DarleneCrossover: 3A Secret Revealed

by Hardwing

Since it is Christmas I decided to give Darlene a gift. She discovers that her family is larger than she would have ever dreamed of, but if this makes her happy?

I just want to thank the creators of DARK AGES for creating such a great background and Storyseeker for correcting my fics and helping me with great ideas and for the characters of his ficverse.

3. A Secret Revealed

"It is a miracle for me that you passed the tests and ascended in those days." Deborah told Demona, running through the living room followed by her. "You have the spiritual maturity of a hatchling, but not the feeling or responsibility like one of them."

With this, she reached the balcony door and looked around to her former pupil for the final time.

"You disappoint me," she declared quietly, nearly inaudible, before she went through the door and vanished, but while she leaped into the sky, a weird thought went through her mind.

~ Did I truly see a hatchling sleeping on the seat? ~

***

"There is no way for me, Gem." she told her youngest grandchild. "It has to end, finally."

With this, she stood up with Gem securely in her arms and started to figure out what to do, what she knew had to be done.

***

"We haven't... come to a common point." she explained. "So I have to talk with Xanatos personally."

"You'll be making a business trip to New York?" Jarred asked.

~ You could call it that. ~ Demona thought.

"Yes."

***

"Mother, I can't force you to do so, but for Lana's sake please try." While Darlene did so, she laid her claw about her mothers. "Mother, of all people in the world, you should know best how painful it is to be alone." She looked at her mother with eyes, which had forever been able to touch her soul. "Please, don't let Lana go through this just because of your pride."

Demona looked long into her daughter's eye and finally she nodded.

"I will see what I can do," she explained, "but I promise nothing."

Darlene smiled.

"Thank you mother."

Demona grumbled and fell back into her chair, looking straight on the monitor, which showed Darlene that it was over, on which she slowly left the room.

Demona's eyes followed her back until her daughter was gone, then she leaned back in the chair. She knew that it had to come one day, she had not made herself any illusions about this even when her foolish heart had wished otherwise sometimes, but that it came now....

"This will complicate things." the immortal whispered and forced herself back to look on the PC.

***A German Story***

31.07.98; 02:31; Destine Mansion Germany:

"Mom, I don't understand why you won't teach me?" Jarred asked his mother.

"Because it is your grandmother's job," Darlene explained. "Besides, I have to care for Gem and can't always take a look at which creature you summon next time."

"Okay, no summoning spells," Jarred said, "but I might practice my illusions."

"Jarred, you may find this hard to believe, but you can actually survive some days without using or practicing magic..." Darlene explained to him. "I have done no magic for 20 years."

Jarred looked at first unwilling, but then he nodded, defeated.

"Mom, telephone!"

Darlene turned around to see Lana standing in the doorframe, she nodded and took the telephone.

"Mother?"

"Hello child."

Darlene smiled shortly, one day she had to bring it up with her mother to not call her 'child' anymore.

"How are you?" she asked her mother.

"The business is running well." Demona told her daughter. "I have been able to overtake a lucrative business here."

"And the other business with the clan?"

There was a longer silence, until Demona finally responded.

"It is progressing…"

"WHUFF"

Darlene was more than surprised to hear a dog barking in the background.

"Mother, what was that?"

"I'm watching TV," Demona explained quickly. "I'm sorry, how are you?"

~ You never watch TV, mother ~ Darlene thought, but kept silent.

"Well, it is all well here... " Darlene started. "We miss you."

Jarred made an eagerly gesture to force his mother to give him the telephone, but she wasn't ready yet.

"I miss you too daughter, I..." Demona began, when there was suddenly a voice in the background, which seemed to be calling her.

"Mother, who...."

"Just the TV." Demona answered quickly. "Listen, I have some work to do and will call back when I've time, greet the children for me." [CLICK]

Darlene looked on the telephone in honest and complete confusion.

~ What is going on? ~

"Mum?" Jarred asked, noticing that the telephone was out, seemingly demanding an explanation for why his grandmother hadn't wanted to speak with him. Even Lana, leaning on the wall with Gem in her arms, looked in wonder on her mother.

"Mum, what is it?" Jarred asked.

Darlene kept silent, but her mind was working. Apparently, her mother was hiding something.

~ No real news there, ~ she thought, ~ but what? ~

She could call her mother back, but this would be senseless and she knew it. As a teenager she had once asked her mother what she had done between the centuries and the only response had been, *things. *

No, her mother would definitely not tell her the truth, neither would she tell her whose voices had been there with her. There was just one way...

"Kids," she addressed her children, looking at them. "Pack up, we're going to visit your grandmother."

03.08.98; 01:33; JFK Airport New York:

The human Darlene Anderson, with Gem in her arms, went through the Great hall of the JFK-airport, her children following her on her invisible tail. Her mother had left her enough money on an account to pay for the flight to New York twice and it had been easy for Darlene to find an illusion spell in her mother's secret cellar, which was strong enough to disguise them all through the night.

By doing so, it had seemed to her as if some spells were missing, but she couldn't determine which.

When the disguised gargoyles went around a corner, they practically ran into a group of humans who were staring at a TV, hanging above them.

~ Is there a football match on again? ~ Darlene thought, distressed, and was going to go past them when she threw a look on the TV-screen and froze.

It showed her mother, as she smashed a man's head with a morning star.

"No… " Darlene whispered, listening to the commentator, speechless like her children.

"I repeat," the commentator of Fox said. "An unknown source has sent us this video tape from the Einstein shopping centre in Queens where, in the early evening, an unnamed horror had happened, seemingly committed by this gargoyle. Comments from the police have not been given yet... But the whole population of New York has but one question… Who is next?"

A man in front of her, who was speaking to a woman, ceased the silence.

"I told you those monsters were dangerous!" he said.

"They should all be killed." the woman replied.

"Fifty deaths by these creatures." a man whispered

"We should have listened to the Quarrymen," another woman added and to her shock, Darlene heard agreeing murmurs coming from the mass of people.

She looked around and saw Jarred and Lana looking, with total blank expressions, on the TV screen, not wanting to trust their eyes. Darlene herself didn't want to trust her eyes, but now their priority was to get away from here, if the humans discovered who and what they truly were then they would have serious problems.

"Come," she ordered her children with a stern voice and had to say it twice to Jarred, to make him follow her.

Once they were out of the building, it burst out of Jarred.

"Mom, this can't be true." he said loudly. "Grandma wouldn't do this, I mean..."

Darlene didn't really listen, as she was thinking about when she had first met her mother after a so long time, how she had told her about the 100 humans she had killed while they were stone...

I had a lot of fun!

Darlene shuddered at the memory of these words and the look in her mother's face, while she had said this, her wild, predatory smile...

"You saw it." Lana answered her brother since Darlene didn't. "She must have done it..."

"No," Darlene stopped her daughter "We're not sure."

~ Never trust just one sense, Lana. ~ Her mother had once taught her that and maybe...

"But..." Lana started, only to be stopped by her mother once again.

"It might be an illusion spell." Jarred said, seemingly reading his mother's mind and Darlene nodded.

"Yes, that might be it."

"So somebody, a sorcerer, let them-self look like our grandmother and then kill all those people." Lana said skeptically. "Sounds weird and besides, why?"

Darlene had no idea. She just knew that the idea of her mother travelling all the way to New York just to make a massacre of the humans in a shopping mall; was crazy.

"Come." Darlene ordered and led her family to an empty place where they could get rid of the illusions and start gliding to Destine Mansion where they could get some answers.... Darlene hoped.

03.08.98; 02:34; Destine Mansion:

They were near Darlene's old home, when they saw something.

It had been broken into.

Darlene landed, with her children, some meters before the broken glass of the veranda.

"Wait here," she ordered Lana and Jarred, while she handed Gem over to her eldest.

"Mum, don't go! It might be dangerous!" Lana pleaded, but Darlene just held a claw before her mouth and shushed her to be quiet, then she approached the building.

Aside from the broken veranda-window, the house seemed fine, but when she slowly entered the main living room, she noticed the clear signs of a struggle and saw that a battle had happened there. The furniture seemed partly destroyed or overturn, all over she saw the claw marks of gargoyles of different types.

"Is this how you wanted to make peace with the Manhattan clan, mother?" Darlene asked her mother silently.

This was the moment when her foot stepped in something damp and when Darlene looked down, she discovered to her horror that it was blood.

She knelt down and smelt it, like her mother had taught her.

~ The blood of a gargoyle ~ she noticed, even when she had somehow known it already, ~ but whose blood? ~

At least her mother wasn't in any danger, since nothing could kill her... except Macbeth, but Darlene doubted that he was present.

~ So what... ~

Her thoughts were interrupted by a growl, coming directly from in front of her and when she slowly looked up, she saw a pair of red eyes looking on her, coming from a black face. It wasn't that of another Gargoyle, Darlene had at first guessed. It was nearly that of a dog, a lizard-dog, with a large scar running from the left forehead to the right chin.

Somehow, Darlene knew that this had to be the source of the barking that she had heard in the last telephone conversation she had had with her mother.

Darlene made quiet noises to calm the beast down and finally, she offered the beast her claw, to smell it.

At first, the beast sniffed it cautiously, but then it... she came nearer and even licked her claw, sensing the smell of her master on the female.

"Seemingly you like what you smell?" Darlene asked the beast while she carefully stroked the beast's back. By doing so, she noticed the many small scars on it, especially a very large one that was above the left foreleg.

"You have been through a lot." Darlene noticed. "But why are you here, where do you come from? What do you do here? And how can you know my mother?"

The gargbeast, unable to completely understand what Darlene had said and even more to answer, stopped licking the common smelling stranger and looked through the broken glass on the veranda.

Darlene sighed.

~ I will have to have a talk to them about discipline. ~

"It is okay," she told her children without turning around. "Except for the beast, there is nobody in here, so come in."

She looked around, seeing Lana enter with Gem in her arms, followed by Jarred.

"Mom, what is this?" Lana asked, looking at the strange creature in mistrust.

"She is a gargbeast." Darlene said while standing up. "I have never seen one, but your grandmother has told me about them. They are the companions of the gargoyles, they even hatch together with normal gargoyles and are often seen as their siblings..."

While Darlene tried to remember more about what her mother had told her, about them, the strange gargbeast approached Lana, who cautiously moved back. But after the gargbeast had shortly smelled the scent of the young female and the baby in her arms, she moved further to the other hatchling.

"They are not dangerous unless they are attacked." But despite saying this, Darlene's eyes followed the gargbeast, as it approached Jarred.

"Wellllll… since you're not dangerous…" Jarred asked, stroking the gargbeast's back.

This proved to be a mistake, since the beast patted him with her forelegs and made him fall on his back.

"Ahhh...!"

Darlene rushed to help her son, but it was too late. The beast had its forelegs on Jarred's chest and was... licking the hatchlings face.

"Stop that!!!" Jarred screamed, laughing in desperation, on which Darlene could only smile.

"I forgot to mention that they also reallllllly like hatchlings." she added and helped her son, by pulling the gargbeast off from his chest.

"Eeewww...." Jarred stated and wiped his face with his claws, as he looked angrily first on the innocent looking gargbeast, which was now sitting, and then to Lana who had started to giggle slightly.

"This isn't funny!" he said angrily, on which Lana giggled even more.

"What now?" Lana asked her mother, when she had calmed down. "Grandmother isn't here, so what can we do?"

Darlene sighed.

"There is just one place where I can search now." she explained to her children "The Eyrie building, the home of the Manhattan clan."

"You mean we." Lana corrected her.

Darlene shook her head.

"You will stay here." Darlene told her daughter. "I'm faster if I glide alone and you stay here where you are safest."

"You can't be serious." Lana said unbelieving and definitely not happy. "You're making us stay here alone?"

Darlene crossed her arms.

"The beast is here. Besides, it is more secure here for a gargoyle than anywhere else in the city." she told her children.

"No!" Jarred began fearfully, tears in his eyes and embracing his mother. "Mum, you might get hurt or be killed, like dad..."

"Jarred, I won't be killed." she explained, kneeling before him and looking into his eyes, which reminded her so much of Paul that it hurt. "Your grandmother has trained me well and I will be careful, do not fear."

Jarred nodded, even though he still feared for her mother.

"And you will stay here, where you are safe." Darlene ordered her children and then looked to the beast that sat beside Jarred and studied the gargress with interested eyes "Protect them," she said to it.

The beast didn't respond, but Darlene hoped she had understood.

"I love you." she told her children again for the last time and then climbed up the facade to the roof from where she jumped and glided into the night.

Her children watched her until she vanished, while the gargbeast watched them carefully.

03.08.98; 03:37; some blocks before the Eyrie building:

Darlene jumped carefully from house to house, in order to not be seen by the humans in the streets where seemingly the whole population of Manhattan had gathered, looking up into the sky, full of fear from the monsters, who might fall from it and slaughter them.

Despite what she had said to her children, she doubted on her mother's innocence. Maybe Demona had done this to destroy the peace between humans and gargoyles in this city.

I had a lot of fun!

Darlene wished she could believe with a full heart that her mother hadn't done so, but a part of her knew that she was capable of this.

Finally, she dared it and jumped into the sky again; gliding to the world's highest building. She was maybe 1000 meters away from it when her keen eyes sensed the mass of people gathered before the building's entrance, demonstrating for her whole race, problems that Darlene doubted if she would be ever capable of forgiving her mother if she was the one responsible.

Then Darlene looked up and couldn't trust her eyes. Large dark clouds had appeared around the highest tower of the building, it rained and lightening raced through the sky around the castle at the top.

And there she could see a figure... a gargoyle, which she recognized through the opened wings. Darlene heard the maniacal laughter despite the thunder and shivered in the depth of her soul.

This was the time when she noticed the other figure falling from the highest tower, always hitting the battlements just to slip down even more. In the light of a lightening, Darlene believed to see that the figure was a female with red hair.

~ No! ~

Darlene tried to glide nearer to the castle, but the winds held her away. Finally, she managed to glide to a wall of the building, some meters below the castle and climbed up as fast as she could.

It was then, when she carefully climbed up the battlement that she heard a strange voice, sarcastic and evil.

"Oh really, what shall this bring? Shall I slip on the ice?"

When Darlene looked over the battlement, she got the shock of her life.

There was the Manhattan clan, at least 80 or maybe 100 gargoyles, standing around in a circle.

~ Large? ~ She thought, ~ this clan is a town! ~

But they grew instantly unimportant, when she looked to see who was in the circle.

There was her mother, kneeling on her knees, a part of her hair was burned away and Darlene knew instantly that a lightening bolt must have hit her. Then she noticed the burned places on her skin and worse, the right shoulder was hanging down unnaturally, broken like the right wing and the left claw.

It ached Darlene just to see her mother so, what pains she must have endured, she couldn't even guess.

And then she noticed the female; standing opposed to her mother and knew instantly that she had discovered the one truly responsible for the massacre. It was the look of total evilness shining out of the eyes, which were, to Darlene's surprise, completely dark. It was also the arrogant look on the face of a gargoyle and last, but not least, it was the scent of magic coming from her like of nothing that Darlene had known before. Her hair was black like her eyes and two large horns like that of a ram, with a third in the middle. She was clothed in black leather and Darlene thought it seemed fitting.

On the other hand, she smelt a fantastic magic power coming from her mother too.

Before she could work out this information, her mother spoke, seemingly answering the female's mockery and in her eyes, Darlene saw evilness that competed with the female's own.

"No, you shall fall!" With these words, her mother raised her healthy claw and spoke a spell that Darlene recognised partly. "Fulminos magnos venite!"

With these words, four large balls of fire emerged from her mother's claws and hit the ground below the dark-haired female.

*BOOM*

On this, the frozen ground, being fragile now, fell down and the female was screaming, falling down with the rubble.

~ How can you be so powerful in magic? ~ Darlene thought, feeling the shaking and having never seen her mother doing so well in the mystic arts before. But her thoughts were stopped when, much to Darlene's shock, the cracks on the ground enlarged and let her mother even so slip into the depths.

~ Mother! ~ Darlene nearly screamed, knowing very well that her mother couldn't hear her.

"Mother!" A female with brown hair and lavender skin screamed on the courtyard, running to the hole.

Darlene looked, unbelieving on her, but couldn't see her very clearly because of all the dust coming from the hole.

~ No… ~ She thought ~ I must have misunderstood this. ~

She saw how, when the dusk had settled, the female who was being followed by the rest of the gargoyle clan, rushed into the seemingly deep hole. Darlene carefully climbed about the battlement and sneaked, as near to the clan as she could, without being noticed, which was very easy since all the gargoyles concentrated on the hole in the courtyard.

Indeed, she was near enough to hear two gargoyles talking.

"How has she survived all that." an orange-skinned female with orange hair, two spiral-horns growing out of her head and a modest blue tunic, whispered fearfully.

"Our sister has survived more already." a large green-skinned one with white hair told her.

~ OUR SISTER??!! ~ Darlene thought unbelieving, while she watched how the gargoyles vanished into the hole.

With a numb feeling, she followed them secretly into the hole, which was four levels deep.

When Darlene reached the level where her mother had landed, the air had cleared enough to let her see a figure, kneeling in the middle of the room. At first she thought it was her mother, but then she noticed the black hair and the black blood, which showed her that it was the unknown evil female.

~ Mother, where are you? ~

As if she had heard the question, her mother came out of the dust and rammed the unarmed female with a sword, into her back so that it came out of the middle of her breast, no doubt stabbing the spine.

The dark-haired female gargoyle, unable to scream, looked on the blade poking out of her breast and grabbed it with her palms, but Demona pulled the sword back and even cut the female's palms.

Then Demona, even so kneeling, seemed to whisper something in her ear of the female, but Darlene couldn't understand what her mother had said.

Finally, Darlene saw her mother rise, with the help of the sword and going, or better yet limping, to the exit and passing the seemingly shocked clan, who seemed to know as much as Darlene… nothing.

By doing so, she took up the other sword that was lying on the ground.

Darlene could just wonder about how her mother was able to walk again. Sure, the immortality fastened the healing, but the wing like the left shoulder seemed still broken.

But the immortal walked, despite the pain, with a dignity that Darlene knew all too well.

When she passed the female, who had run worried to the hole first and had screamed something that Darlene knew wasn't... couldn't be true, Darlene decided to reveal herself since her mother owed her an explanation.

"Mother."

Darlene's mouth stayed open. This hadn't come from her! It came from... the black-haired female gargoyle that her mother had just mortally wounded and who now looked, with black eyes, on Demona's back.

Darlene looked back to her mother, sensing at the back of her mind that the surrounding gargoyles looked just as shocked as she was. The shock even enlarged when Demona rammed the swords on the ground and went to the dying female.

~ Tell me this isn't true ~ Darlene prayed silently to her mother, unable to move. ~ Please, tell me... ~

Meanwhile, Demona had knelt before the female who had started to bleed... black blood out of her mouth.

"Yes, daughter?" Demona asked in a neutral voice.

Darlene stopped thinking and just looked on the scene while her mind tried to work with this unveiling.

The dark-haired female smiled.

"This time, it was short!"

Demona gave her a weak smile.

"Oh yes, it was" said Demona, "but this was it, for the last time... Even when I have to say that your attacks had become quicker."

~ Last time? ~ Darlene thought.

The female... her half sister smiled by this praise and Darlene could just wonder.

"I had trained all these 300 years," she explained and Demona nodded. "Maybe next time... "

"Yes, maybe" Demona said.

Darlene registered in shock, as the female's eyes changed from absolute black to green, like her mothers. Then two of her three spikes on her wing and the spikes on her tail disappeared, along with her horns until they were just as large as from chamois and she fell lifeless down on the side, now in a form which couldn't hide the resemblance to her mother.

There was a timeless moment of absolute silence and Darlene registered that a new group, led by a white-haired and red skinned male, had arrived.

Then Demona rose and moved in the direction of the exit.

Darlene had decided to let her definitely not go, without an explanation and was going to leap before her, when a young female, the one Darlene had noticed before brought Darlene the next shock.

"Mother, this... " The female began, seemingly shocked and Demona nodded.

"She was your half-sister."

~ YOUR HALF-SISTER????!!!! ~ Darlene thought, her mouth hanging open again.

She scanned the female, she had long brown hair and pale lavender skin unlike her mother, but she had practically the same build... God, they had a striking resemblance.

~ My half sister?! ~

"How could you do this, sister?" a female with golden hair and a dark caramel skin tone, asked her mother one of the millions of questions that she had. Darlene noticed that she had four wounds on her stomach.

~ Sister? ~

"It was necessary." Demona answered, without looking in the female's eyes and coldness in her voice, which made Darlene shiver.

~ Necessary? ~

The female, which seemed to be Darlene's half-sister, shook her head and went to the corpse of her other half-sister to kneel beside it.

Demona looked on her daughter, who knelt beside her dead half-sister with somewhat of regret and was then on the move again to turn to the exit. Darlene was going to prevent this now, more than ever and decided to not let her mother go before she had the answers she wanted… needed, even if she would have to use burning irons.

An unsure voice stopped her.

"Aunt Demona?"

Darlene looked around to see a male brown-Grey skinned hatchling, around Jarred's age, with white hair, standing in front of Demona and decided to hold back in order to find out what more surprises this night would bring.

"Yes?" Demona answered with a weak smile and Darlene saw that the hatchling couldn't see the dead body behind his aunt. He gasped when he saw how wounded Demona was and Darlene asked herself how he knew her mother.

"It is okay," her mother explained with a calm voice. "I have had a rough night…" ~ You tend to underestimate ~ Darlene thought, "… but the wounds will heal during the day."

The hatchling nodded unsure, "we saw you on the TV, killing humans... "

"It was a fake," a large lavender gargoyle explained and Darlene noticed the special way he looked on her mother. "What you saw on TV was not Demona... The unnamed female lied to us."

The unsure face of the hatchling lit up. "So I was right?"

The lavender gargoyle nodded and Darlene asked herself what relationship this hatchling must have to her mother, to defend her against the opinion of his clan.

"Yes... " He said, "yes, you were right."

On this, the hatchling stormed to her mother and embraced her with such strength that it seemed to cause Demona pain, but she did not show it to the hatchling.

~ Seemingly they have a strong bond ~ Darlene thought, ~ but why? ~

"Hey, hey... " Demona said and knelt down to be on the eye level with the hatchling, "not so hard, you're crushing me!"

"I've missed you aunt," said the hatchling and looked into Demona's face. "I knew you had not done it."

This was when Darlene noticed the hatchling's eyes... green eyes, like her mother's.

~ No ~ Darlene thought shocked, ~ this can't... ~

Demona looked into the green eyes of the hatchling and smiled weakly.

"I would do nothing, which would harm you or the others."

A green-skinned gargress with fair hair and dumped horns on her head that parted it, seemingly was going to say something and from the look in her eyes, Darlene knew that it wouldn't be something nice. But the large lavender gargoyle... the leader, as Darlene supposed, stopped her with a look.

"They said even more things about you... " Said the hatchling and Demona nodded.

"These things are true... " She answered, "some I regret, others I simply wouldn't repeat and some…" during these words, Darlene saw her mother looking straight to the older green-skinned gargress, who now studied her coolly and she knew there had to be more between them. "… I will never regret."

~ What things? ~ Darlene asked her mother mentally, some things her mother had told her, but surely not all.

"The others have seemingly all chosen names, what is yours?" her mother changed the subject and Darlene noticed the pride in the hatchling's eyes... eyes like her mother's.

~ It can't be ~ she continued to think with open mound. ~ It can't... not another one??? ~

Yet there was a resemblance between them for an instant. The structure of the forehead, the wing structure, the bone's of his body.... and there was a gargoyle standing near her position, which looked damned like the older version of him.

~ It can't be. ~

"I've named myself Connor," the hatchling meanwhile told his aunt with pride and Demona nodded, appreciating.

"A good choice, Connor" said Demona, with a smile.

By these words, the female that was apparently... her half-sister, turned around and seemed to look at Connor as if she had never seen him before. Darlene saw in her eyes the same shocked reckoning she had gone through.

"Mother, this is... " She started in shock, but her... their mother interrupted her at once and stood up. "Connor," she explained with a look in her eyes, which Darlene knew all too well when her mother wanted to stop a discussion, "is a child of the clan."

"I see." the female replied, defeated, after an exchange of looks to her mother. The other gargoyles in the room indeed saw what she meant and looked unbelieving to each other.

The silence following this unveiling was broken by an older female gargoyle, which approached Connor.

"Well lad, I think it is time for ye to go to your brothers and sisters again." she declared and laid a claw on the hatchlings shoulder. "Come, I will accompany you. Aunt Demona has a lot to talk about with the clan."

"Have I?" asked Demona tiredly and, with a lack of shame, somewhat innocent.

"YES!" was the clear response of some gargoyles that Darlene agreed with, with a full heart.

Demona surrendered. "Well, seemingly I have," she explained to Connor.

"Will you come again sometime and tell us stories about your adventures and fights?" asked the hatchling and Darlene noticed the admiration in the hatchlings voice, the same admiration she once had felt for her mother and the same admiration that Jarred now felt.

She remembered all the times before daybreak when her mother had told her stories of her old home, of adventures she had gone through and Darlene couldn't do anything but wonder if all of this was true. Now she knew that they had seemingly not been all stories. Far from all indeed.

"Sure," Demona explained. "I have even more stories to tell."

Connor's eyes glittered by the thought of hearing more exiting adventures from Demona's life and he hugged her again, before finally going with the elder.

When the hatchling was gone, Darlene heard the beaked gargoyle with the twisted horn, speak to his sister with the spiral horns.

"Wow, our sister was definitely no nun in the last 1000 years." he said with a wicked smile.

Before the orange-skinned gargoyle could say something, Darlene stepped between them.

"No, she wasn't." Darlene agreed with them.

Both gargoyles looked in surprise at her.

"Who are you?" the female asked in surprise, but Darlene didn't answer and went further through the line of gargoyles, who looked on her just as surprised, straight in the direction of her mother. Demona just looked to the green-skinned female in front of her, so she didn't notice her daughter until she stood directly in front of her.

Darlene wasn't happy.

"I thought you were in Berlin." Demona told her calmly, but with a slight accusation in her voice.

"And I thought you would have told me at least half of your life." Darlene replied, crossing her arms. "Turns out we were both wrong."

Mother and daughter looked at each other while the clan looked on Darlene, some of the male members with lust in their eyes, noticing that this was definitely a beautiful gargess, even more beautiful than their red-haired sister.

"Who are you?!" Goliath demanded to know, not really happy about the guests he had got this night and added, not seriously, "one more of Demona's daughters?"

Darlene nodded, much to the total shock of everyone else in the room. Darlene noticed an older gargoyle with a white beard and a scar going over his left eye, stumbling beside the younger green-skinned one and she heard the beaked one whisper. "Definitely no nun."

"Yes, I am Darlene." she explained, never taking her eyes from her mother. "And I would like to know who you are?"

Demona opened her mouth to answer, but Darlene stopped her with a snarl.

"You had 6 months time to tell me the truth, mother." Darlene reminded her. "Now they will answer." and to the large lavender gargoyle. "Who are you?"

"I am Goliath, leader of the Manhattan clan." Goliath explained with a slight bow.

Darlene just stared at him, in the back of her mind she had guessed who he was, but hearing it from him...

"Goliath... thee Goliath from Wyvern? The one who was frozen in stone?" she asked, looking at him, still unbelieving.

Goliath nodded.

"And this is the clan of Wyvern?" Darlene continued, looking on her mother who looked as if she wanted to simply vanish.

"It is the Manhattan clan." Goliath explained calmly, throwing a look to his former mate, who retained his look icily. "It is formed by the former clan of Wyvern and the former clan of Moray."

"The former clan of...." Darlene began unbelieving.

She looked to her mother.

"You told me they were all dead!" she snarled at her. "No wait, don't tell me..." Darlene continued before her mother could say something. "You simple summoned them out of your hat?!"

"I have no hat, Darlene." Demona reminded her daughter coolly. "And it was a bit more difficult than this. I brought them into our time with the help of the Phoenix Gate by replacing them with ordinary statues just before the massacre."

Darlene looked on her mother unbelieving, when the female who was seemingly her half sister, started to speak, having just begun to come over the shock of this night.

"So you are my half-sister?" she spoke it out-loud, tasting the sound of these words and asking herself if she were dreaming a weird dream.

Darlene nodded. Now that she was standing before her, Darlene noticed the color resemblance between her and Goliath, the father.

"I heard this." she explained. "But I haven't learned your name."

"I... I am Angela." Angela explained and since she didn't know what else to say, she continued. "Nice to meet you."

"Especially since our mother has prevented this until now." Darlene added, taking a glance to her mother, when she noticed something. "But shouldn't you be an egg? Or been dead since ages?"

Angela looked on her newly found half sister as if she were mad, before she realized what Darlene meant.

"Oh no, no." she explained. "Mother didn't bring me back through time. My siblings and I were saved by Princess Katharine, who together with the Magus and Tom, took us to Avalon where time flows slower."

Darlene looked a bit confused, as this unveiling was a shock, not as large as the other shocks of this evening, but a shock indeed.

~ Avalon... ~

And then there was Princess Katharine, who from all that her mother had told her about the Princess, she never imagined that she would actually help a gargoyle, but seemingly her mother hadn't told the truth about much.

"And you?" Angela asked. "Why have I never seen you... or has she brought you back too?"

"I hatched in 1938." Darlene replied. "It was a normal thing without time travel.... Well, I was human for 20 years, but this doesn't count." Angela's eyes grew big on this, while Demona muttered something under her breath. "Long story, but since six months ago, I've been living with my mother again."

On this, Deborah's eyes started glaring on her former pupil.

"And why didn't you tell me of this when I visited you?" she asked Demona angrily.

Demona grinned superior while Darlene looked on her in wonder.

"You never asked." she explained.

Deborah's eyes started to glare red and she bared fangs, emitted a snarl.

"You miserable, good for nothing...." She lacked the words to describe the gargoyle standing in front of her, but when she felt the warm claw of her mate on her shoulder, it calmed her down.

"Sorry, but who are you and when were you in Berlin?" Darlene interrupted her.

"I'm Deborah." the teacher explained, still unsure what to think of the strange gargoyle. "I was in Berlin..."

"...Over a week ago?" Darlene continued the sentence and Deborah nodded.

Darlene glared at her mother.

"A telephone conference with Xanatos's envoy, mother?!"

Demona sighed.

"What should I have told you?" she asked, surrounded by her fate. "That my former teacher came to visit me for a small talk?"

Darlene was going to answer yes when she realized something.

"Your former teacher?!" Darlene asked unbelieving, not counting the shocks anymore that she had gone through this night. "The one of Wyvern that you told me so much about?"

Demona looked on Darlene in a way, which told her that she had better be quiet, while Deborah looked on her former pupil, wondering what exactly she had told her?

"Yes indeed, I was able to fake her death with the help of a powerful illusion spell." she saw the spark in Darlene's eyes and continued fast. "This was one of three scrolls that I had and the other I used for the leader of the Paris clan and his mate."

Before Darlene could ask more, Goliath interrupted.

"And can you tell us who this…" he pointed to the dead body of the killed Lucifia "…was?"

"I have no idea." Darlene admitted, looking first to Goliath and then to her mother. "I don't even know her name?"

"Lucifia." Demona explained. "Her name was Lucifia and I had her over 300 years before now."

"She was immortal?" Darlene asked and Demona nodded. "But how could you..."

"These swords," she pointed to the two swords lying in front of her, "are powerful enough to kill any immortal."

"You could have been killed." Darlene noted, unbelieving that she would have ever feared that her mother might have been killed. It was a new feeling, a feeling she disliked.

Demona nodded.

"Yes, like everybody else here, but it was the only way." she explained.

"And you had to decide this," Deborah noticed angrily. "You especially!"

"Well everybody here lives, don't they?" Demona replied.

"Barely, sister." Desdemona, beside her, noted and touched her neck. Darlene noticed the slash marks on it.

"I didn't say there was no risk," Demona admitted, "but it was the best way."

"60 humans died through this." Darlene reminded her mother, unbelieving.

"And even more would have been killed by her, if I hadn't have stopped her." Demona answered angrily. "So stop complaining."

Before anybody could answer on this, Xanatos entered the circle.

"I just wanted to inform you that the video system was destroyed by the lightening." he explained "So we have nothing to proof Demona's innocence's... or the clan's."

"Great!" cursed Brooklyn and looked on Demona in anger. "Tell me you witch, what shall we do now? This is seemingly not part of the great game that you and Lucifia played with us!"

Demona looked coolly on Brooklyn. "Well sure!" she answered. "Seeing as it was Lucifia's revenge. But I have planned this in."

As she spoke this, she grabbed something in her hair behind the tiara and took it out. It was a scroll, which had seemingly been placed behind the tiara and was just burned a bit.

"Luckily, your body search was not as thorough as you thought." Demona said with a smile to her old teacher, which she answered with a slight snarl.

~ Next time Demona... ~ answered Deborah through her eyes. ~ Oh just wait until next time! ~

"Is this from the magic books you took with you, mother?" Darlene asked.

Demona nodded. "Yes, it is a spell that I copied from the Grimorum Arcanorum, it is... "

But Demona did not have the possibility to extend this, because Deborah grabbed the scroll quickly out of Demona's claw and tore it to pieces.

"We do not need your magic, Demona!" snarled Deborah, angrily.

Demona looked on her angrily at first, but then she laughed. "You see? That is exactly the reason why I did not tell you that I had learned magic!" She said with barely stopped laughter. "I mean, you surely can't call this a considered reaction!"

"Mother," Darlene interrupted in wonder. "You never told me that you learned magic secretly."

"Well," Demona replied, a bit embarrassed, never taking her eyes from her old teacher. "There was never the opportunity to reveal it."

"HAH!" her teacher replied and Demona saw how some of her siblings whispered amongst themselves while Diomedes just stared on her.

"Okay," Demona started anew. "I didn't tell you this since I didn't want you to keep secrets from me, which might be dangerous for you. This can be very dangerous, especially in magic unless an experienced and responsible person is beside this."

"Oh yes, this says the right one." Deborah noticed, glaring on her former pupil. "I have never seen a spark of sense of responsibility by you, Demona."

But Demona responded her teacher's view. "Well then old teacher," she explained calmly. "Tell me how you want to stop the human mob from killing us all without an irresponsible way of magic."

"We will speak to them." explained Deborah, on which Demona simply laughed.

"A really good idea, old teacher!" responded Demona and looked to Xanatos. "Xanatos, please send me a video tape of Deborah's speech to the mob... and please, enlarge the scene when they tear her to little pieces."

Deborah's eyes glared red on this and she was about to set a pointed remark when Goliath intervened.

"ENOUGH OF THIS!" he ordered with a growl and both adversaries became silent, as they saw that Goliath was hard at the boarder to flip out. "You both know that this is a dangerous situation. So play your games later, yes?!"

The two of them remained silent.

"Demona," Goliath said, controlling himself, "is right. We can't explain to the humans outside what has happened... They would not believe it." He looked directly into his former mate's eyes. "What was the spell for?"

"It brings a total amnesia of this night into the minds of the humans." explained Demona shortly. "And it destroys all records of this night, it doesn't matter what sort."

"But mother, the deaths." Angela started. "They will be noticed."

Demona shook her head. "You mean like how they noticed the gargoyle clan, which lived here since 2 years without being noticed? The spell simply helps them to oversee it or to find a normal reason for such things like 60 deaths... a car crash perhaps."

"We will go to my mansion and speak the original spell there. Tomorrow at dusk, no human in the city will even have a suspect of what has happened." Demona ordered her daughter and was going to take up the swords when the voice of her old teacher stopped her with hers.

"Oh yes, this is exactly your way, Demona," said Deborah angrily. "Letting the humans forget and this is it... Doing it like the coward you are."

On every other night or simply an hour ago, Demona would have simply looked over this insult or answered with a clever response. But it had been a very, very long night.

Demona's eyes glared red and with a snarl, she raised the sword in her claw and she went to her old teacher.

Darlene was trained in it and thus noticed it faster than any other gargoyle in the room, a strange woman, who seemed somehow known to her, having a shotgun in her hands and aiming it... on her mother!

Adrenaline raced through her veins and, faster than anyone in the room could register; Darlene had hit the gun out of the woman's hand and held her up by her neck, glaring at her with red blazing eyes.

"What are you..." Darlene started, but was stopped by Deborah, as she raced on her, tackling her on the stomach and taking her down on the ground. Led by instinct, Darlene brought her legs between her and the older gargoyle and pushed her away with a kick, making her fly away.

When she brought herself back on her feet, she tried to take the defensive pose that her mother had taught her, but two powerful green arms of a gargoyle with white hair, held her back.

"Let me go!!!" Darlene screamed angrily with red blazing eyes, but Othello seemingly had no intention to do so.

"Why have you attacked her?" Goliath demanded to know from Darlene.

"She was going to shoot my mother." Darlene explained, a bit calmer, while she freed herself from Othello's grip.

That was when Goliath noticed the shotgun on the floor and looked in wonder to Chavez, who had just stood up again.

"Are you blind?" she asked shocked. "Besides the fact that she killed 60 people tonight, she was going to attack one of your clan members."

"I haven't killed any useless members of your kind, human." Demona noted angrily. "And I didn't want to attack her."

"Oh yes, like the gargoyle there." Chavez pointed on the dead body of Lucifia. "Haven't you killed so already?"

Demona approached her fast and dangerously close, leading the blade of the sword that she had taken, up to Chavez's throat.

"This is none of your business, human!" she snarled angrily.

"Mother, please." Angela pleaded beside her mother. "She didn't mean it."

"The humans you killed in the shopping center were my business." Chavez replied coolly, despite the fear she felt by looking in those blood red eyes. "And I saw you doing it."

This forced Elisa to intervene.

"Captain, she is..." Elisa hesitated to use this word on Demona, "…innocent. The dead gargoyle there, Lucifia, killed those people."

"We saw her on the video!" she said angrily. "We and the whole world."

"It was magic," Goliath explained "an illusion spell spoken by Lucifia to fake us."

Chavez shook her head. "Magic?!" she said angrily. "Really Goliath! I have heard better excuses from criminals out on the streets. If you want to protect her this way... "

Goliath was going to respond, but he was interrupted by Demona who had calmed down, through sheer exhaustion.

"Oh this is typical of a human," she said with contempt, "not believing what they can't see." She glared with Chavez with somewhat of pity.

"Well then see... Mutare!" she recited while making a complicated gesture with her hands and instead of Demona, suddenly Lucifia stood before Angela.

Lucifia went to the shocked Chavez and said sarcastically, "Well, it's funny isn't it?" said Lucifia in her well-known voice. "Now, if you believe what you see then you can't imprison me."

Darlene sighed. The show her mother was making was the same thing she had been taught by her not to do. ~ Magic is no toy ~ Demona had said, but the way she did it now, it seemed so for her. Besides, the easiness in which she did it was unusual, even for a powerful sorcerer like her mother.

She made a new gesture while going around Chavez. "Mutare!" And instead of Lucifia or Demona, now stood a second Deborah in front of Chavez. "Some here," she looked shortly on her old teacher, who wasn't happy of being duplicated by her former pupil, "aren't very fond of magic. Even so are humans, but luckily, magic is not just illusion."

She turned around to the body of Lucifia. "Burn!" On which, the body started to burn in an unbelievable heat and the surrounding Gargoyles jumped away in shock. The second Deborah looked shortly to Angela, then to Darlene. "In her clan, cremations were usual," she explained and turned back to Chavez.

"But it has a very practical use," she continued. "Mutare!" she ordered again and Chavez found herself looking right at her own face. "So human," said the other Chavez with a smile, "you can now start to believe in magic or let yourself get referred to a madhouse since you are crazy otherwise."

Again, she made a gesture with her hands and she was in her normal form again while Darlene starred on the burning corpse of her half-sister and saw how it turned to dust...

"Well?" asked Demona with an arrogant smile. "What now, human?"

Chavez did not like this Gargoyle. It was the way she acted, the arrogant way she looked at her, but when she looked into her eyes, she knew she spoke the truth and she could not attack or imprison her just because she did not like her.

Chavez threw the shotgun away and looked at the strange Gargoyle. "Okay, I believe you... Demona," she answered and Demona laughed on this.

"I did not ask you to believe me, but your eyes, human." she answered and Chavez's eyes glittered. She definitely did not like this Gargoyle.

"My name is Chavez," she said roughly, ignoring the fact that she had nearly shot this Gargoyle for the wrong reason and this normally would be something to be sorry for. "I am... "

"Maria Chavez, captain of the Police station in the clock tower," Demona interrupted her harshly, "boss of Detective Maza and Detective Bluestone, the leader of the Gargoyle Task Force. You passed the police academy with distinction and have been on patrol for more than twenty years. During this time, you have been shot two times and got two medals for bravery in duty. It's been seven years since you lead this district. You are a widow since six years, but have a 20 year old daughter who lives in San Francisco with whom you have irregular contact."

Chavez, even the whole clan, looked on Demona unbelieving, but before anybody was able to ask Demona where the hell she had got this information from? Chavez's walky-talky rang and Chavez took it, still staring suspiciously at the arrogantly smiling Demona.

"Chavez here!"

While Chavez talked on the phone, Elisa approached Demona. "Where did you get this information from, Demona?" she asked suspiciously.

Before Demona could reply, Darlene began.

"We saw a news report about her, back in Germany." she explained to the clan and received an angry look from her mother since she had passed a good possibility to look superior.

Before anybody could say something, Chavez stopped speaking in the walky-talky.

"Listen," she explained to Demona. "My men are unable to stall the mob much longer, you have to show the people outside what you have shown me so they... "

Demona laughed. "Oh yes, brilliant human! Most of your kind thinks that we are animals or even demons! What do you think they will do when they see how I do my magic?!"

"It is the only way, Demona." Goliath began. "Please..."

"NO!" Demona snarled on him, her fangs bared. "I have no interest in giving myself to the mercy of the humans, Goliath. I will glide to my mansion and speak the spell from there."

"The spell?" Chavez asked in wonder.

"A spell, which deletes all records and human memories of this night and replaces them," Darlene explained. "My mother seemingly has planned all this in."

"Your mother?!" Chavez asked the gargress, who seemed to be the same age of the so called *Demona*.

"Yes," Darlene answered. "Long story."

Chavez looked on her and then the rest of the clan, including Elisa.

"Is there no other way?" she asked. The thought that a part of her memory would be deleted did not appeal to her.

"No," answered Demona, even when she knew that this question was not directed to her. "Or tell me, human. After your experience with mobs of your kind, do you see another way...? I mean, a way where I or my kind are not being lynched?"

Chavez glared at Demona, but shook her head and Demona smiled.

"Well then, let us go," she said. "I and Darlene will glide home, speak the spell from the original page and neither a nightmare will stay of what has happened in the minds of your race."

"How long do you need to glide to your home and how long until the spell works?" asked Chavez and Demona stopped.

"I'll need 20 minutes until I am home," she explained, "if I were at full health. But now I will need 30 or 40 minutes. The spell needs some time to work, as it is a slow process. By the end of the night, the mob will not know anymore why they are there and by tomorrow dusk, it will all be over."

Chavez shook her head. "This is too late, I just spoke with the leader of the SWAT team," she explained. "They can stop the crowd perhaps for another 10 or 15 minutes, but not any longer... and they refuse to shoot on them."

There was a moment of silence in the room; then a large discussion broke out amongst the clan about what to do next.

"We have to protect the castle." "What about the eggs and the hatchlings?" "I knew we could not trust the humans to protect the castle."

Darlene looked around in wonder.

~ They have a rookery? ~ She thought, but this was too weird a thought to be spoken out.

Goliath could barely stop the murmuring, when another voice raised.

"So your SWAT team refuses to protect us." noticed a large, muscular and black-skinned gargoyle with three horns on his hairless head. Darlene noticed that he didn't look on his leader in a very respectful way.

"They refuse to kill humans for you... " Chavez stopped her thought. "Yes."

Chavez and the gargoyle called Kronos, looked in each other's eyes for some moments and then Goliath interrupted.

"What can we do?" asked Goliath while Chavez tried to stay calm.

"They would calm down if they see that we have the responsible Gargoyle," she looked to Demona, "or the one they think who is responsible."

Demona glared on her. "If you think that I will let myself be captured by you human, then... "

"You would be safe," said Chavez. "I swear."

Darlene practically saw how it worked behind her mother's eyes, when she seemed to remember something.

"I trust no human," answered Demona with so much venom in her voice that Chavez nearly took a step backwards and some of the clan, with Angela among him or her, looked uneasily at Demona.

But Darlene knew how to speak with her mother.

"Mother please, for their sake do so." she pleaded. "I will glide to the mansion and take it to you, that way I can also check in after my children."

There was silence in the room, but this silence didn't come alone from Demona who was thinking about it, but from the rest of the gargoyles in the room too."

"Your children?" Angela asked finally.

Darlene looked around and realised that she hadn't spoken about them yet.

"Oh yes, I have three children who are now in my mother's mansion...." Darlene said to the gargoyles looking in wonder on her. "Sorry, I forgot to mention them."

"This must run in the family." Deborah noticed angrily, but before Darlene could reply something, Demona began.

"I'll do it," she explained quietly, but not making any attempt to cover her disgust.

"I'll go along with this, human." Demona explained, clenching her fists. "Darlene, you will go to the mansion and take the spell from my workroom, you know which I mean."

Darlene nodded, she knew of the secret chambers under the house.

"You know where I hide the special materials, go there and enter the code 2-2-16-23." she continued. "On the top I think is the page with the spell, I need you to bring it to the police station. There, the captain can let me free, I speak the spell and tomorrow everybody will be fine."

~ Despite the sixty killed humans, mother ~ Darlene thought, but kept quiet.

"If this is a common agreement?" Demona added it and looked to Goliath and Chavez, who both nodded.

"Agreed," Chavez said, never taking her eyes from Demona. "The room in the clock tower is still free and reachable, so you could get to there. It should be safe there for some minutes when you flee."

Demona nodded and made a last look to her daughters.

"Be careful." Darlene, with Angela beside her, asked her mother while Demona offered her claws to the humans.

Demona looked on both her daughters and tried a smile... She failed due to her lack of practising and the tiredness she felt.

Chavez nodded to Elisa, who took the handcuffs from her belt and shook her head.

"You have to have your claws behind your back, Demona," said Elisa, as she reminisced about the time when Demona and Macbeth entered the Police station, dressed and under the spell of the Weird Sisters, "else it looks unusual."

Demona snorted, but understood what Elisa said to her, even when she could just barely do it, under the great pain.

"I think we can leave it to tell you your rights." Chavez explained and Demona laughed.

"Since when has a Gargoyle had rights in this city?" she asked sarcastically, but her voice couldn't hide that she had pains and not just from her wounds.

Darlene looked to her mother and asked herself if all this sarcasm was real or if her mother used it to protect herself.

Chavez could not answer this remark, so she just took her walky-talky. "Leader one, Chavez here! Detective Maza and I have the Gargoyle who is responsible for the massacre and will bring her down to you."

"I understand, we will wait," said the voice out of the walky-talky and Chavez turned to Demona.

"Come on, let's go." Chavez ordered and to the surprise of all, did the demon do so. "Oh and before I forget," explained Demona on her way through the clan, "take the swords back to my mansion and be careful with Shade." On the questioning look of Darlene, she added. "The gargbeast. She might be a bit angry on those who attacked me and don't forget this spell has to be spoken on this night or else it is useless."

Goliath nodded. "We will."

Darlene followed her mother with her eyes through the mass of gargoyles... her mother's clan… and noticed that some of them wished her luck until she and her guards had vanished.

So now, she was alone with the clan.

She looked around and was even so studied by the other gargoyles.

When the silence turned embarrassing, Darlene turned to Goliath.

"Well, we could start now."

Goliath nodded.

"I will come with you. In these nights, no gargoyle should be alone in the city." he said and Darlene knew this was more an order than an offer.

"I will come with you, fath... leader." Angela explained and Darlene noticed her mother's certainty in these eyes, alike the brief pain when she changed her title for Goliath.

"And I too." Deborah added. "A quad is better than 3, besides who knows what this night still holds for us?"

The clan leader nodded.

"Agreed, but this is all." he said. "Now let us go upstairs and wait there until the public's eye has turned away from this castle a bit."

Darlene nodded and followed the large lavender gargoyle upstairs, through the mass of strange gargoyles who had turned out to be her family, with her newly discovered half-sister Angela beside her and up the more old fashioned parts of the castle.

Doing so, she thought about all that she had learned in this night and asked herself how she could tell this to her children...

~ Besides, I wonder what they are doing? ~

03.08.98; 03:53; Destine Mansion:

Jarred looked at the TV with growing fear while standing before it. They hadn't heard from their mom in ages, it seemed to him, and the reporters of every channel showed him pictures of an ever enlarging mob around the building his mother had glided to.

His sister Lana sat in a seat, a bit backwards, more to the window with a sleeping Gem in her arms.

He had discovered the TV by searching the house with his sister while the monster-dog had followed them without true interest, but somehow watchful. Now they looked on the TV screen in shock, tensed by any news coming from it.

It was someone of the local news reporters, reporting from before the entrance to the Eyrie building.

"Here is Travis Marshal for New York. To the ones who have just turned the TV on, here is the horrible news. One of the creatures called gargoyles, living here on the top of this building…"

The TV once again showed Demona shooting a fleeing woman in the back and crushing a man's head, who desperately and senselessly tried to defend himself.

"…has committed a horrible massacre in the Einstein shopping Mall in Queens. As a reaction on this massacre, angry and worried citizens of.... No wait, there is a movement at the entrance... Yes, I believe they are bringing the responsible gargoyle out, guarded by dozens of police officers."

Lana and Jarred saw it, their grandmother being led away by a lot of cops, who protected her at the same time, against the angry mob who wanted to lynch her.

"Kill the beast!" "Burn the demon!" "Kill the Gargoyles!" "Hang the monster!"

They had passed half the way when a large stone was thrown out of the mob and hit their grandmother's head. Jarred winced by this and when he saw how blood streamed from his grandmother's head, his eyes became white in anger.

"They're killing her!" he said angrily, turning the sound of the TV off since he couldn't bear it any longer.

The gargbeast shortly looked up and then laid her head back down on the floor before the door, leading to the hallway.

"Calm down short stuff, grandmother is immortal." Lana tried to calm her brother down, even when these scenes didn't make her happy.

"And besides, maybe she deserves it..." she said this word silently, but not too silent for Jarred's keen gargoyle-ears.

"She didn't do it!" he replied angrily, glaring at his sister. "You heard what mom said, it might be an illusion."

"Then why is she being led away by the police then?" Lana asked, becoming angry herself, angry on her grandmother for doing such an awful thing, her mother for leaving them alone and her brother for being so naive. "The gargoyles here surely wouldn't deliver her to the police if they weren't convinced of her guilt."

"But..." Jarred's mind worked. "She hasn't defended herself, wouldn't she have at least tried to flee from there? Maybe it is a fake too?"

Lana rocked Gem in her arms, back and forth to calm her down since the discussion between her older siblings and the noises coming from the TV, made her wake up slowly.

"You are crazy, kid!" Lana replied angrily. "You know what she's like with the humans..." she hesitated, "our race. Why would she let herself get captured by the police if she were innocent? This is nuts!"

Jarred crossed his arms.

"Then we will go there."

"WHAT???" Lana screamed so loud that Gem was now fully awake. "Have you lost the last part of your brain? The whole city is looking for gargoyles and I for sure won't glide out there. Besides, mom will go mad if she finds out."

Gem looked around in wonder, wondering what her siblings were so upset about.

"Do you want to sit here and wait?" Jarred asked back. "We don't even know how long we shall have to wait and what happens if mom doesn't..." his claws tensed to fists when he tried to ban the terrible thought. "I can't wait here!"

Lana looked at her brother while she tried to hold Gem in her arms, who tried to flee from her in order to explore the strange house.

She thought about her mother's orders, which had been damned clear and since she had grown up here, Darlene knew this city better than many other citizens did. Yet her brother, as weird as it was, spoke the truth and she didn't want to sit here doing nothing while anything might happen to her mother.

Finally, she nodded.

"Lets go." she said and raised from the seat.

Jarred smiled and went to the door, happy to be able to do something, but then Shade rose and blocked the door, remembering the older gargoyle's order to protect the hatchlings.

"Hey!" Jarred protested and approached the gargbeast. "Get out of the way, Scar!"

On this, the gargbeast moved indeed, but just when Jarred began to smile, Shade raised herself on her hind legs, padded him with her forelegs on his chest and made him fall down on his back. Then she sat on him, much to Jarred's disgust.

"HEY, GET OFF ME!!!" he ordered her, but Shade didn't obey the hatchling's command and stayed sitting there, looking rather bored.

Lana had to work hard to stop giggles coming from her mouth, but when she had managed this, she decided to help her brother.

"Get off him." she ordered in the best intonation she had learned by trying to get her brother to obey, but like Jarred the gargbeast showed no intention to follow her orders.

~ Then how about this way ~ Lana thought and approached the gargbeast, wanting to force her off her brother, but before she could do so, the gargbeast began to growl slightly and her eyes started to burn red.

"Okay, you won't let us through, I understand." she said while she went back to the seat again. "Seemingly, we really have to wait on mom."

"Hey, help me!" Jarred complained.

"It's okay Jarred, just don't move." Lana said.

The answer was a longer complaint from Jarred about older sisters, which made Lana grin. Yet, with Gem in her arms, she couldn't help but ask herself if her mother was truly safe.

03.08.98; 05:13; Castle Wyvern, one of numerous television rooms:

Goliath had led Darlene into one of the many television rooms of the castle, maybe even a living room in which slowly more gargoyles came to look at what happened in the world outside the walls of the castle. While others, mostly, the elders had gone to the hatchlings to tell them of Demona's innocence.

Aside from her, there were maybe 20 of the gargoyles that she had seen in the hall, including her mother's former teacher, who was binding her mate's wounded leg who was stroking a blue gargbeast by his side.

Darlene saw how her mother was taken in the car and drove away. She shivered when she saw how a stone hit her mother's head and made her stumble.

But she wasn't too shocked to notice that her new found half-sister Angela was near crying, even when she was comforted by a rather thick green-skinned gargoyle with soft eyes and a worried face.

~ Apparently my little sister isn't alone ~ Darlene thought a bit jealous, remembering Paul.

"It's okay," she said, touching her sister's claw. "Mother has gone through harder things."

Angela tried to smile.

"I fear so." she replied and sighed. "But she wouldn't tell, would she?"

Darlene shook her head. She remembered one night, just one night when she had been young and had discovered her mother on the roof, looking into the night-sky with tearful eyes. She had asked her what was wrong, but her mother had just replied 'nothing' and leapt into the night... No, her mother would definitely not tell her by freewill of what she had gone through.

"No more than the sun turns up by midnight." she replied and Angela smiled, happy that her sibling in contrast to her mother had a sense of humor... a normal one after all.

"You were with mother four nights ago?" Darlene asked. "I think I heard your voice on the telephone."

Angela looked unbelieving on her sister.

"She had told me that she was talking with one of her German managers." she explained angrily.

Angela was more than angry. She had talked with her mother about her mate-ship with Broadway, about her fear of not being good enough for him, how she had been sorry that her mother hadn't been there to celebrate with them even before she had brought back the rest of the clan. About everything what she thought and her mother hadn't told her that she had siblings... three siblings!

~ Didn't she trust me? ~ Angela thought.

"And she said to me that it was just the TV..." Darlene said, as if to calm her sister. "But since I know her, I didn't accept this. This was the reason why I came here."

There was silence between them while Angela tried to work with what she had learned, but then Darlene continued.

"So, you've been living here since 4 years?" Darlene asked.

"No, since two." Angela explained. "My father and Elisa came to Avalon to save us from the Archmage and the Weird Sisters. I've lived here since then."

"And when did the clan awake?" Darlene asked, having heard stories of the Archmage and the Weird Sisters from her mother already. "I mean, my mother told me that you had some kind of trouble..." by the unbelieving looks of the gargoyles around her, she guessed that it had been a greater kind of trouble. "But she never told me when it started."

"Four years ago." the gargoyle that Goliath had introduced to her as his second, Brooklyn, explained. "Even when it seems longer to me."

"All of you?" she asked.

"No." Goliath, who stood beside Darlene, explained. "First it was just me, my mentor Hudson, Brooklyn, Broadway, Lexington and Bronx who awakened here."

"Yeah, kinda hard to awake here in a strange world with just ourselves as maybe the last gargoyles in the world." Lexington said, sitting on all fours before the TV. "But we got through it and when Demona brought back the rest of the clan 6 months ago, it was great."

"And how was mother involved in the reawakening?" Darlene asked, she knew maybe she should have asked her mother first, but her curiosity was too large.

"OUCH!!!" came a hardly suppressed scream of pain from one part of the room and when Darlene turned around, she saw that it came from the older gargoyle with the scar through his left eye, which Goliath had introduced as Hudson. Seemingly his mate, her mother's former teacher, had pulled the bandages with which she was using to tend her mate's wounded leg, a bit too strong.

~ She looks as if she is going to strangle it ~ Darlene thought, but bit her comment by the look on the gargress's face.

"By betraying her clan." Deborah noted angrily. "She betrayed the clan from the beginning, lied of how she survived the massacre, lied of how she betrayed the castle along with the Captain and brought the Vikings to attack the fortresses of Cyberbiotics to steal their property... and finally she attacked them."

Deborah stared on her. She had guessed that it must have been worse enough to make them enemies, so it was no surprise and she had heard of Cyberbiotics being robbed back then, but guessed it was a simple war between companies.

And then the thing of betraying the clan to the Vikings... Well her mother had told her of this and even back then she had never understood why Demona blamed just the humans, but this was another story.

"The break-in by Cyberbiotics wasn't her plan." Goliath replied, looking more to Deborah than to Darlene. "Indeed, Xanatos said he forced her to do so as price for our awakening, her plan was to convince us slowly of her goals so that we join her war against humanity."

"This isn't better." Deborah noticed angrily. "And it is no excuse for what she did."

"No, it isn't." Goliath admitted calmly. "But I think we should discuss this another night."

His tone made clear that it was no suggestion.

Thersities, who approached Darlene, with an uneasy smile on his beak, stopped the uneasy silence, which followed.

"So, well..." he began grinning. "You're without a mate?"

"My husband Paul died a year ago, yes." she explained and saw how the spark in the gargoyle's eyes enlarged.

"Well, if you need anyone to show you this city..."

"I'll think about it." Darlene said quickly, sensing the way that the gargoyle was looking on her was definitely more than friendly.

~ Okay ~ she thought ~ I will definitely have no problem to make friends here ~

"I found this gargbeast in my mother's mansion." she said, bringing on another topic. "Shade, I believe she called it... where does it come from?"

"Demona discovered her back in Moray, after a farmer came to Macbeth in order to ask him for one of his soldiers to defend them from a monster, which would haunt them." a gargoyle, whose name Darlene didn't know, said.

He had gray skin, two horns growing out of the sides of his hairless head and, most striking, an iron breastplate over his chest. His face proved him to be old, maybe made so by various battles and his silence had made him somehow different of the gargoyles around him.

"They found her heavily wounded, but Demona managed to bring her through." he explained. "She is a beast with more wildness in her than usual beasts. She is untamed... most of the clan said that it was good for her." On the worried look of Darlene, he added quickly. "Oh, she is no danger, but she never seemed to feel well around anyone except Demona. She alone was the one whom she accepted as leader. This was the reason why we gave her to Demona, as she grew sick without her."

~ So, Shade is a wild one ~ Darlene thought ~ like my mother. ~

"And who are you?" she asked.

"I have no name and I need none." he said determined. "But I was your mother's second once, even before our alliance with Macbeth."

Darlene looked on him, surprised by that unveiling, but before she could say anything more, the large green-skinned gargoyle with the white hair came in.

"The mob has lightened, it might be safe now." Othello explained, directed to his leader.

Goliath answered this with a nod, throwing one last look on the TV.

"Well," he looked back to Darlene. "I think we should glide to the Mansion and find Demona's spell."

Darlene nodded. She couldn't wait to see if her children were safe.

03.08.98; 06:11; Destine Mansion:

Jarred groaned, as the monster dog wouldn't let him go! He had tried everything with trying to pull her softly from him, to screaming at her and had even tried to bribe her with the promise of a large sausage, but seemingly she wasn't interested.

It wasn't unpleasant, Jarred had enough air to breath and the beast didn't lick him like it had done when they had arrived, but he felt uneasy since he had been lying here now since a hour or maybe more.

He was just about to make a new attempt to try and force the gargbeast up from him, which was over 300 pounds heavier than he was, when he saw Gem crawling up beside his head.

"Hi Gem." he said with a grin. "Not just now."

But Gem ignored her brother's request and sat down beside him, looking on her brother in wonder. Then she went with her tiny claws through his face.

"HEY!!!" Jarred protested, but Gem just gulped and having done so, she started chewing on her brother's hair.

"Lana, take her away, please!!!" Jarred pleaded, feeling rather uncomfortable now.

Lana, who had been concentrating on a newspaper-article of the New York Times that she had read maybe a dozen times, looked to her brother in his delicate situation.

"No way." she explained. "It is time for you to baby-sit her. Besides, the beast there surely won't let me through."

Jarred's situation got worse when Gem discovered her brother's tail, his maybe only free limb left... Jarred saw the hungry expression on his little sister's face and started to panic.

"Lana! Hey, if you help me, I swear I will never ask you to lend me one of your CDs again!" he said

"Never?" Lana asked.

"Well..." Jarred stopped. "For a month anyway."

Lana pulled her attention back to her newspaper.

"OKAY, OKAY, two months, happy?" Jarred tried, since he noticed that Gem had already approached his tail, dangerously close.

Lana looked at her brother and sighed, deciding that it was worth the two months, but just before she raised from her seat, the gargbeast rose from Jarred's chest and looked around.

~ Okay, now what? ~ Lana thought, when she watched how the beast went from her brother's chest, to the floor.

Jarred, who was happy that he could stand up again, looked around.

"Where is Cujo going?" Jarred asked and Lana groaned while she followed Gem, who had decided to follow the gargbeast on all fours.

"Cujo was a male dog, genie!" she corrected him. "And why don't we simply follow her to find out?"

Before he could reply something, Lana had gone further and he couldn't do anything, but follow them.

He saw how Lana stood beside the gargbeast and Gem, who tried to climb on the beasts' back, in front of a window. Jarred looked through it and saw his mother.

"Mom!" he screamed, but Lana pressed her claws on his mouth.

"Mphf?" he made and looked questioning to his sister.

"Look!" Lana hissed and pointed on the place where her mother stood, seemingly talking sternly with another gargress, a green skinned one. Aside her stood a third female with lavender skin and brown hair, reminding Jarred strangely on someone and the third strange gargoyle was a giant, with muscles over muscles, long brown hair and lavender skin.

"Who are they?" Jarred asked.

Lana shook her head on this.

"I have no idea." she admitted. "But they don't look friendly."

Shade, now with Gem on her back, started to growl.

"And the monster dog here seemingly doesn't like them." Lana noticed. "Maybe they have mom as a hostage?"

Jarred's eyes grew white.

"We have to do something!" he said and Lana nodded.

In the courtyard; Destine Manor:

Darlene landed skillfully in the courtyard of her mother's mansion, her three companions landing beside her.

"Here we are." Darlene noted. "Let's go in."

That was when she noticed the look on Deborah's face.

"What?"

"You decided to live with her, with Demona, even after she told you what she did?" Deborah began.

"Teacher, it isn't the time for..." Goliath began, but Darlene stopped her.

"Yes, she told me how she killed the humans she had changed into stone, or how she had nearly success in killing humanity, me and my family inclusive..." Darlene explained. "By the way, thank you for stopping her."

The last words were more directed on Goliath, so Deborah ignored it.

"And still you decided to live with her." Deborah noticed, ignoring Goliath's slightly angry and Angela's unhappy look.

Darlene sighed.

"She is my family, all what is left of this." Darlene said, her hard tone making it clear that she meant it seriously. "I mean, even if I would have known of you back then... She is my mother and I would have gone with her."

~ You sound as if you would believe it yourself ~ Darlene thought, not really sure what she would have done. ~ Congratulations, you rival your mother in lying! ~

She forced this thought back.

"But this isn't the time to speak about my relationship to my mother, isn't it?" Darlene said. "Our time is short and for the sake of both your clan and my family, I don't think we should throw away any of it."

With this, she turned around and went in the direction of the mansion.

"Was that really necessary?!" Angela asked Deborah silently, but with hardness in her voice, which reminded Goliath of her mother. "Has she given you any reason to talk so with her?"

"I just want to see on which side she is on, ours or Demona's." Deborah explained. "If we can trust her or not."

"She is my sister... half-sister and we can trust her." Angela said, trying to suppress a snarl. "Like we can trust my mother..."

"Since when?" Deborah replied, but before Angela could say anything more, Goliath intervened.

"Enough!" he ordered. "Teacher, at least tonight it is clear that we have the same interest, so let us go before the night passes."

Deborah wasn't happy, but she nodded, accepting her leader's order.

Goliath sighed, feeling how this night shook his nerves and decided to let it be by this.

"Come." he said and went into the direction of Darlene, who waited at the wall of the mansion, followed by Angela.

~ Why can't they see how dangerous Demona is? ~ Deborah thought while she followed them, coming nearer a balcony. ~ Why must they...? ~

"Be careful.... AHHHH"

*CRACK*

Deborah looked up, out of her thought, just in time to see two bodies… falling on her.

Goliath and Angela looked back to see Deborah covered by the bodies of two other gargoyles.

"Ahh." the first, a boy hatchling groaned. "I told you to be careful!"

"If you hadn't pushed!" a young, pretty gargress replied.

"GET OFF ME!!!!" Deborah screamed.

Hearing this order, both of them hurried to do so, so as not to make this green gargress anymore angrier than she was now.

Darlene looked up in wonder where her children had come from, just to see two things, which was the face of Shade, looking down with sharp eyes. The other was her youngest daughter Gem looking down from the head of the beast that she had successfully climbed on and loosing her grip just in this moment.

In the fall, she opened her wings, driven by instinct and made her first try in gliding. Unfortunately, Gem's wings were much too small and would stay so for at least the next 9 or 10 years and she fell. Fortunately, Goliath saw this and caught the hatchling in the air, holding her softly in his claws that were strong enough to break through steel, while the little hatchling looked around in wonder, unknowing of the danger she had been in.

"Your children?" Goliath asked, looking on the baby in his arms and the two other young gargoyles standing in front of an unhappy Deborah and Angela, who looked curiously on them.

Darlene nodded and took Gem out of his arms, cuddling and fussing her youngest daughter who enjoyed this very much. This was even so the moment when Jarred and Lana noticed their mother standing there beside them and ran to her.

"Mom, is everything..." Jarred started.

"We thought you...." Lana said.

"In the TV, they said...." Jarred explained.

"Kids, be quiet!" Darlene ordered, half-happy and half-sternly. "Yes, I am okay and I'm sorry that I was so long, but I needed to work out things with the clan."

This was when both Jarred and Lana looked around to look at the ones, who had come with their mother.

"This is Goliath," Darlene explained and introduced them to the large lavender Gargoyle, who bowed shortly, "leader of the Manhattan clan."

"This is Deborah." she pointed to the green-skinned gargress, who still glared at them.

"And this..." Darlene hesitated while pointing on Angela, who waved one claw as a greeting. "Is Angela, your aunt and my half-sister."

Jarred's and Lana's faces wore the same unbelieving expression when they turned back from Angela to their mother and Darlene thought that she had probably worn the same expression when she had heard it the first time.

"Long story, let us just say that your grandmother has kept some secrets, which were revealed tonight." Darlene explained, underestimating it by worlds.

"And has she..." Jarred started, asking the question which he feared the answer to. "I mean, is she..."

"She hasn't done it, Jarred, believe me." Darlene explained to her son, laying a claw on his shoulder. Jarred could feel how a stone fell from his heart and he would have jumped for joy, if he had had the power in his legs.

"Then why have they taken her away then?" Lana asked.

"Because else the mob would have killed us." Angela answered the question of her niece, looking on her claw with.... Five talons?! "Mother rescued us."

Deborah had to bite her lip to not say what she thought.

"But now I need a spell from mother's secret magic chamber, here..." Darlene didn't say any further since an angry growling stopped her.

Darlene looked down to see Shade standing in the doorway, having run down with glazing red eyes and growling in Deborah's direction.

"She seemingly doesn't like you." Jarred noticed.

"She saw how I attacked Demona." Deborah explained, glaring on the beast.

"You attacked grandma?!" Jarred asked unbelieving. "Wow, she must have kicked your ass!"

Deborah stared on the hatchling, not knowing what to say on this impertinence.

~ This is definitely Demona's grandson ~ she thought ~ definitely. ~

Darlene approached Shade and tried to calm her down by stroking her... without success.

"We should hurry." Goliath said and Darlene nodded.

"I will get the scroll." she explained and went into the house, handing Gem over to Lana. "I will be back soon."

With this, she went into the house, going through the parts devastated by the battle happened there. She went up the floor and to her mother's room until she stood before the bookshelf, then she took away Macbeth and pushed the button until she heard a [CLICK].

The bookshelf had moved a bit toward her, together with the wall behind it. Darlene opened the secret door and sighed when she walked down the stairs to her mother's secret kingdom.

The stairs led to the rooms under the mansion, a real dungeon indeed with magical torches, ever burning when someone entered. ~ Deep down, you have a romantic nature, mother. ~ A cell, a training room, a room where her mother had placed some of her more powerful artifacts and other things that she had gathered over the centuries and which weren't for the eyes of anybody strange coming in the house. But this, or the other rooms, didn't matter for Darlene now since she headed in the direction of her mother's laboratory.

Having passed the doors of these, she breathed in and out a bit more relaxed. She was on common ground now, having spent hours of her youth here, learning spells or being trained to fight by her mother.

~ No time for reminiscing. ~

Darlene looked on the painting of Scotland and took it away, revealing the safe. Remembering the code, she opened it and saw the first page lying there, but it was indeed not the spell she had suspected.

"L-Kor spell." she read unconsciously and what she read did not make her happy, indeed.

She sighed and decided to talk with her mother about this another night... best the next one.

Under this, Darlene discovered the amnesia spell and went through it like she had done with the first spell. What she read made her even angrier than the first.

"Mother!" she snarled angrily, her eyes fading to red.

"The spell doesn't just affect humans, but gargoyles too." a voice beside her said and Darlene winced so much that she nearly tore the page to pieces.

When she looked around, she saw Goliath standing in the door, looking on her with his calm and stern eyes.

"Don't ever do that again!" Darlene demanded and calmed down a bit.

"I am sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you. I just thought it would be better to come with you." Goliath explained.

~ And to see what Demona or you have still in her back-claw ~ Goliath thought, but didn't say it out-loud, as it was too obvious.

Darlene looked at the large lavender-giant and finally sighed.

"Yes, it does." she admitted. "Just like mother wishes it."

"Could you speak the spell?" Goliath asked.

Darlene thought about it.

"Maybe," she said finally, "but I have not practiced magic for over 20 years, so I might make mistakes or even destroy the spell. I don't want to risk it."

Goliath growled, but nodded. Seemingly he disliked the idea of forgetting this night like Darlene did.

"We should go." she finally noted and so they went up.

03.08.98; 7:09; The clock tower over the Police Station:

They landed on the clock tower, which Darlene knew from the TV that it had been destroyed, but seemingly it had been rebuilt up in short time. There were even new stone-gargoyles on the roof.

When she studied the stone-gargoyle in front of her, she got a shock. It was Goliath, or at least a statue of him.

Darlene looked to the original.

"A statue of you?" she asked.

"No," Goliath replied unable to hide a pained expression when he looked to the gargoyle that was frozen in stone. "Thailog was my clone... my son."

Darlene looked to him, totally shocked.

~ Okay ~ she thought ~ having secrets and surprises are seemingly a clan tradition. ~

She looked around and saw that beside Goliath's clone... Thailog, there were four other clones of gargoyles that she knew of and a gargress which she hadn't seen yet, even when these here looked more primitive.

"But why are they stone?" Darlene asked, still startled by what she saw.

"A genetic failure." Angela explained. "We tried to save them, but Sevarius... the geneticist, who was supposed to help us, betrayed us and when we found out, it was too late."

"And this… Sevarius, is the one who created them?" Darlene guessed.

Angela looked a bit uncomfortable at this, but before she could say something, Deborah who was standing beside them with crossed arms, began.

"Xanatos created Thailog." she explained. "The other clones were created by Thailog and Demona."

Darlene looked in wonder on the older gargress.

"My mother and Thailog worked together?" Darlene asked surprised, looking to Goliath and Angela.

"No, they were a couple." Angela said slowly.

Darlene's eyes couldn't become larger, as she stared on her sister.

~ Mother, we will have to have a looooong talk when we get back home ~ she thought, before reminiscing that she wouldn't remember anything after this night.

"And they created the clones to... fight you?" she guessed.

Goliath nodded.

"Mother let herself be captured by us to get our cell-samples," Angela explained, remembering this night. "Then Thailog freed her and they led us into a trap at an old amusement park, but she was against Thailog for killing me and so battled him and freed us, by doing so he revealed Delilah, who is... the hybrid of mother and Elisa."

Darlene's eyes stayed wide when she looked to the statue of the gargoyle called Delilah.

~ A hybrid with parts of my mother and a human? ~ She thought ~ she definitely couldn't have been happy about this. ~

"Come," Goliath ordered, "let us go in. Elisa will be arriving soon."

Darlene nodded and followed them in. In the clock tower, she looked around and saw that it was orderly and clean except for a burned armchair, a rather old looking table and much dust.

"This was your old home?" she asked the gargoyles, who had led her in.

"Yes, until the Hunters destroyed it." Angela said. "We nearly would have died if Lex hadn't discovered the transmitter on Goliath, which led the Hunters to us."

"I heard from it on the TV." Darlene said. "It was a good thing that they hadn't killed one of you."

"They nearly killed me... shortly before dawn, I died from some injuries that I had suffered from them." Angela slowly revealed, seeing how her half-sisters eyes widened in shock. "But luckily Elisa came and performed CPR on me, but without her..."

Darlene approached her sister and laid her claw, comforting on her shoulder.

"The Hunters killed my father hours before I hatched." Darlene said calmly, on which Angela looked on her shocked. "I'm happy that they hadn't taken even so my sister."

Angela nodded and smiled a weak smile on her sister.

"They won't harm any more gargoyles." Goliath explained. "We have peace with the Canmores."

Darlene looked questioning on Goliath, but before she could ask something, the door on the floor opened and the woman that Darlene had learned to know as Elisa Maza, entered.

"My Elisa." Goliath said, approaching his mate. "Is everything well."

Elisa nodded, smiling weakly.

"We could bring Demona here without any problems," she explained, softly touching Goliath's arm. "She is now secure in a cell."

Goliath nodded.

"I will bring her here." Elisa explained and went away again, leaving the gargoyles alone.

Darlene looked to Goliath. It was clear that he loved Elisa and the relationship with her mother was over, which was strange since whenever her mother had told her about him, Darlene had heard something strange in her voice. It had been years later until she had found out what it was, which was the sadness for a lost love.

"We have just some months ago started to give this room some equipment." Angela said, trying to divert the conversation from a more serious thought. "It is a base in the event that a patrol can't make it back to the castle and needs a place to rest and it is the place where we can meet with the police officers when we make out the routes for the patrols."

"I have seen it on the TV, the deal that your clan and Chavez have made." Darlene replied. "I must say I'm really impressed by this... the work you do will help humans and gargoyles alike."

"You mean until tonight." Deborah noticed, leaning on the wall and looking sternly on Darlene. "Through what Lucifia has done, all this is shattered and if Demona hadn't one of her tricks now, there would be no way to reconcile us with the humans."

Before anybody could say something on this, the door in the floor opened and everyone heard someone come up, followed by an icy voice.

"Unfortunately, old teacher," Demona's voice said icily. "You don't even think about the fact that an alliance, shattered so easily, might not be worth of holding onto it." She came up the stairs and her daughters gasped in shock when they saw their mother's bloody face with the seemingly broken nose and the broken cheekbones. "But on such, you wouldn't waste a thought, wouldn't you?"

"Mother, how...." *do you feel?* Darlene was going to say, but since she knew how idiotic it sounded judging by her mother's current state, she bit her lip.

"I feel great." her mother answered, guessing what she had been about to ask and closed the door. "Why should I not?"

~ Because you look like the victim of a car crash ~ Deborah thought, sensing the broken ribs.

"What has happened?" Goliath asked, even so shocked by what he saw.

"A crash with a police officer, nothing serious. [COUGH]" Demona replied icily.

~ Sure, mother ~ Darlene thought sarcastically, while she approached her mother and studied her wounds. ~ Absolutely clear. ~

"Come sit down, mother." Angela pleaded. "At least for a minute."

Demona looked on her chronological oldest child and shook her head

"No, I just want to put this grandiose night behind me." she answered and looked to Darlene. "You have the scroll?"

She nodded, trying not to look on her seemingly broken nose. "Yes, here." Darlene said and gave it to her and she looked on it.

When she had made sure that it was the right scroll, she looked again to the others.

"Come," she said unbelievably tired. "It is best that I speak the spell outside."

With this, the five Gargoyles went through the door, outside onto the clock tower.

Demona looked on the figure in front of her and snarled, all her senses on alarm again, but luckily Darlene's claw on her shoulder stopped her.

"Mother no, they are no danger." Darlene said and saw how her mother studied the six statues with red glaring eyes, which lit up even more when she saw the stone form of Delilah.

"What has happened to them?" Demona asked finally, her eyes normal again and Darlene couldn't help but register that her mother's voice sounded more vivid than before.

"After some months they became sick," Goliath explained. "We brought them to Sevarius and he explained that there had been a failure in their genetic structure. We commanded Sevarius to help us, but he betrayed us."

"He created, with the help of some of our organic material, an antiviral, but it turned out to be a trap of his and Thailogs. Sevarius created a giant Gargoyle that he called little Anton, which we were able to defeat in the end, but Thailog and the others became stone."

"Ah," Demona answered and if Darlene wouldn't have been too surprised about the mention of *Little Anton*, she would have noticed the spark in her mother's eyes.

"Well, I will speak the spell now." Demona finally said and enrolled the scroll.

"God of memory, hear my prayer. I plead to make all this night undone in the minds and scrolls of all creatures, which should never have happened. Hear my plead."

She spoke these words in Latin, knowing that at least Goliath and Darlene would understand all too well.

Suddenly, the page seemed to glow and blue lightening flooded in the night sky. At the same time, the page started to burn and Demona let it fall.

"I feared this," she explained to the other Gargoyles. "The power of the spell was too large for this page without the rest of the Grimorum, which was the reason why I copied it. Maybe we would have even so perished if it had still been in the Grimorum and this is the reason why the Archmage never used it... Who knows?"

"Good," Deborah explained. "I dislike to let the humans forget and in your claws... " She looked into Demona's eyes. "Well, I dislike it."

"Well than you will hate what I have to tell you now." Demona said with a smile, but before she could continue, Darlene interrupted.

"The spell influences everyone, even gargoyles and the Fey except the one who spoke the spell." Darlene said, ruining the second chance for her mother to look superior this night.

Demona nodded, looking on her daughter, but before she could say something, Deborah fell in.

"You promised me that you would tell us what all this had meant, who your daughter... Lucifia, was!" she said angrily and directly to Darlene, she accused. "And I thought you would have, unlike your mother, at least a slight spark of honour!"

Before one of the two could say something on this, Goliath intervened.

"Teacher, I knew of this before," he admitted, "but it was the only way."

"And I," Demona said, "had just promised to answer all the questions you would still have after this night."

Her teacher hit these words like a beat. "You damned little.... " She looked like she was going to attack Demona, who did not move and surely didn't the power to defend herself against her old teacher now, but Goliath stopped her.

"That is enough Deborah," he ordered with a clear voice. "She had no other choice and it is better than the alternative."

The orders of her clan leader seemingly calmed Deborah.

"So, I will forget her?" Angela asked her mother sadly. "All that I have of her... and Connor?"

This hit Darlene like a lightening bolt, as she hadn't thought about it, but what if her mother simply would make them leave New York before they could learn of the clan... again? What if she would not meet Angela and Connor again?

Demona looked to both her daughters, sensing the fear in both of their eyes. "Yes, all or nothing. There is no other way. But I will visit the clan in the next few nights and introduce you to Darlene and the children and I will let you know that Connor is your half brother."

Darlene listened. This sounded honest....

"The next few nights?!" Darlene asked angrily.

Demona sighed. "The next night," she promised.

"What about our other half-sister, mother?" Darlene asked. "What is with...."

~ What was her name? ~

Demona smiled slightly, as she knew it had begun. "No."

Angela and Darlene nodded, as they knew it was senseless now to discuss it with her mother.

"Come, let's glide home." Demona said calmly to Darlene and climbed on the roof.

Before Darlene followed her, she went to her newfound and soon to be forgotten half-sister and embraced her.

"Until we meet again." Darlene said and jumped off the roof. "Good glide!"

Demona smiled slightly too.

"Good night, daughter." With this, she leaped into the sky "And never forget that I love you."

Angela nodded and looked how Demona and Darlene vanished into the sky.

03.08.98; 7:53; Demona's Mansion:

Demona and Darlene landed on the balcony of her mother's room. Darlene opened it and Demona followed in.

"You should go down to the children and tell them that everything is okay." Demona said tonelessly, not even looking to Darlene.

"Mother..." Darlene began, but Demona didn't want to hear.

"They will be worried and Shade is bound to be hungry, she..."

"MOTHER!" Darlene screamed on her and grabbed Demona by her already healed shoulder and pulled her so that she looked directly into the immortal's face.

It seemed healed already, the nose was in the right position, the cheekbones seemed just lightly chipped, but her mother's eyes.

In her mother's eyes, she saw so much pain that it broke Darlene's heart just to see them.

"I..." Demona began, but she hadn't the power anymore and simply collapsed and would have fell to the ground if Darlene hadn't caught her.

Darlene sighed and brought her mother to her bed, laid her on it and covered her with the sheets. Then she softly stroked her hair and by doing so, she looked into her mother's face, which seemed old now, older than anyone Darlene had ever seen.

Suddenly, the door sprang open and Shade came in, smelling her master's scent. When she found her, she laid down beside the bed, whining worriedly.

Shortly after Shade came in, Jarred came in after her followed by Lana with Gem in her arms.

"Mom, what...." Jarred began, but Darlene laid a talon on her lips and ordered him with a view to go out, not wanting to let him see his grandmother so.

Lana, who stood behind Jarred, took the hint and placed a claw on her brother's shoulder.

"Come on, squirt." she said. "We have tomorrow night to ask our questions."

~ No you haven't ~ Darlene thought when she saw how the door closed ~ but thank you Lana. ~

They were good children and Darlene felt pride in herself for having them.

Kneeling so, she believed to hear her mother, deeply sunken in her sleep, whisper something in a strange language and a name.... *Little Panther*

But surely this was just senseless murmur and when her mother did so, Darlene softly murmured herself, saying that everything would be fine when she woke up, that it was over now, even when she forgot what was supposed to be over now...

She did so until the beams of the sun turned her to stone.

To be continued...