Nikoru Sanzo: Eight...eyes. That's it, eyes. Van Helsing has a thing for spiders. :whistles innocently:
HughJackmanFan: Glad you're enjoying it so far.
Seadragon68: Hey, the traditional line is much worse. Stick around, I'm not always sure where I'm going with this, either.
He poked at a sizzling branch, trying to keep the little fire from collapsing in on itself. Orange sparks flew from it, like tiny aimless lightning-bugs, only this wasn't late summer.
This wasn't in his job description, he thought. A bit of specialised training would really have helped. The fire in the forge he could get going, no problem. Reading lamps he could handle with his eyes closed. Bunsen burners were a snap, although sometimes they were also a fwoosh and a bang, much to the vexation of his colleagues.
A campfire in sub-freezing weather was another matter entirely. Striking the match was the easy part, but then how did you keep the flame and tinder from scattering everywhere, especially in this constant light wind?
He shivered, pulling the cloak tighter around himself. The cold didn't seem to bother Van Helsing, although it could be argued that he had the unfair advantage of a new fur coat.
Speaking of which, what was taking Van Helsing so long? Not that he begrudged him the time, as they both knew game was scarce in these parts. But it was nearly dark, and he didn't relish the thought of Van Helsing prowling on his own out there, especially because it also meant that he was sitting on his own out here.
'Mmphh,' said a voice right behind him, and Carl did his best to make his sudden leap up look as nonchalant as possible, even if a two-foot sitting leap was stretching the definition of 'nonchalant' to rather tenuous limits.
He took in the sight of the wolf, and the brace of dead quail that had been dropped at his feet. They weren't very big, hardly more than skin and feathers, but oh well.
He couldn't pass it up. 'I manage to get the whole camp set up in all that time and this is it, O Mighty Hunter?'
'All that's out there,' Van Helsing said, a little indistinctly.
Carl stared at him, then glanced at the - intact - birds. 'Is your mouth full?'
The wolf hung his head, and Carl could have sworn he saw his throat bob just the slightest bit. 'No?'
'Not now, it isn't!'
'Nothing out there but birds.'
'At least three of them, apparently.'
'All right, all right,' Van Helsing grumbled. 'Hunting's hard work. Try getting a noseful of fresh raw quail sometime and see if you can resist.'
'I'm resisting right now.' He moved the quail closer to the firelight and started stripping the feathers from one of them. 'You've been on your feet all day, you know. We could've just gone with the dried beef.'
'No thanks.'
'I thought you liked dried beef.'
'That was before I knew any better.' Van Helsing licked his muzzle, nostrils dilating. 'You could go a little faster. They won't bite. In fact, I think they're dead.'
'What are you complaining about? You've already had an appetizer.'
'Well, I'm a growing wolf.'
'No, you're not.'
'All right, I'm growing into being a wolf. How's that?'
Couldn't argue with that, Carl mused, as Van Helsing circled the rock Carl was seated on to drop beside the fire, putting the friar between himself and the meat. It hadn't even been forty-eight hours.
One had to admit, the antidote had certainly done a good job of curing Van Helsing of being a werewolf. A werewolf no longer, no doubt about that. The potion had done everything the legends claimed it did. It had broken the half-man, half-wolf tension by swinging the pendulum back towards some form of unity.
Trouble was, it hadn't quite swung the way they'd anticipated.
Anna had been unconscious at the time of Van Helsing's transformation, but what they had tactfully declined to tell her was that she had probably remained unconscious for slightly longer than expected aftwards, because paws as it turned out were just no good for holding onto sizable objects when one suddenly went from being a biped to a quadruped. That little bump on your temple, miss? That Aleera, she was a nasty one, eh? Oh, er, I think I may have left the water running upstairs, excuse me...
A night of frantically digging through the crumbling library in Dracula's castle had turned up, around five a.m., a tattered slip that explicated the part the legends had neglected to mention. The 'turning into a wolf' aspect was, fortunately or unfortunately depending on how optimistic a frame of mind one was in, the expected result. The good news was, it was temporary.
The bad news was, they had a month to wait.
He'd explained it to Van Helsing and Anna as best he could. It was a bit like stretching a rubber band. Right now, with Van Helsing a stable wolf (more or less), the band was slack. The next full moon, with all its werewolf-inducing influence, would provide the power to yank that rubber band just hard enough to pop, fly in the opposite direction - et voila, Van Helsing would be back to the joys of walking upright and not having to worry about people treading on his tail whilst he slept.
'Wouldn't the same thing just happen the next full moon after that?' Van Helsing had asked doubtfully.
He'd shrugged. 'No. A one-time deal, apparently.'
'So you mean I'm supposed to hang about an entire month just twiddling my thumbs?'
'No, because you haven't got any. Now listen, there's not much point staying here. I think the Cardinal should get a good look at you first-hand, before he starts hearing rumors about you no longer being human and sends out Knights after us to sweep things up.'
He was prodded out of his reverie as a nose poked at his knee.
'You don't want those kidneys, do you Carl?' the wolf said. 'It's just that they're better when they're raw.'