Pet Shop Of Horrors Fan Fiction ❯ Defying Gravity ❯ Dragon and Phoenix Intertwined ( Chapter 2 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Kita and Subu-chan 
Anime/Manga: Pet Shop Of Horrors Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Supernatural / Romance / Horror / Drama | Type: Songfic | Uploaded On: 02.11.2007 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 1.7K | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Pet Shop Of Horrors Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Supernatural / Romance / Horror / Drama | Type: Songfic | Uploaded On: 02.11.2007 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 1.7K | Status: Work In Progress
Chapter Two: Dragon and Phoenix Intertwined
A/N-Thank you for actually coming back for the next installment. Hope you like it. Sorry if Leon seems a bit out-of-character here, but he’s trying very hard not to be blind anymore. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed the other stories in this run. Thanks for all your kind words. (Thank you! Hope you like! *pauses and bats eyelashes* More reviews, Please?) Akita, when will you learn to shut up?
“What the hell are you doing here?”
The old woman looked up at him with watery eyes, blinking in the dim light of the flashlight. “How did you get in here?” She asked in a quavering voice that was rusty with disuse.
Leon glanced over his shoulder, somehow unsurprised to see that the way he had come was a solid wall of rock. He shrugged. At this point of the night he was ready to believe anything. The skeptic in him was still cowering in disbelieving terror, unable to come up with rational explanations for any of this. “I walked.”
Rheumy eyes blinked and the old woman burst out laughing. Her laughter was that of a much younger woman, rich and full of life. “Of course. You walked.” She smiled, baring a mouthful of very white teeth. “Come then, walker, and sit with me. You must be tired after such a walk.”
Surprisingly, he was suddenly aware of just what a long night it had been and how weary he was. Leon turned and shucked his backpack, leaning it against a rock when a sudden increase in light startled him. He turned back to see the old woman warming her hands at a small fire. Where the wood had come from or how she had started it so quickly were a mystery he didn’t want to contemplate right now.
Leon sat on a level shelf of rock across the flames from the old woman and dug in his bag for a jug of water and a couple of the MRE’s. He offered the old lady one and was rewarded with another smile as she accepted the packet. He had to coach her through heating the contents with the included heater pack and found himself smiling at her obvious delight with the whole process.
She ate daintily and with evident relish. When she finished she leaned back with a satisfied smile. “Thank you, young man. I can’t remember the last time I had such a good meal or such pleasant company.” She chuckled her ageless laugh again. “But then, I’m old and my memory is not what it used to be. But I’m sure I would have remembered someone as pleasant as you.”
Leon had to snort. Now that he had rested and eaten, he was feeling quite a bit better. “You must have not met too many people, granny, if you think I’m pleasant company. I barely said ten words.”
She grinned at him with those unnervingly white teeth again. “It wasn’t what you said, my dear, but your presence. You have a good heart and it shows.”
That startled a laugh out of him. “You wouldn’t happen to be related to a crazy chick who calls herself Madam Enigma, would you? She said some of the same weird things.”
“Alas, no.” She said with a smile. “I regret that I have no children of my own flesh and blood.”
“Oh.” Leon flinched. “Sorry. My bad.”
She waved away the apology with a grin that took years off her face. “As I said, you have a good heart. There is no need to apologize for circumstances that are far beyond your control, my young friend.”
“Still…” Leon shook his head. “Anyway, my name is Leon Orcot. Nice to meet you.”
“A pleasure. A brave name that; it suits you. You are a warrior born.”
“A cop actually. Well, formerly.”
Her laugh startled him, high and full of unadulterated joy. “A creature of the law, how unexpected! Well come and welcome, my walker.”
Leon didn’t know what to make of her abrupt upswing in mood. “Yeah, well…”
“I am called Nogard. How came you to this place?”
“Huh? Oh, that’s a long story, granny.”
“I have nothing but time, Leon Orcot. Take my word for that.”
Leon shook his head and started to rise. “Yeah, but I’m supposed to be searching for something; something to help me find him. I’m the one who doesn’t have time. Sorry. You’re welcome to tag along, lady. I’ll drop you at the next place resembling civilization we run across.”
A wave of her hand froze him in his tracks. “Stay, then. Perhaps I can help you. I’m quite old, and the old know many things. Perhaps, I might know how you can find the one you seek so desperately.”
Leon hesitated. Was this old lady who he was supposed to find? “I…”
“Take a moment to share your tale with me. If I cannot help, all you will have lost is a little time and perhaps some of the weight of your burden. I am a stranger to you, and strangers cannot judge, only listen.”
Leon shook his head and settled back down onto the rock. Whatever. At least the urgency that had driven him crazy earlier had faded. “Sure, I guess. I mean, what harm can it do?”
“That’s the spirit.”
Without his willing it, Leon found himself telling the tale of his first encounter with D. Somehow, it all came spilling out, his obsession with finding the real dirt on D, how his little brother had come to live with him and by proxy, at D’s pet shop, his angry feeling of betrayal when D had not shown the slightest regret at Chris’s leaving, and at last the mad search for the vanished Count.
His anger and hurt came pouring out with the story, and he was shaking by the time he finished. He angrily knuckled tears out of his burning eyes to find Nogard watching him intently. For some reason she no longer looked as old as she had when he had first stumbled upon her. Maybe it was a trick of the dying firelight.
There was no pity in the bright eyes, only sympathy and something he could put no name to. “It has been a long road for you, Leon Orcot, that led you here to my prison. Why do you wish to find him? And, please, no protests that you wish to bring him in. A creature of the law you are, but no longer bound by man’s laws. You shed that lie when you decided to seek him out again.”
“I-I don’t know, dammit! I have to return this to him.” Leon was horrified to find his hands shaking as he pulled the battered drawing from his pocket. “He took it with him when he fled, and it was all they found after the explosion. He kept it. It was the only damned thing he took besides his animals.”
“It was important to him. A reminder of the humanity that he thought was lost to him. Of things dear to him.”
“T-that’s what Madam Enigma said.”
“A wise woman. She is the one who sent you?”
“She called herself an oracle and sent me off into the wilderness with only the moon as a direction!”
“And that led you here.”
Arrested by the tone of her voice, Leon looked up from replacing the much-abused crayon drawing. The old woman across the fire from him was no longer that. In her place was a pale, unearthly beauty with jet-black eyes and crimson hair floating wildly around her pointed ears. She glowed with an inner light that lit the cavern as brightly as the sun.
“I have been prisoner in this tomb of stone for more years than you can fathom, my walker, and you are the first to enter with no desire but the one.” She said, voice echoing as if from some incredible distance. “I confess finding myself a little confused. You want nothing but to find him? This Count D you spoke of?”
Leon shuddered, but was transfixed by her eerie beauty. “I have to find him.”
“Why?”
Leon tried to shake his head but failed. “Dammit, I don’t know!” His voice shook.
As suddenly as she had begun to glow, her light paled as she laughed. Her voice stopped echoing as she chuckled. “How wonderful! No grand dreams, no protestations of undying love, no desire to rule, just honesty in your poor state of confusion. I love it! How incredibly rich…”
She shook her head, still the weird vision of beauty, but no longer glowing like a bug zapper. Her vibrant hair settled around her as she settled back down onto the rocks. “It has been an eternity since I have been so delighted to be disturbed from my endless slumber. You are truly the most interesting creature to wander into this place since I was imprisoned here.”
“Imprisoned?” Glad to be back on familiar territory, Leon managed to force his dry throat to work. The skeptical part of him had died a lingering death, so he accepted that the woman across from him was no woman and moved on. “Why were you…?”
Nogard rested her chin on folded hands. “Caged here? The folly of youth and a crime I didn’t commit, but had knowledge of. I chose not to expose the real culprits, and this was my punishment for daring to love enough to take the blame for they who committed the offense.”
“Who were they?”
“My parents. They dared to rebel against one who claimed to have my clan’s best interests at heart, but did not. My clan was among those who fell to the twin blades of fear and anger. He claimed that he could avenge us and right past wrongs. My parents doubted him and refused to have any part of the wholesale slaughter that he would have brought about. The utter genocide of the race that had destroyed our clan was what he would have caused. He did not take their betrayal lightly and this was my punishment for daring to cover for them.”
“What happened to them?”
“I do not know. Also a part of my penalty, I assume. I knew very little of the outside world, save what I garnered from the minds and hearts of the some few that managed to brave my prison.”
“Why didn’t one of them set you free?” Leon asked, stung by the injustice of her story.
“They would not even if they could have. Fear and anger still lay in their hearts and it would not allow them to free what they feared.”
“I don’t understand.”
Her smile was sad. “I know. You still fear, even if you do not know what it is you fear. And you are angry. Rightfully so, but anger still the same.”
“What am I supposed to be afraid of? You? Don’t make me laugh.”
For a moment, shock ghosted across her features and she froze. Then she shook her head. “No. You do not know enough to fear me, then. You fear other things, though. You fear not finding what you seek, you fear the emotions you cannot give name to or admit.”
Leon cut her off with a sharp wave, “Yeah, yeah. I know, alright? I had this same discussion with myself a few thousand times, okay?” His voice was full of self-mockery. “I’m scared shitless of admitting to some things. Hell, it even scares me to think about them for too long. That’s just the way I am. But I don’t let fear stop me, not when it’s something that has to be done, or…” His tirade faltered and Leon looked away, full of embarrassment and mortification. “Something I want.” That last was said in a bare whisper.
Leon shook himself, shoving away things best left unsaid. “And anger? It’s just an excuse. A way to hide. Sure I’m angry, but it’s mostly at myself these days. I’m not even that pissed at him anymore. It took me a while to get over it, but I understand why he did what he did. I may not condone all of it, but I understand.”
There was silence for a long moment as Nogard regarded him with those fathomless black eyes. At last she spoke, her voice filled with astonishment and a growing warmth. “I confess to being astounded. When I said you were not like the others who braved my prison, I had no idea of the truth that I spoke. You are by far the most unusual individual I have ever encountered. Small wonder that the Count was so fascinated by you. His kind I have come upon before, and know all too well. His weakness for you and your brother is-” She smiled radiantly. “Remarkable. A very pleasant surprise.”
Leon glanced up, caught by the tone of her voice.
“Unfortunately, as I said, I do know his kind, and if they truly do not with to be found, no human alive could find them. It is one of their strongest defenses against mankind.”
Leon could have screamed with frustration, but a languid wave of one graceful hand forestalled him. “Perhaps there is a way, Leon Orcot, but it will require sacrifice on your part. A very great sacrifice, indeed.”
“What?”
“Your life.”
Leon sprang to his feet and backed against the stone behind him. “Are you nuts? I don’t want to die to find him!”
“You misunderstand me. You will not die. The life I refer to is your life as a human.” She was smiling as she spoke.
“Now I’m confused.”
“I offer you a chance to find him, but it will mean shedding the life you had before. Not the core humanity, that which makes you the remarkable creature you are, but the human body that houses it. It means that you will never be able to go back to your life as a human. You might be able to hide among them, but you will never be one of them again.”
“What would I be?”
“Let me show you.”
Suddenly the cavern was a lot smaller, or perhaps it only appeared that way against the size of the creature now filling it. Leon stared in awe at… at the dragon, his mind supplied objectively, though it was like nothing he could have ever imagined in conjunction with the word.
The massive head was lean and arrow-shaped with enormous black eyes and small, upstanding ears poking through a mane (Again his mind supplied the right word) the color of fresh blood. The head topped a long, coiling neck scaled in tiny crimson scales, leading down to a serpentine body with four powerful, clawed legs. Wings, far too glorious to ever have been compared to those of a bat, stirred the air briefly before folding back against the sleek sides. The shelf of rock Leon had just been sitting on was in reality a massive tail, coiling around the edges of the cavern.
The head lowered to regard him with gentle black eyes. Nogard’s voice filled his head. “This is what I offer you. But you would have to give up your life as a human, my walker, so think well.”
Leon could only stare, heart pounding in his throat. Though he had accepted that Nogard was no woman, his brain was taking it’s time catching up to the realization that she was in fact a colossal dragon. His mind flashed back on that one Christmas Eve when he and D had released a three-headed dragon into the sea. Then, he thought he had been hallucinating. Now… he knew he was not.
“Are you afraid of me now, Human?” Narrow jaws opened just a bit to reveal rows of very white, very sharp teeth. “My kind triggers blind, unthinking fear in your kind. This is what you would be.”
Leon had to work to find his voice. “I’m not scared. You-you are beautiful.”
Warmth blossomed in the mental voice, filling his head with approval. “I was right. You are worthy of such a rebirth. Will you regret leaving the world of humans?”
He shook his head. “I would have only one regret, and Chris doesn’t really need me. He has all the family I could never give him.”
“Is that your choice then?”
“What do you get out of it?” Leon met the huge black eyes. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch. What do you want from me?”
“A human proverb does not apply to me. I want nothing from you.” Nogard tilted her head to match his gaze. “Will you be the first born to my kind in thousands of years?”
Leon swallowed and nodded, casting his reservations to the winds. He had made his choice and there was nothing left to lose.
“So be it.”
Massive scarlet wings enfolded him, drawing him into a velvet darkness deeper than night.
A/N-Thank you for actually coming back for the next installment. Hope you like it. Sorry if Leon seems a bit out-of-character here, but he’s trying very hard not to be blind anymore. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed the other stories in this run. Thanks for all your kind words. (Thank you! Hope you like! *pauses and bats eyelashes* More reviews, Please?) Akita, when will you learn to shut up?
“What the hell are you doing here?”
The old woman looked up at him with watery eyes, blinking in the dim light of the flashlight. “How did you get in here?” She asked in a quavering voice that was rusty with disuse.
Leon glanced over his shoulder, somehow unsurprised to see that the way he had come was a solid wall of rock. He shrugged. At this point of the night he was ready to believe anything. The skeptic in him was still cowering in disbelieving terror, unable to come up with rational explanations for any of this. “I walked.”
Rheumy eyes blinked and the old woman burst out laughing. Her laughter was that of a much younger woman, rich and full of life. “Of course. You walked.” She smiled, baring a mouthful of very white teeth. “Come then, walker, and sit with me. You must be tired after such a walk.”
Surprisingly, he was suddenly aware of just what a long night it had been and how weary he was. Leon turned and shucked his backpack, leaning it against a rock when a sudden increase in light startled him. He turned back to see the old woman warming her hands at a small fire. Where the wood had come from or how she had started it so quickly were a mystery he didn’t want to contemplate right now.
Leon sat on a level shelf of rock across the flames from the old woman and dug in his bag for a jug of water and a couple of the MRE’s. He offered the old lady one and was rewarded with another smile as she accepted the packet. He had to coach her through heating the contents with the included heater pack and found himself smiling at her obvious delight with the whole process.
She ate daintily and with evident relish. When she finished she leaned back with a satisfied smile. “Thank you, young man. I can’t remember the last time I had such a good meal or such pleasant company.” She chuckled her ageless laugh again. “But then, I’m old and my memory is not what it used to be. But I’m sure I would have remembered someone as pleasant as you.”
Leon had to snort. Now that he had rested and eaten, he was feeling quite a bit better. “You must have not met too many people, granny, if you think I’m pleasant company. I barely said ten words.”
She grinned at him with those unnervingly white teeth again. “It wasn’t what you said, my dear, but your presence. You have a good heart and it shows.”
That startled a laugh out of him. “You wouldn’t happen to be related to a crazy chick who calls herself Madam Enigma, would you? She said some of the same weird things.”
“Alas, no.” She said with a smile. “I regret that I have no children of my own flesh and blood.”
“Oh.” Leon flinched. “Sorry. My bad.”
She waved away the apology with a grin that took years off her face. “As I said, you have a good heart. There is no need to apologize for circumstances that are far beyond your control, my young friend.”
“Still…” Leon shook his head. “Anyway, my name is Leon Orcot. Nice to meet you.”
“A pleasure. A brave name that; it suits you. You are a warrior born.”
“A cop actually. Well, formerly.”
Her laugh startled him, high and full of unadulterated joy. “A creature of the law, how unexpected! Well come and welcome, my walker.”
Leon didn’t know what to make of her abrupt upswing in mood. “Yeah, well…”
“I am called Nogard. How came you to this place?”
“Huh? Oh, that’s a long story, granny.”
“I have nothing but time, Leon Orcot. Take my word for that.”
Leon shook his head and started to rise. “Yeah, but I’m supposed to be searching for something; something to help me find him. I’m the one who doesn’t have time. Sorry. You’re welcome to tag along, lady. I’ll drop you at the next place resembling civilization we run across.”
A wave of her hand froze him in his tracks. “Stay, then. Perhaps I can help you. I’m quite old, and the old know many things. Perhaps, I might know how you can find the one you seek so desperately.”
Leon hesitated. Was this old lady who he was supposed to find? “I…”
“Take a moment to share your tale with me. If I cannot help, all you will have lost is a little time and perhaps some of the weight of your burden. I am a stranger to you, and strangers cannot judge, only listen.”
Leon shook his head and settled back down onto the rock. Whatever. At least the urgency that had driven him crazy earlier had faded. “Sure, I guess. I mean, what harm can it do?”
“That’s the spirit.”
Without his willing it, Leon found himself telling the tale of his first encounter with D. Somehow, it all came spilling out, his obsession with finding the real dirt on D, how his little brother had come to live with him and by proxy, at D’s pet shop, his angry feeling of betrayal when D had not shown the slightest regret at Chris’s leaving, and at last the mad search for the vanished Count.
His anger and hurt came pouring out with the story, and he was shaking by the time he finished. He angrily knuckled tears out of his burning eyes to find Nogard watching him intently. For some reason she no longer looked as old as she had when he had first stumbled upon her. Maybe it was a trick of the dying firelight.
There was no pity in the bright eyes, only sympathy and something he could put no name to. “It has been a long road for you, Leon Orcot, that led you here to my prison. Why do you wish to find him? And, please, no protests that you wish to bring him in. A creature of the law you are, but no longer bound by man’s laws. You shed that lie when you decided to seek him out again.”
“I-I don’t know, dammit! I have to return this to him.” Leon was horrified to find his hands shaking as he pulled the battered drawing from his pocket. “He took it with him when he fled, and it was all they found after the explosion. He kept it. It was the only damned thing he took besides his animals.”
“It was important to him. A reminder of the humanity that he thought was lost to him. Of things dear to him.”
“T-that’s what Madam Enigma said.”
“A wise woman. She is the one who sent you?”
“She called herself an oracle and sent me off into the wilderness with only the moon as a direction!”
“And that led you here.”
Arrested by the tone of her voice, Leon looked up from replacing the much-abused crayon drawing. The old woman across the fire from him was no longer that. In her place was a pale, unearthly beauty with jet-black eyes and crimson hair floating wildly around her pointed ears. She glowed with an inner light that lit the cavern as brightly as the sun.
“I have been prisoner in this tomb of stone for more years than you can fathom, my walker, and you are the first to enter with no desire but the one.” She said, voice echoing as if from some incredible distance. “I confess finding myself a little confused. You want nothing but to find him? This Count D you spoke of?”
Leon shuddered, but was transfixed by her eerie beauty. “I have to find him.”
“Why?”
Leon tried to shake his head but failed. “Dammit, I don’t know!” His voice shook.
As suddenly as she had begun to glow, her light paled as she laughed. Her voice stopped echoing as she chuckled. “How wonderful! No grand dreams, no protestations of undying love, no desire to rule, just honesty in your poor state of confusion. I love it! How incredibly rich…”
She shook her head, still the weird vision of beauty, but no longer glowing like a bug zapper. Her vibrant hair settled around her as she settled back down onto the rocks. “It has been an eternity since I have been so delighted to be disturbed from my endless slumber. You are truly the most interesting creature to wander into this place since I was imprisoned here.”
“Imprisoned?” Glad to be back on familiar territory, Leon managed to force his dry throat to work. The skeptical part of him had died a lingering death, so he accepted that the woman across from him was no woman and moved on. “Why were you…?”
Nogard rested her chin on folded hands. “Caged here? The folly of youth and a crime I didn’t commit, but had knowledge of. I chose not to expose the real culprits, and this was my punishment for daring to love enough to take the blame for they who committed the offense.”
“Who were they?”
“My parents. They dared to rebel against one who claimed to have my clan’s best interests at heart, but did not. My clan was among those who fell to the twin blades of fear and anger. He claimed that he could avenge us and right past wrongs. My parents doubted him and refused to have any part of the wholesale slaughter that he would have brought about. The utter genocide of the race that had destroyed our clan was what he would have caused. He did not take their betrayal lightly and this was my punishment for daring to cover for them.”
“What happened to them?”
“I do not know. Also a part of my penalty, I assume. I knew very little of the outside world, save what I garnered from the minds and hearts of the some few that managed to brave my prison.”
“Why didn’t one of them set you free?” Leon asked, stung by the injustice of her story.
“They would not even if they could have. Fear and anger still lay in their hearts and it would not allow them to free what they feared.”
“I don’t understand.”
Her smile was sad. “I know. You still fear, even if you do not know what it is you fear. And you are angry. Rightfully so, but anger still the same.”
“What am I supposed to be afraid of? You? Don’t make me laugh.”
For a moment, shock ghosted across her features and she froze. Then she shook her head. “No. You do not know enough to fear me, then. You fear other things, though. You fear not finding what you seek, you fear the emotions you cannot give name to or admit.”
Leon cut her off with a sharp wave, “Yeah, yeah. I know, alright? I had this same discussion with myself a few thousand times, okay?” His voice was full of self-mockery. “I’m scared shitless of admitting to some things. Hell, it even scares me to think about them for too long. That’s just the way I am. But I don’t let fear stop me, not when it’s something that has to be done, or…” His tirade faltered and Leon looked away, full of embarrassment and mortification. “Something I want.” That last was said in a bare whisper.
Leon shook himself, shoving away things best left unsaid. “And anger? It’s just an excuse. A way to hide. Sure I’m angry, but it’s mostly at myself these days. I’m not even that pissed at him anymore. It took me a while to get over it, but I understand why he did what he did. I may not condone all of it, but I understand.”
There was silence for a long moment as Nogard regarded him with those fathomless black eyes. At last she spoke, her voice filled with astonishment and a growing warmth. “I confess to being astounded. When I said you were not like the others who braved my prison, I had no idea of the truth that I spoke. You are by far the most unusual individual I have ever encountered. Small wonder that the Count was so fascinated by you. His kind I have come upon before, and know all too well. His weakness for you and your brother is-” She smiled radiantly. “Remarkable. A very pleasant surprise.”
Leon glanced up, caught by the tone of her voice.
“Unfortunately, as I said, I do know his kind, and if they truly do not with to be found, no human alive could find them. It is one of their strongest defenses against mankind.”
Leon could have screamed with frustration, but a languid wave of one graceful hand forestalled him. “Perhaps there is a way, Leon Orcot, but it will require sacrifice on your part. A very great sacrifice, indeed.”
“What?”
“Your life.”
Leon sprang to his feet and backed against the stone behind him. “Are you nuts? I don’t want to die to find him!”
“You misunderstand me. You will not die. The life I refer to is your life as a human.” She was smiling as she spoke.
“Now I’m confused.”
“I offer you a chance to find him, but it will mean shedding the life you had before. Not the core humanity, that which makes you the remarkable creature you are, but the human body that houses it. It means that you will never be able to go back to your life as a human. You might be able to hide among them, but you will never be one of them again.”
“What would I be?”
“Let me show you.”
Suddenly the cavern was a lot smaller, or perhaps it only appeared that way against the size of the creature now filling it. Leon stared in awe at… at the dragon, his mind supplied objectively, though it was like nothing he could have ever imagined in conjunction with the word.
The massive head was lean and arrow-shaped with enormous black eyes and small, upstanding ears poking through a mane (Again his mind supplied the right word) the color of fresh blood. The head topped a long, coiling neck scaled in tiny crimson scales, leading down to a serpentine body with four powerful, clawed legs. Wings, far too glorious to ever have been compared to those of a bat, stirred the air briefly before folding back against the sleek sides. The shelf of rock Leon had just been sitting on was in reality a massive tail, coiling around the edges of the cavern.
The head lowered to regard him with gentle black eyes. Nogard’s voice filled his head. “This is what I offer you. But you would have to give up your life as a human, my walker, so think well.”
Leon could only stare, heart pounding in his throat. Though he had accepted that Nogard was no woman, his brain was taking it’s time catching up to the realization that she was in fact a colossal dragon. His mind flashed back on that one Christmas Eve when he and D had released a three-headed dragon into the sea. Then, he thought he had been hallucinating. Now… he knew he was not.
“Are you afraid of me now, Human?” Narrow jaws opened just a bit to reveal rows of very white, very sharp teeth. “My kind triggers blind, unthinking fear in your kind. This is what you would be.”
Leon had to work to find his voice. “I’m not scared. You-you are beautiful.”
Warmth blossomed in the mental voice, filling his head with approval. “I was right. You are worthy of such a rebirth. Will you regret leaving the world of humans?”
He shook his head. “I would have only one regret, and Chris doesn’t really need me. He has all the family I could never give him.”
“Is that your choice then?”
“What do you get out of it?” Leon met the huge black eyes. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch. What do you want from me?”
“A human proverb does not apply to me. I want nothing from you.” Nogard tilted her head to match his gaze. “Will you be the first born to my kind in thousands of years?”
Leon swallowed and nodded, casting his reservations to the winds. He had made his choice and there was nothing left to lose.
“So be it.”
Massive scarlet wings enfolded him, drawing him into a velvet darkness deeper than night.