Chapter 10
The goddess was sitting on Donatello's workbench leaning against the wall while Leonardo dug pieces of mug out of her arm. She smiled at him a half smile. "You must be enjoying yourself." She said to him. He looked up at her. He was still angry that Raphael had hurt her, and he was furious at her for making him feel this way. "No." He said tersely. "What no little bit of joy at my comeuppance?" "No." He said as he managed to extract a piece of ceramic mug. It was still mildly disturbing to watch her blood disappear off of everything after it left her body. She had stopped bleeding but the cuts were still open. "Hmmm, how very gentlemanly of you." She said. "I'm not a man, so I can't be gentlemanly." He said with irritation. "So you are a what?" She asked curiously. "I'm a turtle." He said obviously. She laughed then and he looked at her. "So being a turtle precludes you from being a man?" She asked. "Hu-man, gentle-man, yes it does." She just shrugged. "I suppose I just tend to think of anyone who is vaguely human-ish and is male as being a man. Same with women." She tipped her head to the side in thought. "Yep, Orcs, goblins, centaurs, elves, you name it they are men to me, unless they are women. I mean look at me I do not exactly look human, but do you think of me as a woman or a female?" Clink another piece of mug hit the metal tray. Leonardo thought about what she had asked. It was true he thought of her as a woman. He paused in his task and looked into her eyes surprised. He tried to wrap his head around her thinking of him as a man. Then shook himself out of where his thoughts were heading. "He didn't mean it." He said suddenly. He was surprised at his own words. He wasn't planning on saying them, or attempting to defend Raphael's behaviour, but for some reason he felt like he had to. There had been something about the look in his brother's eyes right before he got angry that worried him. The fact that that particular look had made his heart hurt, he wasn't even going to examine. "Yes he did." She said simply."You didn't mean the piece of tail remark, he meant every word he said." He flushed. "But both of you regretted it the moment you said it." She shrugged. "Raphael will punish himself enough without me adding to his burden." He turned his head away before he fell into that calm green gaze. He turned back to his task. "I'm almost done." He said. "You had better hurry Leonardo, I am getting cold." She said to him. Curious he looked at her. She looked distracted, a strange look passed over her face, it was almost like surprise or pain, but he wasn't sure. She looked at him. "I will be right back." He stood back surprised that she was planning on going anywhere when suddenly she closed her eyes and her whole body stilled. He took another step back confused. He looked at her and noticed that her lips were more blue than pink. He reached out, she didn't move as his hand got closer. His finger brushed her lips. Her lips felt cold as ice. He took his hand back confused. She was oddly still. Usually when a person was sleeping or something there was some sort of indication of life. He watched for the rise and fall of her chest, but it was still. He reached out to check the pulse in her neck. He tried several times and found none. Fear spiked through him. He leaned into her chest listening for a heartbeat and found none. Dread stole over him. Arms suddenly went around him. "It's okay Leonardo." She whispered. He closed his eyes letting the fear slip away. He pulled back angrily. Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael walked into the room. "What the hell!" He grabbed her injured arm angrily. She winced in pain as he realized what he had done he loosened his grip. He looked at her arm and found there were a few more chunks of glass imbedded in the cuts. He breathed slowly and tried to get his heart to beat at the right speed. "Leo, what's your problem!" Raphael asked angrily striding up to the workbench. Leonardo angrily shoved the tweezers into Raphael's hand. "You did it, you pull the rest out, and while you are at it ask her why she isn't breathing and doesn't have a heartbeat." Leonardo stalked a few steps away as Raphael looked at her. He paled as he realized she was blue. She smirked. "Because my body is undead. Sorry I startled you Leonardo, I was checking something." "What the hell were you checking! You didn't go anywhere, one minute you are sitting there the next you look dead!" "I was wandering around through my own mind Leonardo. My heart hasn't been beating since we got into this room. I can't lose any more blood so I stopped my heart. I don't actually need to breathe, the only reason I do so is because I need to breathe to talk, that and it tends to creep people out. I try to appear as alive as I can. Nothing in my body really functions unless I will it to, and sometimes not even then." A flash of something crossed her face, pain, sorrow, regret? He couldn't tell. The room was silent. "That is why I need blood. Unlike a vampire I do not constantly need to ingest new blood because my body doesn't use it that way. It is like a super vampire hybrid, I only need to replace it if it has been lost somehow." She paused in thought. "Raphael I would appreciate it if you would take the rest of the mug out of my arm so I can restart my heart. I really am freezing." Raphael started in surprise, then set about the task of removing the final shards. Raphael finished quickly and her cuts closed. She brought her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs leaning her head on her knees. She looked deep in thought. "I have always wondered what it would have been like to have been resurrected into a body that still lived. A true resurrection like what I performed on Raphael instead of a...metamorphic change." Leonardo looked at her. Donatello walked over to her and placed a hand on her arm. She smiled at him covering his hand with her own. "The resurrection didn't go according to plan?" Donatello asked softly. She smiled at him and laughed. "I would say it was rather unsuccessful for all parties involved." "But you're here so it worked." Raphael said in confusion. She just smiled her half smile. "Yes I guess I am here. Resurrections are tricky." She said. "For one thing there are very few who can perform a resurrection to begin with. Even among the gods resurrection abilities are rare. For another there are only three ways to truly resurrect someone from the dead. The first is the easiest way, basically if you have the ability you just shove the soul back into the body. This is what I did with Raphael. Each god, deity or whoever, may have a different way of doing it, but basically the principal is the same. Thankfully I was able to bind Raphael's soul to his body because I wasn't relishing having to go the second route to resurrect him, and the third route is out of the question." Raphael had gripped her other arm. She moved her arm and interlaced her fingers with him. He closed his eyes in relief. Leonardo realized that she had forgiven Raphael. Anger still simmered on the surface as he noticed that she was holding hands with both Donatello and Raphael. "The second way to resurrect someone is to go to the Underworld and bring their soul back. I cannot think of anytime a mortal has been successful when attempting this. The Underworld is huge. You have to figure out where the soul went. The paperwork and hassle alone is enough to make most turn back. It used to be simple, challenge a god to a game, play a nice little song, but now," She shook her head. "it is a mess. Too many souls being processed each day. Most souls get delivered into Limbo Level One, which is in the first level of Hell. There are a few exceptions that get a one way ticket, but pretty much all souls are processed there no matter where they are bound. After the soul is processed it is taken to wherever it was originally bound, Heaven, Hell, Limbo Level Two, Valhalla, the Underworld, you get the picture. All of my creatures go to the Underworld." "So you would have gone to the Underworld to bring me back?" Raphael asked. "Yes. You should not have died that day Raphael, killed as you were by a rogue demon. I would have had to go to Hell to find you, but I would have brought you back." She said with a smile. "The third way to resurrect someone uses the very blackest of magic and tends to be the most favoured way of resurrection used by mortals. Basically by using dark magic one life is sacrificed to bring the other life back. Rule of equality, a life for a life. Resurrecting someone this way is very bad juju. It leaves a stain on your very soul." She said solemnly. "So what you are telling us is that you are...dead?" Leonardo found himself asking. She laughed. "Dead is dead Leonardo. I am a goddess with an undead mortal body. A strange situation to be sure, but it is what it is I suppose." Michelangelo walked up to her and shook his head. "They don't read enough comics do they? 1)Undead vampire makes undead vampire, 2)goddess takes over vampire body, 3) this equals a goddess in a vampire body, but better than a vampire because she's a goddess. It's classic comic pulp." He said with a smile. Holding out his hands for her. She disengaged her hands from Donatello and Raphael. Michelangelo grabbed her around the waist and lifted her down. Michelangelo was laughing but there was something hard that glittered in his eyes. He kept his arm around her waist as he walked her from the room. "What about Vampirella?" He asked her. "She's a vampire in a comic." "Oh please Michelangelo, have you actually read that one?" The goddess asked as their voices drifted away. Leonardo looked in shock at Raphael and Donatello. Raphael shrugged. "So she's undead, if I haven't cared up until now then I guess it doesn't really matter." "Raphael she didn't tell us she wasn't alive!" Leonardo said angrily. "Yeah she did, and if shell for brains over there figured it out, then we should have too. Although I guess you weren't around for that conversation were you Leo?" Raphael asked a slight edge to his voice. "So are you just going to let her walk out of here with Michelangelo?" Leonardo said avoiding the question. He closed his eyes. Now he was starting to talk like her too. When not wanting to lie answer with a question, or simply avoid the question entirely. Raphael looked at the doorway. "Naw, Mikey's just..." He looked at the doorway again. "Hey Mikey!" Raphael yelled as he followed the couple out. Donatello looked at him anger warring with another emotion he couldn't identify. "You got something to say Donny?" Leonardo asked. "Yeah, get out Leo, you're in my space." Donatello crossed his arms and watched him leave. Leonardo went to his room, slamming his door as he went. He wished the fact that she was undead bothered him, but it didn't.
Raphael was panting hard. He looked around at the destruction he had caused in his room. He was angry and he didn't have an outlet. He was tired beyond measure and his arm and leg were in so much pain he could hardly stand it. So he had trashed his room. Mature, no, did it make him feel better, a little.
"I did knock." The goddess said from his doorway. He looked over his shoulder at her. She was leaning against his door frame arms crossed looking at the destruction he had caused. She must have opened his door because it had been closed. "You had better lay down Raphael." She said to him.
"No." He said angrily. He knew he should be acting better but his frustration was too great to be contained. "Where were you all day?" He asked angrily. She had been gone, all day. She was gone when he had woken up and hadn't returned before everyone else had gone to bed.
"I was out." She said watching him intently. She pushed herself from the doorframe and walked into his room. She closed the door behind her. She turned around leaning against the door she crossed her arms and looked at him.
He wanted to throw something wanted to hit something, but he couldn't, especially after what had happened yesterday. He walked over to his bed and sat down putting his head in his hands in frustration. "What do you want?" He asked angrily.
He sensed her move towards him, paper crunched beneath her feet as she stepped on something. He lifted his head up as he looked at her. She reached down and picked up something that had been buried under a pile of clothes. She had uncovered a magazine.
Raphael felt the blood drain from his face. No he didn't, he looked around his trashed room, he couldn't have...
She said flipping through a few of the pages. He struggled to his feet and took a few steps towards her. She glanced at him and the blood rushed to his face. "A porn magazine." She said finally. "Why Raphael I didn't know you were such a perv."
She walked over to his desk chair pulled it out straddled it. She began flipping through some more pages. Raphael wanted to sink into the floor. He was too embarrassed for words. "It's not mine." He managed to choke out. "I don't know how..." He began. She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "Do you know how frustrating it is not being able to lie to you, even when I do lie, you know!" He yelled at her in embarrassed frustration.
She flipped another page then turned the magazine sideways the centerfold unfolding. Raphael covered his eyes and backed up towards his bed.
"I can't lie, why should you be able to?" She asked him. "It's not my fault I can smell it, hear it, and see it when you lie." She closed the magazine and folded her arms along the back of the chair. She rested her head on her arms, the magazine hanging negligently from her fingertips.
He looked at her. He was trying to gage what she was feeling. With her it was so hard to tell. Her eyes were usually a giveaway but right now they were steady and green, but this didn't mean she wasn't angry, it just meant she wasn't in a towering rage. "Do you find these women attractive Raphael?" She asked him.
He felt the jaws of a trap close in on him. Casey had told him about this sort of thing where no matter what answer you gave you were screwed either way. He had thought it was funny. Raphael had never thought that he would actually ever be caught in this type of position, soooo not funny now.
"Umm..." He thought furiously, but no matter which way he answered, neither sounded good.
She rolled her eyes. "I don't mean any woman in particular in this magazine Raphael, I mean human women in general."
The jaws of the trap closed tighter. He was still screwed. Did she consider herself to look human enough, or not human enough? So he did the only thing he could think of, he got defensive and angry.
"What, do you not think any human woman could ever like a freak like me?" He whispered voice dangerous and low. "Touch a creature such as myself. Don't you think I don't know how I look? The dry leathery feel of my skin, the hard rough planes of my shell. I don't even know if I could kiss a human woman because I don't even have lips. My hands are rough and callused from fighting and the thought of touching soft human flesh...Do you actually think a human woman would..." He stopped himself looking at her. Her expression was unreadable.
She was completely unfazed by his outburst. She looked around his room as if searching for something. She got up off the chair walked past him and flopped down on the bed. She stuck her hand beneath his mattress and pulled out more magazines and began sifting through the material. Raphael felt like he had fallen into some sort of horrific Twilight Zone nightmare. She rolled onto her stomach, found a magazine that seemed to interest her, and began flipping through the pages.
She looked over her shoulder at him. "Would what Raphael?" She asked looking at him seriously. "Sleep with you? Make love with you?" She asked her tail flicking back and forth. "I would." She said looking at him evenly. Her voiced rolled over him and shot straight into the nether regions of his pants. "Your skin isn't leathery Raphael, it is textured and warm and quite pleasant."
"My body temperature is lower than a human's." He finally managed to get his mouth working.
She shrugged. "To me you feel warm." She said turning her attention back to the magazine. "As for your shell, yes the shell on your back is rough in places, as for your front, you shell is only rough where it is scarred, or in your case where you scars run straight through your shell exposing the flesh beneath. Your touch, some women like their men to have calluses. And as for the whole kissing thing if you can pronounce an 'o' sound, you can kiss. Don't get me wrong it would be different, but probably doable." She tipped her head looking at the magazine. "She's pretty." She said showing him the picture.
"Grk" was the only sound that issued from his lips.
She looked at the picture, "No?" She shrugged, grabbing another magazine. "Of course I'm only an undead, blood sucking, creature of the night so my opinion might not really count."
"I feel a little weirded out right now." Raphael said trying to get some sort of bearing on where this conversation was or wasn't heading.
"Why? Is it the fact that you have a half naked woman lying on your bed, or the fact that said woman is looking at your porn." She asked with a wry smile.
"A little of both." He said. His leg was beginning to bother him again, but he didn't really want to move. He felt rooted to the spot, because he felt that if he moved in any way he would either wake up, she would come to her senses and leave his room, or she would start throwing things, possibly starting with him.
"Hmm I suppose if I wanted to browse through the movies I'd have to get them from Michelangelo's room." She said kicking her legs up and down.
"Gurk." He said as she threw him back out to sea. "How do you even..." He began.
She smiled over her shoulder at him and laughed. "You should see your face right now." She said rolling and clutching the dirty magazine to her chest. "It's elementary my dear Watson, you see when I found the magazines you almost let your gaze wander over to the closet but then didn't because you remembered the rest of your 'collection' wasn't in there and knowing your brothers as I do Michelangelo is probably the only other one who would watch your dirty movies." She said with a smile. Heat rushed into his face. "But seriously Raphael you had better sit down or something because you are going to fall down any minute."
He glared at her. "You drive me nuts you know that." He said angrily.
She turned her attention back to the magazine. "Whatever, you like it." She said to him flirtatiously.
And that was the problem right there. He did. She drove him crazy and he liked it. He turned to go sit down at his desk when something caught his eye. Her hair had fallen forward leaving her back exposed. He found himself, without even thinking sitting down on the bed and reaching towards her back. He had never actually seen her back before, her hair was always in the way, and even if it hadn't been, he might not have noticed. He touched the black skin between her shoulder blades tracing the cool edges of delicate black scales. He quickly pulled his hand away as he noticed what he was doing.
"Are you pulling your hand away because you are grossed out, or because you don't think you should touch?" She asked him looking over her shoulder. She shrugged and turned back to the magazine. "You can touch if you want, I don't mind. You can undo all of the ties if you want a better look."
He hesitantly reached out and began untying the linen strips and the black bra she wore. The arms of her wings were covered in delicate black scales that continued onto her shoulder blades. The black skin traveled down the center of her back to her tail where another bloom of scales covered her lower back and part of her ass. "Dragon wings, not bat wings, and a dragon tail, so technically part of me is reptilian, if you can call a dragon a reptile." She said as she grabbed another magazine.
He knew she had wings and a tail but he had never really thought about what kind of wings and tail. He slid his hand down the length of her tail. He moved positioning himself better on the bed. He picked up and spread one of her wings watching as the black membrane stretched and folded back. He let go of her wing and ran both of his hands down her back revelling in the feel of soft velvety skin and smooth cool scales. He moved a little closer to her head. She had put the magazine down and was laying with her head down arms crossed across his pillow. Her face was in profile, eyes closed.
He gathered up her hair and ran his hands through the silky softness. He watched as her hair shimmered and changed colours. He had always thought of her hair as being black, but it wasn't really. Royal purple, forest green and midnight blue shimmered in the depths. He grabbed the white part of her hair and saw it wasn't white, but it was made up of golden yellow, blush pink and baby blue. He pulled her hair away from where human ears should have been and found none, just the bottom of her kitty cat ears. He touched her ears which flicked in response. They were covered in shiny black fur with a tuft on the very peak. He touched what he had always thought as black tattoos that lined the very edge of her jaw running just under her chin. As he touched them he realized that they weren't tattoos, but just part of her skin.
He moved but pain shot up his leg. He gasped in pain. She sat up pulling all of her ties closed she somehow managed to tie them all back together. "Lie down Raphael, I'm sorry I got distracted. I brought you something to make you feel better." She moved off of the bed. He stood, pain blazed through his leg but he didn't want to lay down. "Goddess..." He began, but stopped when she gave him a tiny vial. Where she had pulled it from he didn't know.
"Drink this, it will help with the pain. I knew your shoulder and leg were bothering you, but I didn't know the pain was that bad. You should have told me sooner."
He looked at her in surprise. "I..."
She reached up and touched both sides of his face. "I'm sorry I would have gotten it to you sooner, but it took me a while to find everything I needed." She said as she leaned in and kissed him. He was so surprised he didn't even kiss her back. "Definitely doable." She said with a smile. "Have a good sleep Raphael." She said as she strode to his door and opened it. She looked over her shoulder at him. "I alphabetized your magazines, I also put them in order of the ones that I thought were the best." She closed the door quietly behind her. He looked down at his bed and saw a neatly organized pile of pornos. He reached over to the magazines and picked them up. He flipped through the one on top. He closed it and tossed the whole pile into the trash. He sat down on the bed drank the tiny vial of liquid and felt warmth blossom down his throat into his stomach. The pain in his shoulder and thigh lessened almost immediately. That was what she had been doing all day. Searching for something to take his pain away. He fell back on his bed. Like he would be able to sleep now. He thought to himself. "I could really use your advice right now Case." He said to himself.