Reggie looked terrified. His knuckles were white. The journalist gripped the edges of the table like he was holding on for dear life.

“I. Am. Fine,” he gritted out.

“Aw dammit, Skully,” Topaz said. “You’ve scared the poor kid with your damned wizard-blood.”

“Shit,” said Skullfucker Mike. “Sorry. We were tryin’ real hard not to trip your head.”

Topaz nodded. The gesture looked a little telegraphed, as if she were out of practice with making it.

“Stock sapiens, like yourselves, don’t always do well around folks like me’n Mike. We move too fast, or we’ve got too many weird extra parts, I dunno. It’s probably different for every one of us. But your brains definitely read ‘monster’ when you see us.”

“Oh,” Reggie croaked. “You’re not monsters. You’ve both been very, erm, polite. Perfect hosts.”

“Ah,” said Mike, “it’s got nothing to do with how nice we are or aren’t. It’s how your brain reacts to the way we look and move…”

“It’s because we’re fuckin’ monsters, Skully.” She fixed her eyes on the journalist. “I don’t mean that in a bad sense. But like, we’ve taken a big damn step out of anything near to nature. Nothing is supposed to be the way we are. It’s normal for humans to feel weird when they’re around us for the first time.”

“Oh, well,” said Reggie, “maybe don’t slice your wrists open in front of company in the future. Or at least do it behind a screen?”

Mike nodded as if that had been a profound suggestion. Then he handed Topaz her second G-tini and belted down his own. They were both visibly intoxicated now. Topaz’s eyes looked unfocused and she sprawled out backward on the bed and cuddled absent-mindedly with one of the fur blankets on her bed. Mike drifted off too, tapping his foot to a beat Manny couldn’t hear and drumming his fingers on the bar top to what looked like a completely different beat.

The journalist stared at his blood shot. It looked like it had begun to clot. A thin rind had formed across the top. Reggie was in obvious pain, but he was just as obviously too squeamish to drink a stranger’s blood. Manny felt a lot better though. It was weird how fast Mike’s blood had worked. He found himself worrying at the scab on the gash he’d received on his forearm, only for the scab to fall away and reveal clean new skin underneath. An hour ago it had been a bleeding wound.

“It really works man,” he told Reggie. “Just trust me. Choke it down.”

Reggie didn’t look convinced.

“Think about what a story this’ll make for everyone back home,” Manny said. “You escaped a killer drone and drank the blood of an immortal. You’ll dine out on that for years.”