The Hard Road
Chapter 20
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Black night had long since swallowed the last orange vestiges of day, leaving Draco grinding herbs an electric muggle coffee mill and mixing potions in a muggle blender. While their blasted screaming rattled his skull and set his teeth on edge, he wasn't mucking out latrines or scrubbing out all the kitchen's trash cans with the others. Between the gallons of medication for Rosencrantz and the "duty" of driving around town and eating free dinners while Rodier drank wine and told Legion stories, "night watches" really weren't all that bad. Sure, he was now the designated retriever of arrested Legionnaires, but after developing a rapport with the judge and the chief of police, it was fairly painless. Perhaps he should not have been, but he was amazed that nearly every single member of the military force, from generals to privates, ended up sleeping off a night of fun in Aubagne's small jail cell.
Draco studied through Rosencrantz's recipes and wished he had more time to research potion theory. His chest tightened as his thoughts turned to Snape. His godfather would know. These were extremely high level, which made sense given that she had an actual PhD in the subject on top of her medical doctor's degree. From her brief explanation, they exploited the theory of resource constraint. Healing could be sped up until it ran out of resources or poisoned the patient. Metabolism and blood transport were easy enough to boost. The first real problem was that the digestive system was simply incapable of processing foods and absorbing the nutrients fast enough. Next was waste extraction. The liver and kidneys filtered the blood and excreted metabolic byproducts. Last was reducing toxicity of the whole shebang. That explained the cravings and general madness. His body required the variety of proteins, fats, sugars, and enzymes, and whole animals complete with hooves, fur, guts, and all, were often the shortest path... Treatments ran all the way to the maximum threshold given the massive doses of antidotes. It was genius, really, skating the fine line between biology and murder.
The woman had it down to an art form. He copied down every recipe to the last minute scrap of detail for future study. There was an itch in the back of his skull, a connection that laid just out of reach. All his crazy werewolf night potions had been standard, generic stuff because nobody had any sort of clue which sort of Wesen he was going to end up treating. Except they couldn't have been. There had to be more notes here, somewhere.
Dosing werewolves had been really strange business. His mind drifted to the injured recruit transforming into a wildling the instant healing potion hit its stomach. Rodier had likewise lost his mind with hunger when treated. It was like pouring a barrel full of petrol into a bondfire.
With the last of the medications carefully bottled and labelled, Draco cleaned the lab and put all the supplies back in order. He filled out the paperwork to reorder prednisone, cortisol, amphetamines, dimethyl sulfoxide, and three other ingredients which they didn't synthesize.
His fingers were on the light switch when the light haired male nurse from Werewolf night and his hospital visit pushed through the door. "Ah, Malbec. Hoped I'd catch you. You can drive, right?"
"Yes, mon caporal-chef." Draco had officially passed his Legion Driver's Exam three days prior and was officially licensed.
Fabbri continued. "We've got an errand. Prep a couple doses for a female Mauvais Dentes, and come on. Oh, you got any street clothes?"
He flipped through the pages and found the specific remedies. It only took him a minute to modify the Claustreich Wesen potion with extra bezoar dust, charcoal, a gigantic heap of digestive bacteria culture, and ginger root for the nausea. The recipe filled two soda-can sized syringes with tips as big as knitting needles, and off they went. The trip to the hospital included a stop at a seedy Korean barbecue sporting a lightning blue, flashing pig sign for an all-you-can-eat pork buffet and, of course, a bottle of wine for his companion. The man spun tales of the pranks the lycanthropes played on each other during their night exercises. They all agreed that his stunt of incapacitating a quarter of their team and setting Koszjek on fire while wrestling Oliviera was one of the better ones.
It was hard to deny that even given losing a leg and splinching himself, it ranked near the top for the most fun ever. The man was amazed to learn that this was his first time. He explained it was some sort of weird side effect of living off massive doses of Rosencrantz's various elixrs. He had backed way off and hadn't had an episode since. The man snorted out a laugh and wagged a pork chop at him. "Side effect?" The man swigged down a gulp of wine and lifted his nose. "When are you going go leave off on the whole pure blood business."
The git was clearly drunk. Draco rolled his eyes, but Fabbri pressed on. "The waiter. What is he?"
Draco pinched the bridge of his nose. Why in the hell would he know that without the man woging in public, but when he refilled Draco's mineral water, the scent was unmistakable. "Steinadler." Just like the woman in the car wreck.
"You've got the nose of a bludbaden."
Draco waved a hand dismissively. "100 percent wizard. That's how we identify potion ingredients."
The man snorted derisively. "So Rosencrantz is wrong? I've seen your prescriptions."
Draco slid the wine bottle back and screwed the cap on. "No more wine for you or I'll be carrying you back to the barracks."
The man pulled the bottle back and topped off his glass. "So it is just coincidence that you're training hand to hand with the big guys? It's right there in your file. Vorrherrscher. Zauber and Bludbaden. What's your hang up about admitting you're mixed? It's ok. Most of us are. I'm one-sixteenth hundjager. The Wesenrein doesn't mess with The Legion."
He was going to have to carry the loopy git home. Draco had no idea who the fellow had mistaken him for. Probably one of his pygmy puffs. May as well change the subject. "Ok, so you're Wesen. Do you actually have a thing for girls with hairy tits?"
"That's the best. You know, when its super fine and soft like silk. Mmm. But come on. Hexenbiests? How do you even get it in? I mean, she's like a dried out lump of bone and gristle."
"No idea. Probably need a lot of lube." Draco shuddered at the thought. "A girl like that would cut a man to ribbons. I grew up with wizards and witches everywhere, but not a single one of those. Wesen either."
The man nodded. "Mmmm. I heard about the Wizards and Witches in England. Peculiar. Big on inbreeding and bloodlines."
Half an hour later, they pushed the hospital room door open found the swollen shell of Corporal Perrault huddled under a pile of blankets. The smell in the room set Draco's stomach on edge. It was sickness mixed with stale blood and disinfectant. The woman was asleep. His nose said sedated. Her eyes were swollen shut, the few clear patches of skin were yellow, and her blonde hair was shorn off, replaced by iodine smears and rows of weeping stitches.
Three machines beeped while the television played a football match. A muscular man with short cropped brown hair rose and shook their hands and introduced them to their son. The husband's resigned gaze landed on his wife. "The doctors say they are doing the best they can. They aren't sure how she survived."
Fabbri nodded. "You'll have to ask this one. He rescued her."
The man quirked an eyebrow. "They said the guy died in the rescue."
Draco shook his head. "Just an administrative mix up."
The nurse snorted. "He's one of the lycanthropes. You know how they are. Nearly impossible to kill on the full moon."
It simply wasn't worth the trouble or explanation to argue, so Draco left it.
The man sighed hard. "What happened? They won't tell me anything."
Fabbri lowered his voice and nodded his head toward the boy. "We've got some medicine for your wife. Can you give us a minute."
The man pushed a few euros into the boy's hands and sent him the cafeteria to buy a drinl and a snack.
The man winced when Fabbri coached Draco through stabbing the huge syringes deep into the woman's stomach. Her eyes popped open on the second shot, revealing fiery yellow burning bright. Her back arched, black striped white fur sheeted her body, and she shot out of the bed, clawing into Draco.
The whole room twisted as fire and cramps poured through every scrap of his being. His head crashed a lamp as his knee automatically kicked into her gut. Her curved fangs tore his shirt and raked the arm he braced under her chin. Her claws were ripping into his back, so he stuffed a wordless stunner into her. She sagged just long enough for him to rip her claws loose. Fabbri was laughing. "And that's why I always stand behind my trainees. Overall, that went better than I expected." To the husband, "Mind giving us a hand?"
Her husband was half a millimeter away, fully woged with thick muscles rippling under black striped white fur. Fangs as long as a man's hand glinted white as he snarled, "What did you do to her?"
A low growl rumbled deep in Draco's chest. His lip curled off his teeth. The husband's claws were out and he had a wide, low stance, but he froze when his eyes fell on Draco's tattooed asp coiling through the skull's eye sockets and hissing. The man backed off, eyed his arm again, and swallowed hard. "You're the one who saved her? Those shots, that was medicine?"
Draco nodded, and her husband transformed back to his normal form. Fabbri butted back in with, "That bag of chips your boy is bringing back won't be enough. Come on, it's time to find Miss Teeth a meal." Then, to Draco, "You mind getting her to woge back?"
He had the saber-tooth tiger woman dangling at arm's length in a one handed grip to minimize the parts of himself she would tear to pieces with her gigantic claws. Her furry head rolled around and her eyes flared, so he sent a burst of calming magic through her.
Her fur and wesen features receded back into her petite muggle form. He gently passed her into her husband's waiting arms. Her blue eyes were droopy, but the whites were clearing. She leaned heavily on the man's chest when her stomach growled. Fabbri turned to Draco and coughed out a laugh before saying, "You too, mister wizard."
The woman's husband transformed back and eyed him. "I've never seen a wizard like that. You sure he's not Bludbaden?"
Draco groaned. "It's the medicine."
Fabbri pointed towards the mirror in the bathroom. "Come on. Can't go out like that, now can you."
Draco turned to look and promptly smashed his head into the top of the door jamb. The impact sent him to the floor in a shower of broken plaster while Fabbri laughed. "Clumsy one, he is. I swear, he broke every single door frame on base our last go round."
"He's a big one, I'll grant you that."
"You should see his buddy. Biggest one I've ever seen. Massive when he's riding the moon. Makes this one look normal."
His arms and back were already slicked red from Perrault's claws, His head throbbed as blood burned his eyes. The whole world turned sideways again as bones crackled and cramps wracked his body. One second later, everything washed out into normal, except that he was still covered in blood and gashes.
The world spun as the husband hauled him to his feet. Draco turned to Fabbri. "You saw that? That's what I'm talking about. It's some weird side effect of those potions."
The corporal shook his head. "Whatever, if you don't want to admit it, fine, but quit fooling around. Take your healing potion like a good pitou. We've got to get this one down stairs before she eats one of us. Oh, and do something about the door."
The last thing he needed was to get stuck out in public looking like some freakish, seven and a half foot tall beast complete with pointy teeth and glowing yellow eyes... But that seemed like a better alternative than being cut to ribbons. Two vials went down like sludgy rotten fish and left a putrid slick all over the inside of his mouth. Nausea swelled and crested, then turned into a vile burp that burned like acid in his throat. His arms, back, and head itched like a swarm of bees had taken up inside him. Flesh was swirling back into the gashes when his stomach growled. His nostrils flared and both Perrault and Fabbri started smelling delicious.
Fabbri crossed his arms and pointed at the smashed bathroom door. Draco waved some repair spells into it. Perrault's husband gaped as the steel creaked and twisted back into shape. Plaster chips swirled and wove into place slick and smooth. The paint was a shade off from dust mixed in, but it was hard to focus through the hunger pangs.
Fog clouded his brain and he didn't have the energy to cast anything more complex than a quick once over cleaning spell. Draco donned a white lab coat while Fabbri changed into a pair of green nursing scrubs. With that, they escorted Perrault down the elevator while her husband waited for their son. The sign for the cafeteria pointed left but the Fabbri took them right, around a corner, and down two flights of stairs. Double doors swung open and their breath formed clouds. The familiar scent of death and chemical disinfectant hung the air. Draco quirked an eyebrow. "Why are we in the morgue?"
Fabbri flipped through a clip board before tapping it and pointing towards a drawer. "Doing our civic duty for the city of Aubagnes. You fancy bauerschwein?"
Perrault transformed the instant the drawer rolled out. Her claws tore through the white plastic bag covering the body and she gorged, tearing chunks loose and stuffing them down her throat. Fabbri waved at him. "You too. Eat up. Can't have you go all stupid on me, taking a bite of a nurse."
What sort of crazy monster does he take me for, eating bodies in the middle of the night? Before he could say a word, searing hunger overcame him and Draco's hands stuffed his mouth full of rich, savory meat and bone. The belly full evaporated as quickly as it had filled and his brain cleared. Draco tried to avoid thinking about what he had just done.
Again.
Back in the room, Perrault was crying and slurring gibberish as she drifted in and out of sedated sleep. Black welts went purple, yellow, and back to pale, white skin. Greenish pus oozing out of the sutured gashes turned to pink liquid and then black scab. Her husband petted over her shaved head and held her hand while they told him a bit more about what happened that night.
He really as needed to figure out what was going on with these crazy potions, but nothing in Rosencrantz's sparse instructions indicated anything remotely like this.
On the way out, Fabbri led him around a half dozen different hallways before stopping outside the pharmacy. "The captain needs those ingredients and the supply truck won't be in for another week."
"Is there some sort of requisition paperwork?"
The man's laugh snorted out. Of course there wasn't. Draco focused on the internals of the lock and twisted his wrist. The door clicked and they snuck in.