me along with the pen. “You can write your request to avoid being turned into a creepy-crawly, and you may also write in your request to become a unicorn or a sabretooth tiger, although there are no strains of either as far as I’m aware.”

  The first sheet served as a waiver for the hospital, claiming I understood I might leave the place dead rather than alive as a result of the experimental treatment process. I signed off on it, and in the comments section below, I requested all of my various bits be given to research hospitals or whatever institution might require bits of some human for medical training or study. The second sheet acknowledged if I survived, I would be leaving the hospital with the lycanthropy virus and would need to abide by all rules and regulations involving those infected with lycanthropy. On that sheet, I made a notation of my dislike of creepy-crawlies and my interest in unicorns and sabretooth tigers. As I was on a roll, I also listed a few species of dinosaur, foxes, honey badgers, and the slow loris, a rather venomous mammal capable of killing humans with its bite. As I was venturing in the badass and lethal category, I also added some mythical creatures, include a phoenix, a kitsune, and a dragon.

  With nothing to lose and the ability to breathe fire to gain, I figured adding wishlist species counted as fair play.

  When Marie reviewed my notes, she laughed. “Slow loris? What’s that?”

  “They’re big-eyed little primates, they’re ridiculously cute, and if they do bite, they can kill people. They don’t usually bite people, but exotic animal traders are careful and take precautions. The bite can cause anaphylactic shock in people. Unfortunately, they will bite each other, and they’ll often die as a consequence. The wounds will fester. They’re a common target of animal smugglers and the illegal animal trade, but you really don’t want one as a pet, no matter how cute they are. Worse, to stop people from being killed when bitten, the illegal traders pull their teeth out. It’s pretty awful. It’s one of those species that just belongs in the wild.”

  “Well, I learned something new today. You like animals?”

  “I fucking love animals,” I informed the woman.

  “Then you likely don’t see many downsides to the lycanthropy virus, do you?”

  “The whole mate business is a little off-putting, but as far as disadvantages go, it could be worse. While I tend to be a one-man woman, I’m trying to become an attorney. Do attorneys have time for love lives and men? Or even a man?”

  Marie laughed. “I’m sure you could find time if you met a good one. But there’s nothing in the rulebook stating you can’t corner an incubus and have your way with him. Any incubus who can show his wings is capable of handling a lycanthrope without forming a mating bond. That’s something we’re trained to disclose. Now, we’re also told we need to disclose your virus absolutely can tame an incubus with sufficient exposure. Unless you want to keep an incubus, the CDC recommends you limit your flings to single evenings. Repeated exposure to the same incubus might result in you having to put up with the incubus for a while, and there is evidence an incubus will become monogamous when under the repeated influence of an active lycanthropy virus. There’s at least one documented case of a succubus having been caught by a lycanthrope.”

  Huh. “I could actually catch an incubus? Permanently?”

  “The lycanthropy virus is quite potent, and it can override even an incubus’s base tendencies.”

  How interesting. “Medically, how much exposure would an incubus actually require to be tamed by a lycanthrope? I mean, incubi are pretty in demand.” According to the magical biology courses I’d taken in high school, incubi made excellent fathers, especially when tamed over the long term. They had a tendency to stray if not kept well-fed, a problem lycanthropes wouldn’t have, as one of the consequences of the lycanthropy virus in women involved a heightened desire for her man.

  Marie went to the door and pulled out the digital tablet they used for medical referencing, and she unplugged it from its charger before bringing it over to my bed. She sat on the chair beside me and tapped at the screen. “This is preliminary data only, but according to the CDC’s files, it is believed it would take a contagious virus the equivalent of twenty hours of intercourse for the virus to take root in an incubus. Two evenings with an incubus is thought to be sufficient, but according to this, it hasn’t been sufficiently tested. A bond can be formed in a single day if the lycanthrope is caught by a hungry incubus or succubus, although most demons and devils usually manage to calm their hunger before the bond can take hold. The CDC also has a notation that lycanthropes are ideal for feeding starved incubi or succubi, as they can handle more vigorous attention. The CDC offers twenty thousand for the risk involved with becoming potentially mated to a demon in extreme circumstances.”

  “Wait. I could be paid how much to do what with an incubus?”

  “The standard CDC fee to feed a starved demon is twenty thousand due to the potential risk of a mating bond plus the inability to leave the situation until the demon has been fed.” Marie tapped the screen. “According to this, there have been no instances of a hired lycanthrope complaining about being the partner of a demon for a period of twelve to eighteen hours. There was one hospitalization of a lycanthrope due to a demon. This resulted in a bonded pair, and the lycanthrope, a wolf female, emerged from the incident quite happy to be bonded to her incubus. That couple is still together, and they have six children. If you would like to discuss the situation with them, there is a note in the file stating they welcome communication from lycanthropes interested in assisting the CDC in feeding starved demons.”

  “I have a question. How do these demons get starved in the first place? Aren’t they apex predators? Most work at brothels, don’t they?”

  “There are those who hunt demons for sport and keep them as pets, and the ones that have menageries take precautions. The demons go hungry while put on display for the enjoyment of those operating and using the black market. The CDC then needs to feed the demons that are rescued from the black market, although this resource states the Devil can be called to retrieve the demons—or devils—as needed.”

  “The Devil actually retrieves them if starved?” I blurted.

  “Yeah, that surprised me too.” After tapping on the screen a few more times, Marie said, “According to the CDC’s statistics, there are five to ten incidents of a starved demon requiring CDC care and a volunteer.”

  “Are they really volunteers if they’re being paid?”

  Marie giggled. “The twent
y thousand dollars is nice, but I mean, I would not need to be paid to do that work. I’m single, and for me, there’s nothing worse than an okay date followed with disappointment in bed. There’s no date with the demons, I’m guessing, but there’s not going to be any disappointment, that’s for sure!”

  “Do you think an incubus would make an expensive husband?”

  Marie narrowed her eyes and eyed the tablet with interest. “I don’t know, but now I’m rethinking everything I thought about lycanthropy infections and if it might be worth it to catch an incubus permanently. I am so tired of bad dates.”

  I had gone on a few bad dates in high school, figured out the boys wanted sex and little else, and I hadn’t wanted to play those games, so I’d skipped the sex and ditched the boys the instant they’d gotten too pushy. I could have gone to the parties, but I’d been more interested in making sure I hadn’t wasted my chance to get an education and mitigate the worst of my expenses through maintaining my grades so I wouldn’t lose any scholarship money.

  I could buy sex any day of the week, but I couldn’t magically make student loan debt disappear—and I’d have a lot of debt assuming I made it through my cancer treatments alive and could finish school.

  “Bad dates are pretty horrible,” I agreed. I checked over the last page, which confirmed I was really, really aware I might die as a result of the treatments. “How long to get this show on the road?”

  Marie turned off the tablet, collected the signed papers, and reviewed something on my clipboard. “We should be able to get the strain donation today, so we’ll start treatments tonight. We’ll have to check blood types, the health of the donor, and so on. If the donor has a compatible blood type, we’ll be able to do a proper transfusion, something you could use thanks to your cancer treatments, anyway. It’ll add a few hours if we have to extract the virus from their blood.”

  “My blood pressure dropped again, didn’t it?”

  “You’re borderline for needing a transfusion, so if the donor has a compatible blood type, this will really help your general prognosis. Lycanthropes have the safest blood for transfusions; the virus works with their immune system, which means when they do get sick, they aren’t sick for as long and rarely suffer from long-term consequences of the illness.” Marie stood and tucked the tablet and the clipboard under her arm. “I’ll notify the doctors you’ve signed off on the treatments, and hopefully by this time tomorrow, you’ll be on your way towards recovery.”

  I could only hope.

  Three

  I would always choose the samosas.

  The lycanthrope donor had a compatible blood type. Had I been wiser, I would have been more aware of the consequences of accepting a large transfusion. The desire for survival made me stupid with a dash of reckless. The sudden influx of the lycanthropy virus hurt like hell, and thanks to the chemotherapy and its damage to my various organs, the virus opted to attack my bones first before taking aim and firing at the rest of my beleaguered body.

  Three weeks after the first transfusion, I needed a second one to encourage the virus to develop. Despite having been given two units of a lycanthrope’s blood in the first treatment, the cancer had given the strain quite the beating, resulting in a weak infection destined to take decades to mature while I had numerous organs in dire need of help.

  I wouldn’t survive through any transplants, and while the cancer had either gone into remission or had been eradicated, the doctors wanted to continue using me as a human test subject to see how far the lycanthropy virus would go to save its host.

  As their tests might buy me a lengthened lifespan, I signed the second series of waivers and prepared for another visit to living hell.

  The first few days after the second treatment went by in a pained-filled blur, but within a week, they freed me from the plastic-shrouded prison and sent me to a private room on the other side of the hospital to test if the virus could rebuild—and function as—my immune system.

  To test the theory, they injected me with a live sample of an influenza virus.

  The lycanthropy virus won, and to celebrate having jumped a critical hurdle in my recovery, my team of doctors and nurses conspired and brought in some forbidden treats from the outside world in the form of Indian food, good coffee, and my parents.

  I suspected my parents had been the informants on my enjoyment of Indian food, and somebody had gone out of their way to make my meal as spicy as possible. Eating while having guests counted as a little rude, but my parents would eventually forgive me.

  My mother, who still questioned how and why an introvert like her had married an extrovert like my dad, gave me a severe case of the stink eye while Dad opted for the crossed arms and scowl version of parental disapproval.

  When given a choice between facing the wrath of my parental units or eating samosas, I would always choose the samosas. I dipped mine in the provided yogurt sauce and met their gazes, wondering which of us would crack first. I assumed Mom would hold on until the bitter end.

  Introverts tended to win any contest involving people and silence for some reason.

  As I took more after Dad, the real struggle would be between us. With four samosas to devour before I ventured into the spicy world of vindaloo, I gave myself half-decent chances of taking the second-place prize.

  “She gets this from you,” my mother accused, and I stared at her with wide eyes, wondering which of my offenses had transformed her into the leader of our family rather than the observer.

  Dad shrugged. “I can’t say I’d sneak off to the hospital for cancer treatments without telling my parents first, but I do understand the logic. Mostly, I suspect the cancer targeted the portion of her brain responsible for common sense, but she did so trying to make our lives a little easier and to limit how much stress our poor, fragile hearts have to handle.”

  Victory belonged to me, and I wasn’t sure what to do with having finally, probably for the first time in my life, beat them at a staring match. My victory wouldn’t do me much good, as I’d lost on all other fronts.

  Maybe dodging the unwanted conversation regarding my cancer with my parents hadn’t been all that good of an idea. “In my defense, today is the first day I’ve been allowed to see anyone who isn’t on my medical team, and I was kept in one of those fancy quarantine rooms you see on television. I even got staff wearing hazmat suits for a while, but that was when the chemotherapy finished trashing my immune system. I opted to contract a disease to help increase my odds of surviving the cancer, so you should be showering me with praise and extra vindaloo.” As I often enjoyed taking strange adventures with my food, I dipped a samosa in my vindaloo and gave it a try, discovering a new favorite combination of flavors. “I didn’t want to worry you when there was nothing you could have done either way. I’m sorry I upset you.”

  “I can respect that,” my father replied, and he turned his stare onto my mother. “See? I told you that she had a good reason for staying quiet on the matter. Frankly, this is our daughter we’re discussing here. We’re lucky she told us she’d been diagnosed with cancer.”

  “She only told us because I told her something seemed off, and she hadn’t been feeling well,” my mother retorted. “I will concede the point, but only because it seems she’s trying to do good things in bad ways.”

  When honest with myself, I adored both of my parents, who liked being right but would accept being wrong when given a good reason they could understand.

  They understood the road to hell was paved with good intentions, and they tried to mitigate the hell however they could.

  “How did two nice people produce a fledgling attorney?” I asked, pausing in my eating frenzy to scrutinize both of my parents. They stood firm under my stare, much to my pleasure.

  Mom tended to fold under pressure, and Dad tended to change the topic away from uncomfortable subjects if at all possible.

  My father relaxed, uncrossed his arms, and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, his way of indica
ting I’d been forgiven for my latest crime. “The hospital said you’d already cleared your bills? We wanted to inquire about the payment plan and get it set up.”

  My parents couldn’t afford a payment plan for my medical bills, but they’d find a way to make it work despite their low income. The only reason they hadn’t run themselves into the ground over my college debt involved my student loans and scholarships. My scholarships meant far more to them than they did to me, as I would have added onto my debt without complaint to get my legal degree.

  Sometimes, I questioned why they’d been given me as a daughter.

  They deserved better.

  Then again, I’d opted to become an attorney so I would be able to give them what they hadn’t been able to give themselves. If I worked hard enough and had a knack for defense, I might even eventually be made a partner at one of the larger firms—or I could go corporate and make a killing keeping some company on the right side of the law.

  I still had time to decide, although I’d ultimately look at how I could get paid the money I needed to be able to take care of my parents.

  To ease their worries, I said, “I qualified for a test treatment for my cancer, so they’re footing the bill. There’s no payment plan because I won’t be paying any bills for this visit. That’s part of why I didn’t say anything. It’s a test treatment, and nobody really knew how it would work out.” I braced for parental disappointment. “It involved the lycanthropy virus.”

  My mother’s eyes widened. “Are you infected?”

  “Yes, I’m infected. But it got the job done. The lycanthropy virus made my cancer its little bitch.”

  My dad snorted, although he didn’t chide me for my language for a change. “Was the donor a male wolf?”