"Hey guys, I think you should check this out…" Danny said, turning around.
"What is it Danny? Tucker, SHUT UP! Your sixteen, not six." Sam was stillt trying to get tucker to stop whining.
They both looked up and gasped.
Held in Danny's arms…was a young girl, with pointed ears and a long auburn cat tail. Her hair was auburn as well and she had fangs. She was wearing a torn up grey dress and had a tarnished fake silver band around her arm. What they gasped for was not this though. Her stomach was bleeding freely and she had cuts all over her back.
"What the…?"
"I know. We're lucky that we're in walking distance from home. She's losing a lot of blood. I'll fly her home and meet you guys there, m'kay?" Danny stood up and silver (that's right, they're silver now) rings passed over his body. He still looked the same in ghost mode, but taller and more mature.
"Kay Danny, be careful." Sam said. Frowning.
Why's she get to be close to him! She thought.
Later, at Danny's
"She's still asleep, and her wounds have stopped bleeding." Maddie, Danny's mother, told them as they sat on the couch at home. Jazz was off at college and Jack was at work, a job he'd gotten a year before.
"Thanks mom." Danny said.
"You can go see her now, but only one of you at a time. She could wake at any moment."
The group talked for awhile and decided that Danny should go first since he found her.
As he was walking up the stairs, a high pitched scream was probably heard by even Vlad.
Everyone fought their way upstairs, Danny getting there first and closing the door and locking it.
He looked in the direction of his bed and saw light blue eyes under the bed. He walked over and got on his hands and knees.
"Stop it guys! You're scaring her!" He yelled outside. Everyone stopped trying to knock the door down and sat on the stairs.
Still on his hands and knees, Danny reached under the bed and said, "Come on. It's okay we won't hurt you." He smiled.
She grabbed his hand and hesitantly came out from under the bed.
"There ya go. Now what's your name?" Danny said gently.
She shook her head and pointed to his paper and pencils on his desk.
He walked over and picked up seven pieces of paper and a pen.
"Here, write it down." He handed her one piece of paper and the pen.
She scrawled something quickly and handed the paper back to him.
I can't talk. My name is Leera Woode.
"Why can't you talk?" He said handing the paper back to her.
I was teased a lot when I was younger, even by my parents, in a bad way. They made fun of everything I would say. If everything you say is seen as inferior, or is hated, you get to being afraid of everyone, and your words die. Everything starts to look dark and your heart… shuts down…
"What happened to your parents?"
They died when I was 4.
"Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to bring up any bad memories."
That's fine, I didn't even like them.
"How old are you? And don't you live somewhere?"
I'm 12. I don't live anywhere; everyone kicked me out of my town when I was 6.
"What happened before I found you?"
Ghosts or something. They beat me up and laughed at me. You know the worst part?
"What?"
They were my parents.
"I'm so sorry. Can I keep asking questions or would you like to stop for now?"
Can we stop? I'm hungry.
"Sure."
He took her hand and unlocked the door, leading her to the kitchen, where everyone was now sitting around the table.
"She's hungry. What do we have?" Danny explained.
"Well what does she want?" Maddie asked.
"Just a minute." Danny kneeled down in front of her and looked into her eyes. It was the first time he noticed that her left eye was faded and her pupil was a blob, instead of a circle.
Her eyes said that she would have anything, as long as it wasn't dry. (Don't as me how, she just did.)
"We don't have anything wet until tomorrow, except for cat food from before out cat died." Maddie said.
Leera pointed at some tuna flavor and jumped up and down as Maddie looked at her strangely and handed her the can. Leera dug her fangs into the lid and sat at the table, sucking out the juice and food through the holes she had made.
When she had scraped out the last of it with her long fingernails, she threw it away and grabbed Danny's hand, pulling him up to his room.
She wrote on a new piece of paper:
Write down your questions and I'll answer them one each day!
"Okay…"
He wrote down about 24 questions.
She took the paper and picked a tack up off his desk, putting the paper to the wall, and sticking the tack through it.