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Waking up in a new place was terrifying. It took Erkan several moments to realize where he was, and minutes after that for his heart to calm down. It was fine. He was safe. This was Nico’s condo, he’d come here to be protected.
His thoughts felt sluggish, but he managed to sort everything out. Vittore had followed him to his apartment, where Erkan managed to hold him off for a few moments before Justin showed up. There was a far too grisly fight which had ended with Vittore’s death and Erkan’s apartment being wrecked. In related news, he had to call in to work to let him know he wouldn’t be coming. Vittore might have been out of the picture, but he wasn’t exactly working alone. He was involved with Marconi and the Nervettis- ‘regular’ and vampire run parts of the mafia that had moved into San Francisco. Technically Nico and Savina were related to those same Nervettis, though they obviously weren’t on good terms with each other.
As Erkan sorted out his thoughts, Nico awoke as well. “Hey. I’m planning to go out to buy some breakfast for you. I don’t have any food in stock. How are you feeling?”
“Still sluggish and dizzy.”
“Blood loss will do that to you. You’re lucky you didn’t use too much.”
“Yeah… right…” Erkan did know he was lucky. He certainly wasn’t thinking about moderating his use of his own blood as he held off Vittore. He just needed to do something. He just wasn’t used to feeling so weak after losing blood. “Is blood loss usually this way?”
“It should be, yes. Remember what I said about contacting the hospital?”
“Yeah… I’ll do that.”
“Great. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Erkan took a bit to find the right number to call for the hospital. He’d been there- but he hadn’t been calling or visiting. Then he had to give some information to the man on the phone to prove he was himself. “So… about my last two visits… I just wanted to know if I received any blood transfusions?”
“Of course, Mr. Kasabian, I’ll look that up for you.” There was the sound of typing on a keyboard for about a minute. “Let’s see… it looks like in both cases blood was prepared.”
“I see.” Erkan wasn’t sure exactly why he was asking, but he had his answer.
“One moment.” There was a bit more typing and clicking, “It appears that the blood transfusions were prepared, but it was deemed unnecessary to administer them based on blood pressure and other vital signs. Is there anything else you need, Mr. Kasabian.”
“No… that should be enough, thanks.”
—–
When Nico returned, Erkan was ready with a question, “What does it mean that I never got any blood transfusions? Was that what you thought it would be?”
Nico walked towards the kitchen with his bag of groceries, “It was a possibility.”
“So…” Erkan followed after him into the kitchen, “What does it mean then?”
“With the amount of blood you lost… if you didn’t need more, it just means you had more blood.” Nico started taking things out of the grocery bags and placing them into the fridge next to a few bottles of blood.
“But humans basically have the same amount of blood at the same size… I’m not super big, either.”
“People at high altitudes produce more red blood cells,” Nico commented. “Then there are some who just retain higher amounts of blood all the time. Tell me, along with your haemophilia, do you have high blood pressure? Do you easily get cuts?”
“Well… yeah. High blood pressure is kind of normal though…”
“Not at your age. Anyway, it’s likely that you just produce and maintain more blood. Otherwise you’d be dead.” Nico pulled out a package of bacon and started shuffling through the cabinets, “I’ve gotta have a pan somewhere…”
“Dead?”
“Sure. You controlled the blood in someone else’s body enough to stop their movement. That takes a lot of energy. Even though you’ve been training in using blood magic, the density of energy in your blood won’t be that much higher than a normal person’s yet. Thus, you should have used enough blood to kill someone- even without the training earlier to try to learn how to clot your blood. How heavy are you?”
“One hundred and… something…” Erkan looked down at himself. “Or maybe very low two hundreds.”
“I’m not trying to judge you or anything,” Nico shrugged, “A night shift laboratory job doesn’t lend itself to easy exercise or anything. If you store extra blood, you’ll have more weight. I’d bet you’re around five pounds lighter now than you were earlier.”
Erkan shrugged, “I have no idea. I suppose I would be, if I used enough blood to kill a normal person. Is having more blood… normal?”
“Normal enough. It can range from ten percent to double. Most people would never find out. It does occasionally save aspiring young blood mages, however. Later, they learn how to change their constitution to intentionally produce more blood.”
Erkan scratched his head, “Hey, I was being attacked. I didn’t really have time to think.”
Nico grinned, “Oh, I’m not blaming you. Combat is its own thing. However, you were lucky enough to accidentally use your own blood and survive. That can give you a pretty good sense of how much you can use, since you got to the point where you were dizzy- preferably keep a bit more than that.” Nico finally found a pan. He washed it off to clean away the dust, wiping it down with a rag. Then he put it on the stove and poured the entire package of bacon into the pan.
“It’s strange though. I got dizzy from blood loss before… but this time lasted longer and felt different.” Erkan frowned, “Maybe it was just the idea of losing so much blood that did it before.”
“The mind is quite capable of making us feel ills that we do not have.” Nico looked down at the pan, “It’s a good thing you like meat, because you’ll need to eat a lot of it to replace your blood.”