Paternity

Chapter the Ninth

Eva hesitated in the doorway. Slowly, she advanced a few paces into the room, set down the box, and moved the barrel of her gun from doorway to doorway.

Sevarius appeared in the center doorway directly across the room, a semiconscious Mauser lying on a guerney in front of him, a tranquilizer gun of some sort in his hand.

"What is that?" Eva hissed.

"Oh, I don't know," Sevarius mused, studying the gun. "I had to grab whatever drug I could find. It might kill him. It might only paralyze him...or blind him...perhaps permanently...I really can't say."

"Dad?" Mauser mumbled.

"You'll let him go? If I give you the egg?"

"That's the idea."

Eva nodded to the box. "There it is. Take it."

Sevarius advanced a pace to the right. Eva eased a step in the opposite direction. They circled the room cautiously, one pace at a time, remaining directly across from one another. As the scientist got closer to the box, his weapon moved from Mauser to Eva. The German female's gun was trained on Sevarius throughout.

Eva looked worriedly over at Mauser. He didn't look like he was capable of standing, and while she was certain she could carry his weight, doing so while holding a gun was something else again-and the scientist was between them and the exit. She wrapped her left arm around his shoulders, hauling him to a sitting position. He blinked, leaning heavily against her.

Sevarius smirked as he came within reach of the box. "Quite the catch for one night...an egg and two gargoyles." The tranquilizer gun raised and fired.

The dart bounced harmlessly off the armour around Eva's upper chest. Sevarius snarled and prepared to fire again.

A booted foot hit him full force in the back, knocking him over. The tranquilizer gun skittered across the floor.

"Dad!" Mauser cried, as Wagner's form, wings out, was silhouetted in the doorway.

Sevarius and Wagner both dove for the gun. The scientist was closer, but the gargoyle spread his wings and glided across the distance, snatching the weapon away just as Sevarius' fingers touched it. Wagner rolled across the floor, stopping in an aiming position, but Sevarius had already scrabbled to his feet and held the box threateningly.

"Stop or I smash the egg," Sevarius demanded, eyes narrow.

Wagner laughed coldly. "Go ahead."

"Fuck you, Dad!" Mauser yelled, but Eva simply picked him up and flung him over her shoulder.

At that moment, Sevarius noticed how light the box was.

"Empty!" he cried, throwing the box at Wagner and running back down the corridor to the laboratories.

Wagner snarled, his eyes lighting up with a predatory gleam. He sprang from his position like a hunting cat, muscles tense, and gave chase. The expression on his face was merciless as he drew the bronze Walther from his waistband.

Eva dragged Mauser through the door, looking back over her shoulder just to see Wagner disappearing in pursuit of Sevarius.

"Wagner!" she cried, but the humanlike gargoyle ignored her.

###

Rommel jumped into the front of the cab with the egg in his arms. "Go!" Chaz jerked the wheel and stepped on the gas.

Abruptly, the truck stalled.

"Get it started!" Rommel yelled, a hysterical note in his voice, as Chaz turned the key back and forth with no effect.

"Don't blow a gasket, I'll get it going," Chaz grumbled.

Rommel shook Chaz's shoulder and pointed out through the windshield.

A laser blast hit the ground in front of the truck. It was coming from a weapon held by a red-headed azure gargoyle who shrieked like the Furies as she descended on them.

Chaz looked up. "Aw, SHIT..."

#

Aashlee and Claymore touched down on the roof. "Looks like you've been having some fun," the white gargoyle snorted. Paint of all colours was splashed across the roof, the door into the building, and the unconscious guards. Claymore laughed, unslinging his paint gun and adding to the scene.

"We're getting low on supplies," Alexia said.

There was a banging on the stairs. The door flung wide, and a squad of guards emerged, wearing full riot gear and carrying semiautomatics.

"I think that's our exit cue," Aashlee murmured...

...just as Wes screamed, "PARTY'S OVER!"

The five gargoyles spread their wings and jumped off the side of the building, jinking in the air to avoid the odd stream of fire that came their way. They were fast enough so that by the time the guards got a decent aim, the distance between the guns and their targets was great enough to diminish accuracy considerably. Wraiths in the night, the five gargoyles headed back to the homestead.

#

Demona looked down on the ramshackle truck. There he was...that insufferable idiot Mauser, coming out the shotgun side.

"Fix the truck! I'll hold her off!" Rommel shouted to Chaz.

Demona dove down on the green Outklaw. The grey one was frantically yanking up the hood of the pickup; he seemed to pose no threat to her. As Demona lined up the Outklaw leader in the sights of her laser, she noticed with a bit of grudging respect that Mauser had finally learned to dress like a gargoyle, in a loincloth and some very nice gold armour...

Mauser drew a Beretta handgun, dropped to his knee and fired in one smooth motion.

Demona's eyes widened in shock as the bullet hit her laser rifle. She pressed her trigger, but the weapon refused to fire.

Mauser fired twice more, both his shots going wide, and then Demona was upon him.

He rolled under her, delivering a strong punch across her jaw. She staggered back. He flipped over, lashing her across the legs with his dragon-spiked tail, and she cried out as his spines drew blood...

Mauser? Spines?

He was getting to his feet now, eyes glowing white, and Demona gasped as she realized that she was fighting a gargoyle about ten years older than Mauser, a lighter green, with ribless wings and curling horns who nevertheless bore an uncanny resemblance to the Outklaw leader...

#

Wagner paused, listening. His sensitive hearing picked up running footsteps in the far left corridor. He darted forward, rounding the corner just in time to catch a glimpse of Sevarius disappearing into a room further down the hall.

#

I still don't know what the hell I was trying to prove, chasing Sevarius like that. We had the egg. We had Mauser. Our goals were met and there was nothing to gain from my still being there.

But I wanted Sevarius. I wanted him bad.

I could smell the chemicals, death and fear. Upstairs, Mauser had reeked of them as well. I could see the Sevarius leer on two faces-father and son. I could feel the fine white ash that had covered everything in Auschwitz like tears. Auschwitz was like yesterday. Hell, it was like I was still there...like I had never really left. I could hear the mocking German voice ringing in my head...

"What can you do, young Luftwaffe officer? You know what is going on here...what will you do?"

I had done almost nothing. Not to Johann Sevarius, not then. In 1943 I held my silence and let him proceed as he would.

Not this time. This time would be different.

Anton Sevarius had reminded me too much of his father.

I struggled with myself as I shoved wide the door that Sevarius had vanished through. My behaviour was impulsive, poorly thought out, emotional, irrational... completely unlike me.

They might need me outside. That was a sobering thought.

Then I caught a glimpse of Sevarius, and I figured I could take just two more minutes.

#

Eva dragged Mauser out the door. The Outklaw's head lolled back, in time to see Demona descending from the sky overtop of the truck. "Shit!" he rasped.

"Who is that?" Eva asked. "Mercedes?"

"Demona."

#

Wagner came through the front door of the lab, and Sevarius fired. The tranquilizer dart went wide, slamming into the wall, but in that moment Sevarius got a good look at his pursuer. Patrick Devlin, the Irish Illuminatus...with terrible black wings and a light in his eyes which did not belong anywhere outside of hell.

"What are you?" Sevarius asked, unsure whether the figure before him was gargoyle, human, a hybrid, a mutation, or a surgically altered...something...

"I'm the avenging angel," Wagner said, his voice slow and cold, his eyes blazing.

Indeed, he looked demonic...but Sevarius' rational mind had no place for angels or demons of any sort. "A scientific curiosity," he murmured, subtly fumbling for another tranquilizer dart.

Wagner fired, catching Sevarius in the left arm. Sevarius screamed and dropped the dart. "Go away! Don't hurt me!" he snivelled.

Wagner's eyes flashed with a predatory gleam. "Big man, aren't you," he growled. "Big man when you're not the victim. Do you ever think about that? Do you ever think how they feel?"

"I don't want to die..." Sevarius moaned.

Wagner smiled, a death's-head grin. "You won't die. Not for a long time. It's Judgement Day." His weapon twisted, melting, reforming itself into a great bronze scythe.

Sevarius' eyes widened in pure, abject horror. Judgement Day...he knew what that meant...

The radio crackled, and he heard Eva's voice. "Omega, it's Demona! Demona is here! Backup!"

And in that short moment of distraction, Sevarius had fled out the back of the lab.

Wagner cursed, bounding across the lab, seeing Sevarius' back as the geneticist ran for his life. In a flash, the Assassin's Blade reformed into Wagner's weapon of choice, the Walther PPK.

The German assassin took aim and fired twice. Sevarius went down.

There was no time to confirm the kill...no time to ensure he'd finished the job.

Wagner turned on his heel and ran back the way he had come.

#

The khaki newcomer unslung an assault rifle from his back...AK-47, from the look of it...and tried to bring it to bear, but Demona lashed it out of his hands with her tail. He clawed out at her, and his golden-gauntleted wing hands cut furrows down her face. She hissed, kneeing him in the groin, and delivering a powerful punch to his jaw. He staggered back against the truck, groaning.

With a similar groan, the truck's engine roared to life.

"Yes!" Chaz cried. He looked over at the weakened Rommel and the snarling Demona. His face fell. "Shit!"

Demona heard footsteps behind her and turned.

There was Mauser, the real Mauser, staggering as he was half-supported, half-carried by a dark blue Valkyrie of a gargoyle with two blond braids and...yes...

Four toes. Four fingers and a thumb on the hands. Four claws and a thumb on the wings. She looked over at her khaki opponant who was still glaring at her defiantly. Four on him as well.

Was there HUMAN blood in their veins?

"Who are you?" she hissed. "What are you doing here?"

"We are Bavarians," the blue female snarled back. "From the Iron Clan."

Demona growled. "You have no business here. Leave this degenerate clan..." she gestured to Chaz and Maus "...and be gone!"

"We most certainly do have business here," Rommel growled, glaring at her. "You stole my brother's egg!"

"Your brother?" Demona replied, incredulous.

The voice came from out of the sky. "And my son."

Demona looked up at the figure that had alighted on the roof of the truck, its black wings folding behind it.

Once again, the bullet from a Walther PPK slammed between her eyes.

#

Charlie Team ran smack into Bob as they flew down the street. Bob was still crouching atop a building, holding his paint gun. When he saw them, he spread his wings and glided into formation beside them.

"What are you doing here?" he yelled.

"Where the hell were you?" Aashlee replied.

"You losers never radioed me!"

"We did too!" Alexia shouted.

"Lemme see that," Clay snapped, grabbing the radio. "135.5? You idiot! We said 155.3! You got the wrong frequency!"

"Damn!" Bob said, falling into formation beside them.

They flew in silence for a few moments before Bob asked, "So does that mean I missed everything?"

#

"DAD!" Mauser yelled, still unsteady on his feet. "KICK ASS!"

Eva finished stuffing her brother-in-law into the cab. "Go!" she cried, hopping into the back. Chaz stepped on the gas, and the old truck lurched forward as Rommel clung tightly to his future niece or nephew from his position between Chaz and Mauser.

"Nice shooting," Eva said to Wagner.

"Danke," the humanlike gargoyle replied, but his mind seemed far away, his mouth set in an unsettled frown.

#

Minutes later Caligo coalesced out of the shadows in the place where the truch had been parked. He frowned down at Demona's rumpled body, then turned his head towards the riot of police cars that surrounded the Stern's building. Carefully, he scooped Demona into his arms, and they both slid into shadow.

#

Demona came to the next evening, rubbing at her forehead.

"Are you all right, my love?" Caligo asked with concern.

"What happened?" she moaned.

"You were shot," he said.

Demona's eyes flashed as she remembered. "By that damned friend of yours. Wagner."

"You had taken his grandchild," Caligo said gently.

"Damn them. Damn them all to hell. Wagner, Clan Winslow, the Outklaws, and Mauser most of all. I will have that egg...at any cost."

"Please, my love, do not do this. Let it go."

"What?"

"My love...I do not wish to see you injured like that again. Clan Winslow may not be traditional warriors, but surely they proved their prowess in battle last night. They can protect the egg. I fear they will stop at nothing to guard it. There is nothing to be gained and much to be lost in this course of action. For example, the love of your daughter."

Demona sighed. "You are right. This battle will end tonight." She grimaced, morbidly curious. "What happened to Nightstone?"

"Six offices bombed out, smoke and fire damage, minor damage to the roof, and a nasty virus in the computer mainframe, according to the call I received just after sunset. Electricity was restored this afternoon and the injuries to your security forces are minor." He frowned. "One more thing. Your head geneticist, Sevarius...he's in hospital with a gunshot wound to the arm. Another bullet just grazed his temple. One more inch and he'd have been a dead man. He's very lucky."

"Sevarius?" Demona replied. "What does Sevarius have to do with this?"

"I don't know," Caligo replied, and stroked his chin, because not knowing disturbed him.

#

Later that evening, Caligo looked up from the book on his lap with a distinctly disturbed expression.

SEVARIUS, JOHANN LUDWIG. Camp doctor at Auschwitz. Performed experiments on live human subjects-pain thresholds, genetic manipulation, and more.

Johann Ludwig Sevarius had also met a very nasty end. The body had been found in 1966, in a house in Argentina, where Sevarius had escaped to after the war to avoid being called to tribunal for war crimes. The death had been extremely slow and gruesome. Written in blood on the wall had been the words JUDGEMENT DAY. The Argentine authorities had chalked up the murder to the Israelis, though no one was ever charged with the crime.

Caligo had a terrible suspicion that this, like Auschwitz, was what Wagner would call one of the Things Not To Be Thought About.

#

Demonika gently laid the egg back down in its nest of straw. In the games room,

Clan Winslow, the Outklaws, Aashlee, and the two Bavarian gargoyles were toasting their victory with a beer or six, laughing and high-fiving one another. Mauser cheered, draining his beer and wrapping his arm around his mate when she emerged from the cellar where the egg now lay. It took him several moments to realize that his father was nowhere to be seen.

Mauser untangled himself from Monika's embrace and trotted upstairs.

The black-winged figure stood before the kitchen window, hands behind his back, staring out into the night.

"Dad?" Mauser asked.

Wagner turned to his son, a sad smile on his face. "You don't need to call me your father, if you don't want to."

Mauser shrugged. "You're the only dad I got."

A sudden thought crossed the German's mind; he smacked his face with his palm.

"Mein Gott. What am I going to tell Bismarck?"

"Who?"

"My mate," he said quietly.

"You mean I got a step-mom?"

Wagner nodded. "And twin siblings in the egg."

Mauser's brain reeled. "Dad...I wanna meet my family...my blood family...but you know the Outklaws are my family too, eh?" He struggled to find the words.

"You're saying you belong here," the humanlike gargoyle said, as if reading his mind.

The green Outklaw nodded.

"I understand that," Wagner said, "and I will never take you away from your family here. I just hope..." His voice dropped. "...that there might be a little room for me too."

"Yeah," Mauser said, nodding. "Yeah, I think there is."

The banging of a piano came from the games room. Wagner and Mauser heard Colt's voice saying something about "the blue bitch." The humanlike gargoyle's eyes lit up with a wicked gleam. "Come," he said to Mauser, grinning, and led the way to the basement.

He paused at the bottom of the steps. "Can you quiet your friends?" he said to his son with a quirk of his eyebrow.

"QUIET!" Mauser yelled. "Quiet, everyone! My dad would like to say something to you."

An evil grin spread across Wagner's face. "Play something," he corrected. He sat down at the piano, paused for a moment, and then began to plunk out a rollicking melody that was very, very familiar to the young gargoyles, repeating the first few bars over and over.

Mauser's face split in a nasty smile that was eerily similar to Wagner's, and broke in with the cue.

"How 'bout we sing "Demona's a Bitch" in D minor?"

Eddie cracked up laughing.

Monika smirked and did her best to imitate Kyle. "I told you NOT to call my mom a bitch, Maus!"

"OooOOOooooh," Mauser replied, clasping his hands to his chest and rolling his eyes. He coughed a little, and started the song. "Well...have you ever met Demonika's mom, she's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world, she's a mean ol' bitch if there ever was a bitch, she's a bitch to Outklaw boys and girls!"

"Shut up, Mauser!" Chaz yelled, looking fearfully into the shadows for a sign of Caligo. Most of those assembled only broke into laughter, since his words fit so perfectly into the song.

Wagner opened the next verse, getting into the spirit of things. "In Calais she's a bitch, in Milan she's a bitch, in New York and Paris she's a bitch..." Then the Outklaws broke in, singing at the top of their lungs, "Then in Maine, just to be different she's a SUPER DUPER MEGA BITCH!"

Suddenly, the shadows solidified, and there stood Caligo with his arms folded across his chest. "That's not very civil. I may have to teach you some manners."

Caligo vanished.

"Does he KNOW the song?" Wes whispered loudly.

Wagner shook his head.

Wesson collapsed with laughter.

Mauser continued, "Have...you ever met Demonika's mom, she's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world, she's a mean ol' bitch and she wears stupid clothes, she's a big big big big big big bitch. Big big big big big big bitch, and she's a stupid bitch..."

Wagner concluded the verse with, "Demona's a bitch, she's a mean immortal bitch!"

Mauser hopped up on the piano bench, put his arm around his father's shoulders, and they sang the last line in harmony. "DeeeEEemoOOonnAAAA...is a...bIIIIIIIIIItch! YEAH!"

Caligo melted out of the shadows again.

Mauser quickly put on a puppy-dog expression and plastered a big insincere grin on his face. Wagner gripped Maus' shoulder and gave Caligo a grin of his own, fluttering his eyes in a vain attempt to look like a completely uninvolved bystander.

Caligo looked down at the two Germanic gargoyles. He struggled to keep his composure, but even Caligo couldn't help a snicker at the sight of the two obviously guilty gargoyles trying to look innocent...with such similar expressions.

"He's definitely your son, Wagner," Caligo said, raising his hand to cover his smile. "And he takes after his father, I see."

"You're not being very sympathetic," Wagner grumbled. "Cal, if you ever find out that some foulmouthed little punk is your long lost son, I want to be there...so I can laugh..."

THE END