i know i said i wouldn't post until i got another review, but i decided to cut the suspence and give you guys another chapter or two. ^.^
CHAPTER 3: SHARED DREAMS
When they return to Hellsing HQ, Shadra heads to Alucard's room as if claiming it for her own. In fact, when she reaches the basement bedroom, she once again retrieves her bag of blood bottles and sets it on the table next to Alucard's dinner before sitting on the edge of his coffin and bending to take her shoes off again. Alucard eyes the bag as he comes in, saying, "Dragon skin, huh?"
Shadra smiles, "Yep. In fact, it was given to me willingly by the dragon himself. The bag, along with the special crystal that makes up the bottles, keeps the blood from going bad."
"Like that bottle of blood you had my fledgling help you drink back there? Why homunculus blood? I thought it only paralyzed."
"You've only encountered Wrath's blood, then. Like the homunculi themselves, each one's blood has a different effect. Pride's promotes healing. Lust's is a sleeping agent. Gluttony's drains the victim of energy, while Greed's boosts the drinker's energy. Sloth's stops the effects of the others, and acts as normal blood otherwise. As for Envy's, I've only used it once, and apparently, it gives you a god-complex that you don't remember when it wears off. I haven't used it since I woke up from it and found out I'd leveled a whole village, and left only one survivor…."
"So yesterday, you were under the influence of Lust's blood when I found you asleep in my coffin?"
"I've been using it to help me sleep since waking up from Envy's blood. Otherwise, the nightmares are too much for me."
At this point, Shadra turns to look Alucard in the eye, "Back there, you called me 'Princess'. How did you know that the shadows call me that, Alucard?"
"They told me. How is it that one as young as you could gain the title of Shadow Princess? I'd thought it was only given to the children of Lucifer."
"Did you ever wonder what happened to my birth mother? Papa caught her trying to sacrifice me when I was three and killed her, but not before she branded me with this." She moves the collar of her dress to show him the crown branded onto the right side of her neck, "Lucifer's Crown. Since the ritual wasn't completed, I'm only an honorary princess, but the shadows here acknowledge me as a daughter of the fallen archangel."
"Mind if I ask why you seem set on sleeping in my room?"
"A legend Prince Abadon once told me. It's a pretty short legend, but I'm the only princess it fits.
Hair the color of a vampire's eyes, she dreams of being the vampire king's bride. Eyes a glowing demonic shade of green, she sees the things that shouldn't be seen.
"With the Bird of the Hermes,
I share my wings."
,said the Shadow Princess
To the No Life King.
That's the legend that Abadon told me mere hours before I first met you and Integra. Do you see why I've taken to you so quickly?"
"A quaint little legend about who is supposed to become my bride, huh? Well, you certainly fit the description given in the beginning, but what about that last part?"
As an answer, a pair of black dragon wings sprout from Shadra's shoulder blades, then shrink down to half of their original size. At the same time the wings are shrinking, one of the binding circles fades from Alucard's gloves. Doing this, however, fatigues Shadra to the point where her wings disappear completely and she pitches forward into Alucard's arms, asleep before he has a hold of her completely. With a sigh, Alucard tucks her into his coffin and goes to drink his blood pack.
Within a few minutes of Alucard tucking her in, though, Shadra's body starts to shake violently, accompanied by wolf-like growls from her throat. Alucard decides to see what she's dreaming about and enters her mind.
Within the dream, Shadra is thirteen, standing in the center of what once was a desert village, now blood splattered ruins. She turns her head towards Alucard, and shows that her eyes are homunculus purple. She's been taken over by the homunculus whose blood she drank, Envy. Over to one side comes the sound of crying just as her eyes fade back to green and widen upon seeing the destruction around her. She rushes over to the ruined building the crying is coming from and pulls out an eight year old girl, her raven black hair matted with blood as her chocolate brown eyes widen in fear of Shadra. The girl struggles as best as she can in Shadra's arms, terrified of the girl who just destroyed her home. Shadra tries to calm her down, whispering soothingly to the young girl as she stands with her in her arms and quickly goes to try and find her sisters. Alicia has the best healing abilities of the three sisters, but by the time Shadra finds her sisters, the girl has fallen into a coma from terror and blood loss. Saturn is able to keep the girl from dying while Alicia heals her, but something about the power Saturn uses won't allow the girl to wake up….
The scene changes to a few nights before Shadra's eighteenth birthday. Shadra is sitting in a chair beside a princess bed. In the bed is the eight year old she rescued from her own rampage. She hasn't aged a day since then, or woken up. The only way you would know that any time has passed for her would be that her raven hair is much longer than it was before. Shadra has made it her responsibility to look after the girl for the last five years. Now Alicia will be taking over until they find a way to wake her up or Shadra has found her mate. Shadra remembers the legend that Abadon told her when she was the same age as the little girl before her, and remembers clearly the feelings she's felt for the vampire named Alucard since she first laid eyes on him.
Shadra bolts awake at this point, forcing Alucard from her dream world. She's breathing heavily and reaching almost blindly towards the dragon skin bag on the table, nearly falling over the side of Alucard's coffin before he wraps his arms around her and holds her to him. She doesn't even realize that she's crying blood tears until a few minutes later.