Comings and Goings

by Kimberly T

Not long ago, thanks to the Hunters, the whole world found out there were gargoyles in New York. Including a few clans that had thought they were alone in the world. Now... Look out, New York! Nos. 19 and 20 in the Life Goes On series.

2. Ships Passing in the Night

COMINGS AND GOINGS PART 2:

SHIPS PASSING IN THE NIGHT

By Kimberly T. (kimbertow at yahoo dot com)

See Part 1 for most of the disclaimers and acknowledgments! Just one more to add here: Valjean and the Paris clan are the intellectual property of the TGS staff, and the full story of their demise has been told in the TGS story "From the Heart."

Rated R for violence and a few bits of adult language. And speaking of language, any screwups in foreign language translations are mine too. Sentences and phrase in doubled parantheses are ((translated from Japanese)), while sentences and phrases bracketed by pound signs are #translated Spanish#, and finally, sentences and phrases surrounded by slashes are /translated German/.

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Sunrise in five seconds. (Carefully put aside current project, get up and move well clear of all objects)

Three… (Stand with feet apart, body braced in expectation)

Two… (Silently swear that this time everything will be handled calmly and with dignity, while knowing that is and will always be a flat-out lie)

One… (Try to deny that short hiss of pain escaping through already clenched teeth)

Now. "Hssss… Rrrraaahh, aahh, AAAAAGGGGHHHH!"

And the first rays of the morning sun peeked in through the window of the Nightstone CEO's inner office. Moments ago, the room had held five gargoyles and three humans; now it held four stone statues and four humans, one of whom was in the process of slowly getting back on her feet after yet another truly agonizing transformation. Dominique Destine vowed once more that the next time she had the Puck in her grip, she'd grab his ears on either side and pull them right off his head, unless he agreed to change his transformation spell to make it pain-free.

She almost batted away the human hands that reached for her, but looked up in time to see that they belonged to eyes filled with concern and sympathetic horror. "Are you well? Do you need medications? Water?" Hiroshi asked anxiously.

"Jeez!" Vinnie blurted, his eyes big as saucers. Carlos, standing next to him with his broken hand bound in a cast and sling, was just as wide-eyed with shock and sympathy. Vinnie continued, "That was… and you gotta go through that every day!"

"And every night," Dominique said wearily as she accepted Hiroshi's help in getting to her feet.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Vinnie said under his breath with a hard swallow. Then he said a little louder, "Remind me to never ask any magical dudes for any favors…" Carlos nodded emphatic agreement.

"All magic has a price," Dominique said as she kindly but firmly took her arm from Hiroshi's concerned grip. "Believe me, gentlemen, the price could have been much higher than regular bouts of pain! Now there is much for me to do today, and not much time until the next sunset. Go out to the anteroom while I get dressed," as she turned to the closet where she kept a spare set of clothes for just such an occasion, "and I'll join you out there in a few minutes."

"As you wish, Di-mono," Hiroshi said with a respectful bow as he turned to leave.

During the night, Demona had noticed that the Japanese human and gargoyle were mispronouncing her name slightly, but decided not to say anything about it. She remembered enough of the Japanese she'd spoken long ago to know that 'di-mono' sounded a lot like 'day-person,' and admitted to herself that it was an apt description these day. Besides, now that she had called an end to her war on all humanity, the name 'Demona' and the more common 'Demon' that the Hunters called her made her somewhat uncomfortable. Now, however, it was daylight and well past time she made something clear to them all. So she stopped them before they could leave and explained, "During the day, when I wear this form, I am known as Dominique Destine. You may call me Dominique… ah, except for you, Vinnie. If you're to be working for me, you'll have to call me Ms. Destine, to maintain proper employee relations."

"Not a problem, Ms. Destine," Vinnie said cheerfully.

Hiroshi bowed to her again, and said, "As you wish, Dominiko," before leaving the office. Dominique rolled her eyes but didn't say anything; it had been close enough. (And besides, the clan in Yatsushiro had been terribly patient with the way she'd mangled their names at first, so long ago…)

She firmly pushed the old and painful memories out of her mind, and got ready for the business day. There really was a lot to do, and not much time at all to do it in.

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Miles to the north, in the kitchen of the parish rectory for Our Lady of Mercy Roman Catholic Church, Adam DuBois opened a cabinet door and dropped an odd-looking spray can into the kitchen trash bin. Standing next to him, Marcel LeBeau shook his head and said, "When she wakes up, she ain't gonna like this a-tall, mon…"

Father Maurice was also nearby, looking on with concern. "Marcel had a point earlier, Adam. There is every reason to believe that she'll be fully recovered by sunset… and when she is, she'll be very unhappy with what you've done."

"I'd far rather she'd be unhappy with me, and alive, than happily dead," Adam said harshly. "We can't afford to lose her—to lose any of them!"

"Mon, dey all take dat risk ev'ry time dey go to town back home, an' you don' say nuttin'!" Maurice protested.

"Back home, we have crime—but we do NOT have open warfare!" Adam returned, his eyes seeming to glow slightly in the early morning light. "So unless you happen to have a personal fighter jet for her to use, stashed in your back pocket, my decision is final!"

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Farther south and far under street level, Matt Bluestone walked up a long incline, wearing a thoughtful and unhappy frown. It had taken him most of the night to deal with just the initial investigation into the "incident" at that warehouse… "Incident" being such an innocuous term for what had resulted in the deaths of at least eleven people. All through the night, just every time Matt had turned around, he'd had to deal with people from every level of local government and every damn newspaper in the city, all looking for answers as to what had really happened.

The Quarrymen swore up, down and sideways that they had been battling real gargoyles, who had started the fight by deliberately attacking men who had been on a aerial surveillance watch, trying to keep New York neighborhoods safe. But one Quarrymen witness had already inadvertently let slip that the men mounted on hovercycles had been chasing the gargoyles, not the other way around… not that the mayor of the city gave a flying f#$& about who'd started the fight, only about who'd finished it. And there was no doubt in anyone's mind that body for body, the Quarrymen had come out the worse for this encounter; six bodies on the roof, three in the wrecked helicopter, one more at the base of the warehouse who had apparently fallen to his death (with a little help?) and the eleventh body, found five blocks away just a few hours ago, confirming the Quarrymen's report that one of their hovercycle riders had been knocked off his ride by a gargoyle… or by someone in a flying gargoyle costume.

There was the real question, at least in the mayor's eyes; had the Quarrymen been killed by gargoyles, or by gargoyle imitators? There was no denying that scraps of gargoyle costumes had been found at the battle scene. Jon Castaway, the Quarrymen leader, swore that his men knew the difference between mere costumes and real gargoyles, and that someone must have planted the costume scraps after the battle had ended. But then, he also swore that his organization hadn't been responsible for those tapes that showed gargoyles attacking a couple in the park… even though after WVRN TV had exposed the tape for a hoax, a postal worker recalled that someone resembling Castaway's description, though with a neat goatee added to his facial features, had mailed a box just about the right size for that videocassette. (A damn shame that Castaway was always careful to never leave fingerprints behind… especially since if they could get just one good set of prints that proved Jon Castaway was also Jon Canmore, his butt would be behind bars before he could blink, for the bombing of the 23rd precinct.) But even the mayor had to admit that after that hoax, although the police couldn't prove in court that the Quarrymen were behind it, their words could no longer be blindly accepted as the gospel truth.

So who had been up there on the roof, fighting the Quarrymen? Just as there was no denying the scraps of costume, there was also no denying that four of the dead men and one of the wounded bore trios of slash marks that resembled the work of real gargoyle talons… But many of them also bore wounds made by shuriken, Japanese throwing stars; Matt and the other investigators had found nearly a dozen littering the rooftop. And Miyako, one of the patrolmen who worked the graveyard shift, confirmed that while Japanese ninjas were most famous for their shuriken, they also had been known to use steel strap-on claws called nekote that strapped on to each finger (and if one fell off the pinky finger, the other three could still be deadly). Miyako had added that ninja had also used three-clawed weapons that were strapped to the palm of the hand, called tekagi or shuko depending on the dialect. They were primarily used for climbing aids, but Miyako had once seen a fighting demonstration with a set that had slashed right through a vinyl dummy's face… Forensics was still examining the bodies to see if traces of the weapons used could be found in the wounds, but their report wasn't expected until tomorrow night at the earliest.

Matt had dusted some of the shuriken for prints, but no prints had been found so far. Which could mean that the gargoyle-costume-wearing man who had been throwing those things around had been careful to wear gloves even while packing the weapons into his costume… but Matt was one of the very few people in this city to know from personal experience that true gargoyles don't have fingerprints. Back while Elisa had been seeing the world with Goliath and Matt had been the remaining gargoyles' only human contact, Broadway had once asked him to bring a fingerprinting kit upstairs, so they could learn more about how human detectives did their work. Matt had been happy to show them a few pointers, and learn a bit more about gargoyles in the process…

Between the investigation itself and the constant interruptions to deal with city and state officials, not to mention truckloads of reporters, it had taken nearly until dawn for Matt to get away for a little while. Elisa was sooo lucky that she'd decided to stay at the castle instead of returning home after Broadway had come out of surgery; if she'd been home, Matt would have gladly dragged her butt down to the station to help with the investigation and even run interference with the reporters. (Elisa was never afraid to tell a reporter who got too obnoxious, or city official who tried to tell the cops how to do their jobs, just where and how far they could shove their questions and inanities. While that was one reason why she wasn't a police captain already—the police commissioner was scared to death of what she'd do if she took on a captain's usual PR duties—having her on hand in a touchy investigation sure made things easier sometimes; she'd have the reporters at arm's length, sometimes half of them afraid to open their mouths lest they get on the wrong side of her razor tongue, while Matt quietly went on with his work.) But she'd been up in the castle with the Manhattan clan all night, and if they'd heard about the attack… Matt absolutely, positively did NOT want Goliath and the others involving themselves in this right now; that was almost guaranteed to make an already complicated investigation even more complicated.

It had taken him until nearly dawn to get down to the Labyrinth, where the cloned gargoyles made their home; he'd arrived only a few minutes before they'd turned to stone for the day. But he'd established that Hollywood was the only gargoyle to have left the Labyrinth at all that night; when the others had woken up to find Hollywood missing, Maggie and Claw had kept them down below, occupying their attention with games and such to keep them from gliding up to the castle to see their brother. And after Hollywood had returned, weak as a kitten from donating so much blood to save Broadway's life, concern for him had kept them below street level for the rest of the night; the most exciting thing any of them had done all night was kill a few rats that had been foolish enough to venture into the main Labyrinth area, then give them to Hollywood for a get-well-soon present.

There was still one gargoyle unaccounted for: Demona. (Two, if you counted Thailog, but Talon and the gargoyles were thinking now that he must have died after all, in that fire on Coney Island last August; there'd been no sightings of him since then.) By all reports, Demona was certainly bloodthirsty enough, and had enough general hatred of humanity, to kill eleven Quarrymen without a qualm… but that very hatred of humanity made it very unlikely that she'd associate with mere humans wearing costumes. It was possible that if she'd been involved, she'd come back after the battle was over but before the police had gotten there, and planted the scraps of costumes just to throw the investigation off track… but if so, who had been the other gargoyles with her? The Quarrymen swore, and evidence from the crime scene bore out, that more than one opponent had been involved.

If they had been gargoyles, but not the Wyvern Clan or the Clone Clan, where had they come from? Japan? That would explain the shuriken, and Elisa had said there was a gargoyle clan living somewhere in Japan. But she'd also confirmed Matt's own observation that gargoyles were territorial in nature; once they'd claimed a territory, such as Manhattan, they generally stayed within its boundaries unless something very important called them away. Unlike many humans who like to go exploring, climbing mountains and crossing oceans just to see what they could see, most gargoyles could be classified as "homebodies." Goliath and Bronx would likely have never left on that World Tour to start with, if Guardian Tom hadn't told them that the clan's children were in danger. (There was Angela, of course; Matt had been told that she'd voluntarily left her home in Avalon to go exploring, and even now that Manhattan was her home, she was reportedly showing signs of wanting to go exploring again. But considering the way the rest of the clan was reacting to Angela's "worrisome" hints and musings, she was apparently the exception that proved the rule.) So where had the other gargoyles, IF they had been gargoyles, come from and why had they come?

But if Miyako was right and the claw marks had been made by ninja nekote, tekagi or shuko, then all the Quarrymen's opponents could have been humans, flying with the aid of personal jet packs like the models that Xanatos and his wife had. And that opened up a whole new can of worms… The very last thing the city needed was a gang that wore gargoyle costumes for their "colors." Not just because they already had a surfeit of Crips and Bloods and Mafia and Triad and Yakuza imports and truckloads of lesser gangs, but because every gargoyle imitator that committed crimes would cause that much more grief for the real gargoyles. So far, all the criminals that had been sporting gargoyle costumes—all the ones that the police knew of—had been caught, unmasked and hauled off to jail, sometimes with the aid of the clan. But those crooks had all been operating solo, too; if a gang of such people truly got organized…

Matt sighed, rubbing his forehead; sometime during the night, he had developed a raging headache. Rather than go to the castle now, to let Xanatos know what was going on and see if he'd heard anything from the Illuminati's inner circle that might be related to last night's incident, he decided to go home and get some sleep. He'd talk to Xanatos in the afternoon, and maybe by then Forensics would have found something that would give them a break in the case. Or maybe by then a hospital would come forward with a report of humans who had been treated for electrical burns and bullet wounds that had been caused by the Quarrymen.

Or maybe the solution to the whole mess would just suddenly come to him in his sleep, like that scientist who figured out the formula for benzene when he dreamed about snakes eating their tails. A funny dream, that; maybe the guy had been Norwegian, because the old Norse had that myth about the snake that encircled the whole world with its tail in its mouth… Good grief, had he really thought about that useless bit of trivia? No doubt about it, he really needed sleep…

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The administrative and executive levels of Nightstone, Incorporated were in an uproar all that day; rumors buzzed about the water coolers and bounced around the break rooms, crowding out all other talk, even plans for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. Their CEO, Dominique Destine, was back at work after a full week of unexplained absence, and issuing the darndest orders: Arranging for the company jet to be flown to Japan tonight, with herself and a bunch of total strangers aboard. Appointing one of the executives to run the company in her stead. Announcing that another executive, whose name would be kept secret, would be reporting directly to her on the company's progress. Having one of the dumpsters behind the building hauled away to a junkyard, after it had been locked up for a week. Telling the Mailroom that they had a new employee starting right now, and never mind the lack of a resume… What was going on!

Theories abounded:

The Dragon Lady had finally fallen in love, with that middle-aged Japanese gentleman that was in her inner office all day (and they were having wild sex right there on the executive desk; that was why she had that "The first person to open this will be IMMEDIATELY FIRED" sign on the doorknob!) And they were going to Japan for a traditional Japanese wedding, whatever that was like…

Nightstone was going to be audited by the IRS, and their CEO was fleeing the country before she could be nailed for tax evasion. So why run to Japan instead of Bermuda, where most other corporate executives ran when fleeing the IRS and other government departments? Because that's where her former partner, Alexander Thailog, must be staying, and she hated his guts so much she wouldn't be caught dead on the same island as him…

The dumpster that had been hauled away to the junkyard had a dead body in it; Ms. Destine was trying to get rid of evidence, after cold-bloodedly killing somebody. But whose body? Nobody at Nightstone had disappeared lately… It was Marcia Rathers, that secretary that used to work at Marketing! She'd been fired just before Ms. Destine had disappeared for a week; she must have come back after hours to clear out her desk, overheard something she shouldn't have, and been killed for it! …No, couldn't be her; Marcia's friend Jenny swore up and down that right after she'd been fired, Xanatos Enterprises had hired her, and even called her at her new desk in the Aerie Building to prove she was alive and well.

That new guy in the mailroom, a Vinnie somebody—no one was quite sure of the last name—was actually her secret love child. They must have a pretty close relationship, because when he overheard some other employees calling her the Top Bitch—which wasn't even the worst name people had come up with for her!—he'd shut them up and told them they were dead wrong about her. As if a guy who'd just been hired that day could know more about her than people who'd been working her since Nightstone first began hiring! But rumor said that he'd said he knew more about her than they ever would…

That new guy in the mailroom wasn't the Dragon Lady's secret love child (he was really a little old for that, unless she'd had a facelift or two, though that was a possibility); he was her lover! Rich older woman were acquiring boytoys all the time in Hollywood. …But if that were true, why was he staying here while she went to Japan?

Ms. Destine had lied about having appointed another executive to report on the CEO-by-proxy; instead, that new guy in the mailroom was going to be her spy!

Ms. Destine had made a deal with the Feds, and the new guy was actually an FBI agent, planted there to crack a secret drug ring that was operating out of the Nightstone building! He was probably carrying a concealed weapon…

Whatever made that new guy so special, several people decided, it would be a good thing to get on his good side. Why is why by noon that day, that guy named Vinnie had offers to go out with people for fishing trips, dinners, football games, hockey games… enough to keep him busy every weekend right through New Year's (and a secretary in Marketing had already called dibs on being his date in Times Square that night.)

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One o'clock on a Tuesday: Elisa stifled a yawn as she guided her car over the bridge to Ryker's Island Prison, and slowed to stop at the first checkpoint. She really hadn't gotten enough sleep in the last 24 hours, since being awoken at about this time yesterday afternoon; she'd caught a few Z's while at the castle, having curled up in an easy chair and dozed while waiting for Goliath to return from his patrol, but awakened when he'd returned so they could visit Broadway together. Then she'd stayed at the castle until dawn, and only went home for her own bed and a few hours of real sleep after seeing Goliath and all the others to their sleep of stone. But now it was time for her weekly visit with the Canmores, an appointment that Elisa meant to keep for every week that she possibly could; it really was the least she could do for Jason, after he'd taken a bullet that had been meant for Goliath.

For the umpteenth time since getting into the car, she glanced at her left hand, at the fancy gold band now gracing her ring finger. A ring that hadn't been there last week… Jason was sure to notice it and ask about it. And she didn't dare tell him about her now being married to Goliath; there were limits to many people's tolerance, and she didn't want to test his by telling him about her being married to a gargoyle. (Before Sunday night, she might have considered it. But after Goliath had frowned when Halcyon Renard's name had come up in conversation, and after he'd finally admitted what he'd overheard Renard saying to his aide Preston Vogel during the reception; after hearing that one of the clan's closest allies actually feared for her soul, due to her committing bestiality…! That had hurt. No matter how much she and Goliath had sworn to each other that a stubborn and bigoted old man's opinion didn't matter worth gravel to their happiness, the knowledge still hurt. And she didn't want to cause any more hurt to either Jason or herself.)

Still preoccupied with how to deal with her secret—should she just take the ring off, put it in a pocket until the visit was over? And continue to do that for as long as she was allowed to visit?—the prison guard's words didn't register at first, and he had to repeat them for her. And then he had to repeat them a third time, very slowly, after she stared at him in utter befuddlement: "He's… not… here… any… more. He… was… released… last… Friday. What, do you need me to use sign language!"

Jason had been released! But his bail had been set sky-high! …And what about his sister, Robyn?

After being informed that Robyn Canmore had also been released last Friday, Elisa turned around and went back to Queens, growing more worried with every mile that passed. Why hadn't Jason called and told her the news? He knew her number... She knew instinctively that Jason would have contacted her after being released, unless the reason behind his release had him too ashamed to do so… or someone or something had actively prevented him... Well, okay, she'd unplugged the phone last Friday morning, because she hadn't wanted to be disturbed during her few hours sleep before meeting Beth's airplane, but since then the phone and her answering machine had been working just fine! Was whoever had gotten him released keeping him away from all means of contact, for unsavory purposes? Right at that moment, she could think of only one person who would have the motivation… Was Jon Canmore/Castaway trying to reunite the Hunters?

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At that moment, approximately thirty nautical miles out at sea, the Anton von Werner, a German cargo ship, was cruising straight for New York Harbor. It carried a full load of BMW's and other German-made automobiles, and other goods that had been made in Germany. And while it wasn't listed on the cargo manifest, the ship also carried a being who had been hatched there…

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At two o'clock in the afternoon, Dominique Destine took a late lunch hour. She took with her a suitcase-sized container; one that had been unsealed and empty when it had been delivered to her office earlier, but which was now significantly heavier and sealed shut. She had her chauffeur drive her to Morton's on 5th Avenue, one of New York's finest steakhouses, where a private room awaited her.

Shortly after her arrival, a mahogany-skinned man with glasses was ushered into her presence. "To what do I owe the honor of this invitation?" he asked her politely, but with a wary eye.

"Do sit down," Dominique invited. And after he did so, she said casually, "I understand you are, or were, in the employ of another well-known businessman… a man named Tony Dracon?"

The man known throughout most of New York's underworld simply by his nickname, "Glasses," said carefully, "The name is somewhat familiar to me. And you brought this up because…?"

"The same one who advised me of your employer also advised me that you are the sort of man who either knows just who to contact, to get any sort of job done… or does the job himself, when necessary. Loyal, intelligent, determined, and highly resourceful."

"I'm truly touched," he said dryly. "I may start blushing at any minute. And this fulsome praise is leading up to…?"

"A one-time job offer," Dominique said with a raised eyebrow. "Just a little something for you and those who work for you to do, while waiting for your employer to, shall we say, settle his disagreement with the local authorities."

Glasses waited a beat, then said bluntly, "A contract."

"One could use that term, yes… though none of this will be committed to paper," Dominique said severely. "This will not be traced back to me, under any circumstances."

" 'Discretion is our watchword,' " Glasses quoted with a half-smile. "But before I say yea or nay to anything, I'll need more information… such as exactly who this contract is about."

Dominique smiled, a very odd smile. "What would you say if I said, that's entirely up to you?"

Glasses hadn't been expecting that, and he stared at her for a moment before saying, "I'd say, you'd best explain that."

"There is one criteria involved in choosing the subject," Dominique said as she nudged the sealed case forward. "He must be a wanted criminal; someone that quite frankly, Humanity as a whole would be better off without. I'm sure you have plenty of 'business rivals' to choose from…"

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The afternoon sun sank lower and lower in the sky, until it finally touched the western horizon and sank beneath it. Just before it sank out of sight, the last few rays seeped through the bedroom curtains of an apartment rented to one Matthew J. Bluestone… but didn't awaken the man lying there with the sheets pulled up over his head. After Matt had finally finished at the precinct and returned to his apartment, he'd found five more messages on his answering machine, all pertaining to the Quarrymen case. He hadn't gotten to sleep until ten a.m., and then only after unplugging his phone, turning off his cell phone, and posting a note on his door saying that the first person to knock would be arrested for disturbing the peace. Matt had still fully intended to get up and go to the castle before sunset, to talk with Xanatos… but the broken alarm clock lying on the floor next to the bed gave mute evidence as to how those plans had changed.

So Matt Bluestone slept on, while all across the city, gargoyles awakened. Including one deep in the bowels of the Werner; though the sun's rays hadn't reached him, Heinrich still awoke at sunset. Unlike most other gargoyles, Heinrich didn't roar upon awakening; long decades of hiding from humanity in the midst of a bustling city had forced the Dresden-Berlin clan members to train themselves to be voiceless at dusk. But he still stretched and flexed and shook the last few shards of stone skin off himself, before taking stock of his situation.

His sharp ears caught the sound of voices outside the shipping crate he'd concealed himself in; two men—no, three of them. One of them had heard the sound of his stone skin breaking, and wanted to investigate, but the others were saying that it wasn't worth the trouble to find out what had crashed; if they broke the seals on any of these crates, their company would be liable for any and all damages discovered. Heinrich smiled lopsidedly, wondering what they'd do if they happened to notice that the crate he was in had the top seal broken, since he'd broken it to make his hiding place the night he'd stowed away aboard the ship.

But for once, he was having good luck; the men were walking away now instead of looking at his crate. From what they were saying as they left, the ship had reached port, but was still in the process of unloading. Well, he'd been aboard for several nights already; he'd wait a few more hours, until the current shift of workers went home, before breaking out and going to look for the gargoyles of New York.

To pass the time while waiting for the coast to clear, he pulled out a loose-leaf binder full of paper and his pen, and began writing again. This was how he'd kept himself sane, during the long voyage with no one to talk to; he wrote almost constantly. Letters to Karl and Andrea, and to Helmut and Helga, describing what he'd seen and overheard so far, and letters to little Gregor that were simpler and more 'sanitized' versions of the letters to his parents. Heinrich hadn't worked out yet exactly how he would mail the letters back once he reached shore, but he was sure he'd find a way eventually. There was also a diary section for his most private thoughts, hopes and fears that he would share with no one… and even a section for stories. Like every child, Gregor enjoyed hearing stories about other children's adventures, but the storybooks that Karl and Andrea brought home for him all featured either human children, or talking animals. So Heinrich had taken it upon himself to write stories featuring gargoyle children, and over the last decade, he'd written over two dozen stories. Most of them featured a gargoyle named Little Johannes, a bright and resourceful child who got into all sorts of mischief and fantastic adventures while chasing after his pet cat Igor. Gregor's favorite story so far was Johannes und der Drache, but Heinrich had a hunch that this new tale, Johannes und die Piraten, would also be well received.

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Inside the CEO's inner office at Nightstone, Inc., four gargoyles were clustered in concern and dismay at a fifth one who was heaving herself up off the floor. As the agony of transformation faded, Demona realized she was hearing rapid-fire exchanges of Mexican and Japanese over her head. Her skills in both languages were rusty after centuries of disuse, but she was pretty sure that the information Malaquita was demanding from Carlos was the same information Yama wanted to learn from Hiroshi: Had there been another attack just now? Had an assassin fired a shot through the windows just before they awoke? Or was she deathly ill, or having convulsions from food poisoning? And Carlos and Hiroshi were explaining that no, everything was all right; Demona (although Hiroshi was still mispronouncing her name) had just neglected to tell anyone before dawn that transforming from gargoyle to human and back again was agonizing in the extreme. And after they were finally convinced she was all right, when she smiled and shrugged and flexed her wings at them to say without words that she was used to it and that they shouldn't let it bother them, Yama muttered something else to Hiroshi. Demona didn't catch all of it, but she thought Yama was saying he'd decided not to go looking for a kitsune back home after all…

Even if the renewed exposure was restoring her memories of long-unused languages, Demona decided to keep speaking only in English. She was sure that the versions she had learned while wandering through Castile in the fifteenth century, and living in Japan in the early nineteenth century, contained many archaic words no longer in common use, and someone would ask her how she'd come to know them. Besides, years of living on the run or in hiding had taught her that information was power and advantage, and had ingrained caution even among fellow gargoyles. If they didn't know that she somewhat understood them, they'd feel freer to say whatever they pleased around her, even information that they'd rather have kept from her ears.

"Please, help yourself to the food," she told everyone, gesturing to the small feat laid out on her executive desk. Now that they were assured she was okay, the smell of roasted chicken, steak strips, baked potatoes, fresh fruit and fresh pastries beckoned them forward even before the humans were done translating. "We'll need to stay in here another hour and a half, until the regular workers in the building leave for the day; I don't want to risk the exposure of someone looking out a window as we glide past. But once the building is empty for the most part, I'll guide you all to the parking garage in the basement. Vinnie will be waiting there to chauffeur us all to our various stops before we go to the airport. Everything has been arranged; we'll be flying out at midnight tonight!"

After all that had been translated for them, with her cheeks bulging with pastries despite her mother's hissing to eat more slowly, have the meat and vegetables first and at least not talk with her mouth full, little Galena had a mumbled question for Carlos. He grinned, and turned to Demona to tell her that Galena wasn't too sure about letting someone else do the gliding for her, and wanted to know why they couldn't just ride another train to Japan instead.

Demona rolled her eyes, laughed and gestured. "Come over here, little one! …Yes, you can bring your food along. Have you ever seen a computer before? No? Well, this little box can show you the world, if you know how to look at it right and what to tell it to do. There are many wonderful map sites out on the Internet… ah, here's a good one. Carlos, help me pinpoint your old village on this map series for Mexico. While we're all waiting is as good a time as any for some geography lessons…"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Up inside Castle Wyvern atop the Aerie Building, Owen walked into the main security room and said quietly but firmly, "Your shift ended five minutes ago."

"I realize that, sir," Jameson the security guard said with a respectful nod as he turned to face him. "I know I'm off the clock already. But… please, don't ask me to leave yet. I can't leave until I know whether or not…" he took a deep breath, then turned to face a monitor as he finished, "whether or not my screwup yesterday cost a gargoyle the use of his wings forever."

Owen seemed about to say something, but instead he just shook his head, and moved to stand next to Jameson and peer into the monitor. It was tuned to one of the cameras mounted on the castle's highest battlements, which had been turned to face the door to the interior…

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Broadway opened the door and stepped determinedly through it, not quite batting away the hands that had reached out to either prevent him from going through or open it for him. "I'm fine, guys, really! The 'concrete cure-all', remember?"

"But, Broadway…" Lexington's voice trailed off uneasily, as he stared one more at Broadway's left wing. Two nights ago, it had been smooth and unmarred, but now… four string-like ridges of scar tissue in varying lengths snaked up his wing, tying together in an awful keloidal knot at the site where the crowbar had struck the stone.

"I said, I'm fine now! And I'm going to prove it!" Broadway almost snarled at them all, flexing his wings as he cleared the doorway… and trying but not succeeding to hide his wince of pain as his left wing faltered in mid-flex.

Goliath saw that wince and falter, and where before he'd been silent, now his voice rose sharply. "Broadway!"

Broadway stopped in his tracks, then turned to Goliath and said with a sigh, "Goliath… I have to try."

Goliath nodded solemnly. "I know. But your first flight will be only from my perch," as he gestured to the highest point on the battlements, "to the courtyard below. No turns, no midair maneuvers. Only after accomplishing that may you attempt more. Understood?"

Broadway sighed again. "Yes, Goliath," and he turned to climb the stairs up to Goliath's normal perch.

As Broadway climbed, the door opened again, and Dr. Lucinda Lacey strode through it angrily, holding a bloodstained bandage to her right cheek. "Where has that fool gargoyle gone off to!"

"He has gone to test his wings, Doctor," Goliath said as he rose to his full height and flexed out his own wings, blocking her from going up the stairs after Broadway. "And you will not interfere."

"But he was operated on only yesterday!" Dr. Lacey protested. "I didn't even get a good look at the injury site today after he woke up! And if that damn shard hadn't hit me right in the face--"

Goliath almost, but not quite, smirked. "Didn't any of Sevarius' notes specify the safe distance for waiting while a gargoyle awakens?" The doctor sputtered in outrage, but before she could make a coherent reply Goliath continued, "Broadway's testing will begin with the easiest of glides; it's the common first glide for the clan's hatchlings, once they're ready to come out of the rookery. And the others are preparing for if anything goes wrong," as he pointed down to the courtyard below. Hudson and Angela were down in the courtyard already, with Hudson pointing to where he wanted Angela to stand and wait. Brooklyn was climbing up to a perch on one side and flexing his wings, obviously preparing to spring into flight if Broadway developed trouble in midair and went off-course. Having jumped off the battlements after Goliath spoke to Broadway, Lexington was gliding over to the other ready-to-assist position on the other side of the courtyard. Xanatos and Fox were standing at the doorway to the courtyard, watching the preparations; Xanatos had a semblance of his usual confident smile, but Fox wasn't even trying to hide her worried frown.

Goliath glanced up to the high perch, where Broadway would surely appear in another moment, and wondered if he should be up there as well; closely watching Broadway before the launch, to determine if his wings really had healed well enough for him to attempt gliding. No, that would be too much like the first flight of a hatchling (and for a moment he fell under the spell of memory, then angrily pushed back the images of the hatchlings he'd seen launch on their first flights. Hatchlings all dead now, dead for over a thousand years…) This was now, he had to keep his mind on now, and right now he had to show that he still trusted his warrior's own judgment. Broadway didn't need anyone up there with him right now, treating him even more like a hatchling. The precautions the others were taking below, while sensible, were surely humiliating enough.

Once everyone was in position, Brooklyn called up to Broadway encouragingly, "Ready when you are, Bro!"

Already standing on Goliath's perch with his wings outstretched (and if the left wing had been slower to unfold than the other, no one had commented on it,) Broadway took a deep breath, and jumped.

While not perfect, his form was excellent; head up, arms, legs and tail aligned for minimal air resistance, and wings at just the right angle for an easy descent. Focusing on the perfect angle of those wings, Goliath felt a grin of sheer delight start to form; this clan's warrior still knew the sky!

But when Broadway reached the courtyard, and started to backwing for braking… His left wing didn't angle back and extend at the same pace as the right. His flight pulled to the right, he tried to correct, overcompensated, and ended up crashing right into Angela.

Goliath swore under his breath as he saw his daughter and her would-be mate go down together in a squawking tangle of arms and legs; then he leaped off the battlements and glided down, ignoring the doctor's startled/outraged, "Wait for me, dammit!"

By the time Dr. Lacey had huffed and puffed her way down to the courtyard, Broadway and Angela had already gotten back to their feet… that is, Angela had gotten to her feet; Broadway was on his knees, hiding his face in his hands. Everyone around him was almost in tears, even while trying to tell Broadway that it had been just a little mistake, and maybe there'd been a bad cross-breeze or something, and they could try again later…

"Oh, for Christ's fucking sake!" Lacey bellowed, causing everyone to stop in their tracks and stare at her. "You people are supposed to be intelligent; haven't you ever heard of physical therapy!"

After a few more angry exchanges back and forth between the doctor and the clan, in which the doctor learned that yes, the clan had heard of the concept of physical therapy, but hadn't thought it applied to them anymore than sunburn did—stone sleep either healed you within a day's span or it didn't, and that had been that for the entire history of their clan—they worked out a tentative plan for exercising Broadway's wings, that would hopefully restore more function than stone sleep had done. "And I want you to the point where you can do ten repetitions of the entire set without stopping, and perfect form each time, before you so much as jump off a footstool!" Lacey told Broadway, leaning in and poking a finger into his chest for emphasis.

Lightning-fast, he caught her hand and held it, while his eyes gave off a faint whitish glow. Lacey instantly went still, her face a mask of perfect calm; only the gargoyles nearest to her could see and smell the tiny telltales that said she was suddenly remembering what physical feats gargoyles were capable of, and suddenly very worried.

Broadway said slowly, "Listen, Doc… I know you're trying to help. But there's a right way and a wrong way to talk to people, including us, and you're really doing it the wrong way! The only ones who can ever bark orders at me like that are the clan leader and the clan second-in-command, and you aren't either of them!" The glow in his eyes faded, and he let go of her hand. "But I'll do the exercises, and see what good they'll do… You really did this with a bat once?"

Lacey nodded. "On a Flying Fox bat that had gotten loose and had been attacked by a local hawk. But three months after the attack, it was flying on its own again; not quite as agile as before, but it got around just fine at night with the rest of the bat colony! And it should be easier with you than it was with the bat, since you can talk and understand me, and understand why it's all being done…" She paused to step back, and critically survey him from head to toe, as she said, "Mind you, while your wingspan is almost four times the biggest known bat's span, your weight is about 100 times more; that's got to be accounted for when gauging your wing strength." Broadway flushed as she continued, "Probably better put you on a diet, too, to be on the safe side…"

"The doctor's right, Broadway dear," Angela said as she laid a comforting hand on his arm. "But I promise, I'll help you wherever I can. Help you with the exercises, help you maintain your diet…"

"We will all help, Broadway," Goliath said with assurance as he rested a hand on Broadway's shoulder. "Whatever is needed in order to get you into the sky again, we will do, and do gladly; your clan is here for you."

Bronx had been waiting in a corner while the test glide and the ensuing drama had been going on, but now he nosed his way into the group and whuffed gently at Broadway as if to say that he'd help too, if he could. Then he rubbed up against Dr. Lacey, forcing her to step back a bit from his sheer weight against her legs, and rubbed some more with an inquiring whine.

"Hey, fellow; we haven't forgotten you," Dr. Lacey said as she looked down at Bronx, a sudden soft smile changing the topography of her still battered features. She reached down to waggle his ears, rub along his spikes and scratch under his chin, and soon Bronx was sitting at her feet and groaning with delight.

The rest of the clan looked on the display of affection with a mixture of wonder, disbelief and something's-not-right-here… Brooklyn muttered to Goliath, "How come she rubs every last one of us winged gargoyles the wrong way, but she and Bronx are like rookery kin?"

Goliath only shook his head, before heading back inside the castle. Some humans were simply beyond understanding… and at the moment, he was more concerned with a human that he knew very well indeed.

Last dawn, before he'd gone to his stone sleep, Elisa had said she'd be there when they all work up, to see if stone sleep had restored Broadway's wings… but she wasn't here. Where was she? It wasn't at all like her to make a promise, then not keep it, let alone fail to give all the support she could for a member of the clan.

In the living room, the message light on the clan's answering machine was blinking: flash-flash-pause, flash-flash-pause. If he remembered correctly, that meant two messages had been left for the clan on that device, by callers during the daytime. Perhaps one of them was from Elisa? He reached out and pushed Play.

-click- Hi, people! It's Jeffrey Robbins. Hudson and Goliath, if you can spare the time tonight, would you come out to my home for an hour or two? I've got about fifty questions I'd like to ask you. It's all for that book idea I got at the bachelor party last Friday; Hudson should remember our talking about it… that is, if he can remember much at all of that night (heh heh). Seriously, you people could use some good PR, and a book about your clan's long history might help out a lot. Give me a call or just drop on by, okay? –beeeep-

-click- Hi, guys; it's me. If Goliath isn't listening yet, save this for him, okay? …Big Guy, if you're hearing this at all, it means I wasn't able to get back to the castle before sunset to clear the tape. I'm sorry, but… there's this sticky situation that's developed at work… Sorry to be so vague, but right now it's so confusing, I want to wait until we get a few facts straight before trying to explain it all. I'll call you as soon as I can, okay? -beeeep… beep-beep-beep-

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

It was past sunset, Elisa realized as she glanced out a precinct window at the darkening skies. Good thing she'd thought to make that phone call right after she'd arrived at work, so Goliath would know why she wasn't there after all. She hoped Broadway's wing was completely healed and that he'd be able to fly again, but right now she had other problems…

She'd gone straight to the precinct after leaving Ryker's Island; Captain Chavez had a better working relationship with the Ryker's prison warden than she did, and she needed answers to her questions about Jason and Robyn Canmore too badly to risk antagonizing the man again. But when she'd arrived at the precinct, the first thing she saw on her desk was a sheet of cardboard overlaying a stack of papers, and the cardboard had "Maza" written on it in Matt's handwriting. She turned the cardboard over to find a hasty note on the back: Don't talk to anyone until after we talk. And Matt had drawn those extra squiggles on the 'a' and the 'e', and lengthened the tail of the 'y'; that was their secret code for 'anyone with wings and a tail'…

Looking through the papers stacked underneath the cardboard, starting with Detective Bluestone's preliminary investigation report on the top, she'd realized why Matt had added that precaution. Gargoyles and/or gargoyles imposters (!) in a battle with the Quarrymen! Eleven Quarrymen dead, four more injured… And this had all happened last night; why the hell hadn't she been notified before now! …Stupid question; because she'd been with the real gargoyles all last night, who'd been busy dealing with their own crisis. Emotions had been running high enough already after that midday sneak attack; adding this news on top of that would have been like pouring gasoline onto a raging fire. And there was no excuse Matt could have used to draw Elisa away from the clan's crisis, that wouldn't have made Goliath and the others suspicious anyway.

The next paper under the preliminary investigation report had been another note in Matt's handwriting; a brief 'SoCal all OK.' Elisa had sighed in relief when she'd seen that note; she'd been all set to go charging off to the Labyrinth, to see if the mutates and gargoyle clones living there had been involved in the battle. But since the clones had all been named after locations in Southern California, 'SoCal' was a lot safer to say in front of others than 'the clone clan.'

The stacks of papers held interviews with the surviving Quarrymen, and interviews with supposed witnesses (though she recognized the names of three of those supposed witnesses as 'canaries', people who had claimed to have witnessed crimes in the past and had been discovered to be lying, just trying to get attention in their own twisted way.) There were preliminary autopsy reports on six of the dead Quarrymen, Forensics' reports on the rooftop that had seen most of the fighting, and a note from the FAA investigator who'd been assigned to investigate the helicopter's crash. All these papers together, made the stack that had been generated from the Quarrymen's battle in the hospital two weeks ago look like a simple mugging. Elisa had groaned and set to reading, knowing that as soon as Captain Chavez came in at the start of the shift and saw her at work, she'd be hitting the streets to track down every possible lead on this case; she'd better read up on all the data acquired so far, while she was still in the office. That had been three hours ago, and she still hadn't finished going through all the papers; while she'd been sitting there, the remainder of the autopsy reports, another report from Forensics on the bullet shells found at the scene and four more 'witness' statements had come in, and five different city and state officials had called wanting an update on the investigation.

What was she going to tell Goliath about this? That there might or might not be gargoyle imitators gliding through the air at night? That there might or might not be a clan of strange gargoyles in town? That either way, people had died last night and gargoyles were being blamed for it? And she'd have to add that there were definitely fewer Quarrymen tonight than there were last night, but that the Quarrymen were touting the dead men as martyrs to anyone who'd listen; she'd almost bet money that enough outraged citizens had signed up today, under some rallying cry like "Remember the lost defenders!", to replace those men and more.

She could just imagine what Goliath would do the moment she told him, too. He'd have every able-bodied gargoyle out scouring the city, to find the winged people who fought with the Quarrymen last night. And if they were humans wearing flight-capable gargoyle costumes, he'd probably have their wings trashed and the lot of them left tied up somewhere that the police could easily find them. That would be a good thing, too; it would go a long way towards putting out the fires that had sprung up since last night's attack, putting the Gargoyles Task Force in the hot seat. But only IF the perps last night had all been humans. And Elisa had a sick feeling in her stomach, one telling her that at least one gargoyle really had been involved. She couldn't ignore the autopsy report for one of the dead Quarrymen: decapitated, but not from a sharp blade or rotor shard severing the head from the neck. No, the coroner's office was sure that, incredible as it seemed, his head had been pulled off by something with claws and superhuman strength…

Demona was capable of doing that, and worse. But if she'd been involved, then what or who the hell were those gargoyle costume scraps from! The Demona that Elisa knew all too well would sooner rip her own eyes out, and wait however long it took for them to grow in again, than work with any costume-wearing human. Unless… that compulsion spell that Demona had hit Goliath with long ago. Suppose she'd found another copy of that spell? And had enslaved some costume-wearing humans, in order to deliberately use them as 'cannon fodder' in a battle with Quarrymen… It was a horrible thought, but Elisa knew from bitter experience that when it came to acts of hatred and malice, with Demona, anything was possible.

And if Demona hadn't been involved, but other real gargoyles were in town, gargoyles who didn't mind killing? Elisa had a sickly feeling what Goliath would do once they were found… He'd probably invite them to join the clan on the spot; where gargoyles were concerned, it was always 'the more, the merrier.' And if she protested that these new gargoyles were responsible for the deaths of eleven people, her mate was just apt to dismiss it all as self-defense; after all, the clan had ample prior evidence of the Quarrymen's lethal intentions. The dismal truth was, the clan needed every able-bodied and breeding-capable gargoyle they could find; even with the four clans that they'd found while on the World Tour, their race was teetering on the edge of extinction. But those Quarrymen hadn't been wooden toy soldiers; they had been men with families, and even if the Quarrymen went away tomorrow, those families would be crying out for justice… justice that Goliath would deny them, if he insisted that the new gargoyles be accepted into the clan.

And what if Jason and/or Robyn had somehow been involved? Elisa couldn't ignore the fact that this battle had occurred just a few days after their release from jail. Was it a mere coincidence, or… had Jason been wearing one of those augmented gargoyle costumes? He'd told her before that if he somehow found himself a free man again, he'd do what he could to make up for his family's millennia-long feud with gargoyles… If was such a crazy, sick idea, but what if he'd decided that the best way to make it up to the clan was to fight for them—physically battling their current foes?

Back during that day-long argument they'd had about the Hunters and their quest, he'd told her that more than a few of his ancestors had taken to the skies, to battle the gargoyles in their own element; from gliders centuries ago, to biplanes in the WWI era, to the sophisticated hovercycles and hovership that Jason and his brother had used against the clan just a few months ago. Elisa could easily imagine Jason strapping himself into some sort of exo-frame with flight capability; his paralyzed legs wouldn't matter much in midair. And of course Robyn would go along, if only out of concern for Jason's well-being; she'd been nearly frantic to be reunited with her brother while they were behind bars but in separate wings of the prison. And Elisa had seen firsthand how strong those exo-frames could be; while he was wearing his battlesuit, Xanatos was as strong as the average gargoyle, though not as strong as Goliath. A man wearing such a battlesuit would find that ripping a man's head right off his shoulders wasn't any harder than ripping open a bag of chips… She had no idea where the Canmores would get such a high-tech device on such short notice, but again, where the Hunters were concerned, nearly anything was possible.

"C'mon, Matt, get your butt in here," Elisa muttered as she took another glance at the clock on the wall. Technically, their shift didn't start for another hour, but she was sure that Matt would be in early to deal with whatever new evidence or complications had come to light during the day. And hopefully, he'd left that note for her because he had more evidence about the attack, information that he hadn't dared put down onto cryptic scraps of paper. Elisa desperately wanted more information, before she told Goliath about any of this unholy mess…

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Some time later…

Brooklyn and Lexington had left the castle roughly half an hour ago, for the first patrol of the night. Brooklyn had been unusually silent so far, and Lex had let him brood, knowing that whatever was bothering him would probably not affect his ability to patrol. And sure enough, five minutes ago, Brooklyn had spotted their first crime-in-progress even before Lexington's sharp eyes had. A standard mugging, using a knife instead of a gun, and Lexington had willingly hung back and let Brooklyn work off whatever was bothering him all over the would-be-mugger's face. But Brook hadn't hurt him too much, really; the guy was already awake when they left, and banging the sides of the dumpster they'd stuffed him into. (But he couldn't get out, because they'd slid wire through the hasps on the lids and tied them shut. His would-be victim had promised to call the police, to give the mugger a proper coming-out party.) Now that they were up in the air again, Lexington turned to Brooklyn and said simply, "You want to talk about it?"

"Ehhhh… not really."

Lexington waited, silently counting down. Eight… seven… six…

At Lex's mental 'two', Brooklyn admitted, "I'm just… all right, dammit, I'm tired of being single! I know it's no good thinking about the past, but if the massacre hadn't happened, we'd probably have chosen our mates by now!"

"If the massacre hadn't happened, we'd probably be dust by now," Lex corrected him. "Gotta live in the now, bro…"

"Yeah, and right now, there's only one female, and she's chosen Broadway!" Brooklyn retorted.

It was true, Angela had basically chosen Broadway… but that was before yesterday, Lexington thought to himself. Broadway had said that Angela had put a condition on their mating… Broadway had to lose weight first. A lot of weight, too, and she'd said it was so they could be sure that he could catch her on the breeding flights. If Broadway's wings never fully recovered, if he ended up clumsy and slow in the sky… Would Angela be coldly practical and choose someone else for a mate? Or would Brooklyn just be asked to 'substitute' for Broadway on the breeding flights alone? But those were awful thoughts, and Lexington didn't want to even think them again, let alone say them aloud.

Unaware of what was going through Lexington's mind just then, Brooklyn persisted, "C'mon, doesn't that bother you at all!"

"What, that she didn't choose me? To tell the truth, I'd already pretty much decided not to even try courting Angela; not long after she set us all straight about courting her, actually. I mean, sure, she's pretty, she's smart, and she's as brave as any of us, but beyond that, she and I have almost nothing in common beyond the fact that we both turn to stone at sunrise. I mean, she reads everything she can get her hands on, but I've tried at least half a dozen times to get her interested in modern technology, and she could care less about computers or robotics. As eager as she is to go exploring more of the world, she could pretty much care less about exploring cyberspace! She'd rather spend over an hour looking through books in the library to get information than five minutes looking for it online, even after I streamlined a search engine for her." Lex shook his head in bafflement. "It beats me how she could be so much like Goliath, when they never even met each other until last year. Maybe those human psychologists are right when they say some personality traits are inherited, not learned."

Brooklyn smiled crookedly. "So in other words, Angela's not quite good enough for you. Better not let Goliath hear you say that."

"You said it, not me!" Lex protested. "It's not that she's not good enough; she's just… not my type."

Brooklyn pointed out, "You weren't thinking that way when she first arrived…"

"Well, no, but back then I didn't really know her! I kind-of just got caught up in the competition," Lexington admitted. "Once that wore off… well, she's nice enough, but we just don't go together. I know not everyone can be as enthusiastic about this new technology as I am, but I'm not going to spend my life with a mate who doesn't at least appreciate my interests."

"Well, Lex, maybe you'll find a mate in one of those, whaddayacallem, chatter rooms."

"That's 'chat rooms'. And I've got several friends there already, but I'm not going to start looking for a mate among the humans just yet, okay? Remember, Goliath told us about those other clans out there in Japan and Guatemala, and we already met Griff from the clan in London! So I'm not giving up hope of finding a mate someday, and neither should you; it could be that one of those clans has the right female just waiting for you!"

Brooklyn snorted again. "Maybe… but there's a logistics problem involved. As in, all those clans you mentioned are thousands of miles away from our territory; there won't be any simple two-night journeys to intermingle on the Equinoxes! What are you thinking, that a female is going to just drop right out of the sky?"

And right after as Brooklyn said that, they heard a high-pitched, feminine shriek, coming from somewhere above them. Startled, Lex turned to Brooklyn, to find him looking back just as startled; a mutual look of 'Did you hear what I just heard?' Then they both turned to look upwards… just in time to see a swift blur of golden form come crashing down, right onto Brooklyn!

Brooklyn and whatever had hit him tumbled out of the sky in a tangle of arms and legs, and for a moment Lex was so stunned he just hovered there gaping like a hatchling. By the time he'd recovered his senses and glided down to the rooftop where they'd ended up, the tangle had resolved itself: Brooklyn was lying on his back on the rooftop, while a golden female gargoyle was crouched over him, effectively pinning him down while chattering excitedly, "You're here, you're real, really real! This is wonderful! My name's Rebecca, what's yours? And please, please be single!"

Brooklyn said dazedly as Lex came swooping in, "I'm Brooklyn. I'm single. And I'm dreaming this, right?"

"This is better than a dream!" the female said as she hugged him fiercely. "I've been waiting my whole life to find you!"

"R-really?" Brooklyn gasped, his eyes bugging out, either from sheer surprise or from lack of oxygen while crushed in her enthusiastic grip.

Lexington backwinged to a gentle landing next to them, and discreetly cleared his throat before saying, "Clear skies to you tonight; I'm Lexington."

"Oh, sorry!" the female said as she scrambled off of Brooklyn and came over to give Lexington a swift hug (though not as enthusiastically as the way she'd hugged Brooklyn, Lex noted; he wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.) "I'm Rebecca; well met by starlight!"

Now that she was upright and Lexington got a good look at her, he decided she was actually quite pretty, though in a far different way than Angela; where Angela was lavender in hue, Rebecca was yellow-gold, and where Angela's sable mane was kept neatly tied back, Rebecca's copper-red mane was a riot of curls bouncing in nearly all directions. The females' wings were the same configuration, but not their bodies; where Angela was tall and lushly curvaceous, Rebecca was no taller than Lexington and definitely petite in build. And where Angela's face was beautiful even by human standards, Rebecca had a beak almost as prominent as Brooklyn's… but when she grinned, like she was grinning now, she really was pretty. Then Lexington mentally gave himself a tail-swat; there were more important things to think about right now! "So, Rebecca, what clan are you from? And is anyone else with you?"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

"Just imagine… a book written entirely about us, and our clan!" Hudson marveled as he and Goliath soared through the night sky, on a course for Jeffrey Robbins' place.

"One that speaks of us as we truly are, instead of calling us demons and monsters," Goliath sighed happily. Then he looked over at Hudson a little wryly. "But you do realize that this won't be quite as momentous an occasion as it would have been back in our old time. In this era, books are printed by the thousands if not millions, every day… and with the use of computers and other machines, instead of writing and binding everything by hand, Jeffrey will likely not have to devote his entire life to it, as the monks used to do."

"Ach, I know all that; Jeffrey explained it to me before," Hudson said with a wave of his hand. "But 'tis still a wondrous thing! As ye said, a book that tells other humans what we're really like, instead of all the lies those Quarrymen have been spouting… that can only be good for our clan and our kind!"

"Good indeed," Goliath agreed, but a trifle absently; his attention had just been caught by a winged shape far below them, gliding to the north. What was Brooklyn doing gliding in that direction instead of the agreed-upon patrol route, and why wasn't Lexington with him? Then he took another look… and gasped. That wasn't Brooklyn! The body was as slim as his second-in-command's, but the wings were the wrong type and the hide was dark brown instead of brick red!

Goliath doubled back to follow the stranger, nearly blocking Hudson's glide path in the process. "Hoy! Lad, what's wrong!" Hudson demanded after he pulled up sharply to avoid a midair collision.

"Look! Another gargoyle!" Goliath said as he pointed below them.

Hudson looked where he was pointing, and gasped in astonished delight. "A newcomer! Ach, can this night get any better?" he asked rhetorically as he started to glide down to meet the stranger.

"Wait!" Goliath cautioned, before Hudson had descended more than a few yards. "Let's follow him first. I'm as eager to meet new friends as you are, my mentor… but after Thailog and the clones…"

"Aye, you're right; best to be a bit cautious," Hudson sighed, as he came back up to Goliath's level and matched his path.

Together they tracked the stranger, who was moving at a fast clip; followed him clear out of Manhattan, and into the Bronx. A few minutes after passing into that borough, they saw that the stranger was heading straight for a Gothic-looking church… and that someone was waiting on the roof for him. A man clad in priest's vestments, and making use of a pair of binoculars… which, they saw as they came closer, were being aimed more in their direction, instead of on the stranger's level, roughly a hundred feet below them. And a second after Goliath realized that, the man gave a start, then while still holding the binoculars up with one hand, waved the other hand wildly at them. Then he let the binoculars drop on their cord, and gestured a wide welcome at them with both hands, and with an equally welcoming grin on his face.

Well, since he'd obviously seen them… Goliath and Hudson shrugged at each other, then descended together, falling in a few yards behind the strange gargoyle. Who backwinged to a landing on the church's roof, still oblivious to their presence, as he called out to the human (and his voice had a slight, peculiar accent,) "What's wrong… or right? You sounded très urgent and upset before we were cut off when my battery died, but now you're grinning like a child at Christmas! Did you find the location of the city's clan?"

The man's eyes widened in surprise… then he grinned even wider. "Well, not quite…"

"But you've got something. Then you're doing better than I have; two nights of gliding to all nearly points in the city, and not so much as a stone shard of evidence."

"Not so much as a stone shard," the man repeated, with a definite mischievous tone. "Tell me, Adam, in all your searching, did you ever think to look… behind you?"

The gargoyle whipped around, just as Goliath and Hudson landed together on the roof behind him. "Wha—ha hah! I should have guessed that you'd find us first!" He came up to them with arm outstretched for a warrior's greeting, and a grin just as wide as his companion's. "Well met by starlight; I am Adam, of the New Orleans Clan!"

"Clear skies to you tonight," Goliath said formally as they clasped forearms, making note of the phrase 'well met by starlight'; it appeared to be this new clan's version of the 'clear skies' greeting. "I am Goliath, leader of the Manhattan Clan, and this is Hudson."

"And this is Father Maurice DuBois, also of my clan," Adam said as he gestured the priest forward; Goliath was pleased to note that the human knew warrior's greeting etiquette, grasping forearms instead of shaking hands. Adam continued, "We came to New York to see if the rumors were true, and lo and behold, we've found kin at last! Or you found us… how long have you been following me? Oh, never mind that; how long has your clan dwelt here? How many do you number? Did you really live in that old clocktower, and was anyone lost in the explosion? Where do you--"

"Adam, Adam," Father Maurice interrupted with a grin, "I haven't heard you babble on so in decades! Our new friends can scarcely get a word in edgewise. Come," as he beckoned to them all, "Let's go inside and have some tea, to take the chill off while discussing clan affairs. I know you're not bothered by the cold, but these old bones can feel it all too keenly."

Goliath and Hudson agreed, and they followed Father Maurice and Adam through the hatch and down a few flights of stairs. They entered a small room that looked to be normally used for storage, but now had a space heater, a hot plate, a table and a mixed set of folding chairs and stools set up inside. It was reminiscent of the clan's old living quarters in the clocktower, and Goliath had a hunch that the church's congregation was no more aware of a gargoyle's presence above them than the 23rd Police Precinct had been.

Father Maurice busied himself with a teapot on the hot plate, while Adam invited Goliath and Hudson to take seats on the high stools at the table. Goliath took the opportunity to look the strangers over more closely, both human and gargoyle. Father Maurice looked to be of fairly advanced age, an equivalent to Hudson, though in decent shape; his neatly trimmed hair had gone entirely to white and his lean Caucasian face bore some wrinkles, but many more laugh lines than frown lines. Adam had a chocolate-brown hide, black curly mane cropped at the shoulders, and facial features that were so lacking in prominent ridges on brow, chin or cheekbone that he almost looked like a human; on a gargoyle, such soft features appeared immature, like he was still a hatchling. But judging by the subtle beginnings of wrinkles and by the rest of his body, Goliath estimated that Adam was middle-aged, in his eighties; a hatching generation beyond Goliath's age, but still decades ahead of Hudson's venerable years.

After they were seated and Maurice announced that the tea would be ready in about ten minutes, Adam asked his friend, "Where are Rebecca and Marcel? They'll be overjoyed to meet our kinsmen… are they inside the truck, tinkering with the 'cycle again?"

A teaspoon clattered to the floor as Maurice turned to face them, his own face gone pale with dismay and fear. "Poo-yaille, I can't believe I forgot even for an instant! Adam, Rebecca slipped out while we weren't looking; we fear she's gone out to search again, without paint or radio!"

"She what" Adam overturned his chair as he leaped to his feet, his tail lashing in agitation. "That foolish, stubborn… Excuse me, kinsmen, but I've a wayward female to find, before those fils de putains Quarrymen do!"

Goliath and Hudson leaped to their feet, preparing to follow Adam right out the door, galvanized to action at the thought of a lone female stumbling into a Quarryman patrol. Goliath told Adam while waving his communicator, "Give us a rough description, and we can have our entire clan looking for her!"

Adam paused at the doorway, but before he could say anything, everyone clearly heard a creaking noise coming from above, accompanied by a female voice crying joyously, "I found them!"

Adam heaved a great sigh and rolled his eyes at the ceiling, as he slumped against the nearest wall in mingled relief and resignation. Goliath had a distinct feeling that this particular female had a history of giving Adam worrisome nights, and he fought to hold back a knowing smile as they all heard the clatter of many taloned footsteps down the same stairs that Goliath had come down only minutes before. Still unseen, the female was crying out gaily, "Father Maurice, Marcel, I found them! And I brought two of them back with me!" Seconds later, the door opened and a petite golden female practically bounced through, while dragging Brooklyn behind her by the arm, and with Lexington following right after. "Everyone, meet—oh!" as she stopped in her tracks at sight of Goliath and Hudson. "Oh, you found some of them too!"

"Actually, they found us," Adam said gently from where he was still standing, beside the door. The female, who simply had to be the Rebecca who had caused Adam such stress, whirled around to face him… then let go of Brooklyn's arm and shrank back as Adam, without moving a muscle, seemed to loom over her. "And we were just about to go out and find you," Adam continued, his voice still soft… but gaining a terrible edge. "Because you went out… without blackening body-paint… without a radio… and against. My. Orders."

Rebecca dropped to her knees and let her wings droop until they touched the floor, but dared to lift her face to her clan leader (and Goliath had no doubt that was Adam's role, not after what he'd just seen) and said with tearful defiance, "B-but we had to find them! And New York is just too big for one gargoyle to search alone! But I went high, higher than a falcon, and just watched and waited for movement, and at that height, I'd have seen any humans on mechanical flyers long before they'd have seen me!"

Every other gargoyle in the room was trying very hard to pretend that they weren't there; it tended to be embarrassing, to be present when a clan leader was having harsh words with someone else. But Brooklyn gave Goliath a quick, desperate glance, seeming to ask a question with his eyes. Goliath didn't know what Brooklyn had in mind, but he gave a flicker of his right wing-talon; he trusted his second-in-command's judgment in most situations. Brooklyn took that as permission to do whatever he had planned, for he cleared his throat and took a half-step forward, saying, "Excuse me… you would be Adam, Rebecca's clan leader? She spoke of you to us while we were gliding here. I'm Brooklyn; the Manhattan Clan's second-in-command… and this is my rookery brother Lexington."

Adam turned to them with a rueful look and an outstretched arm for a warrior's greeting. "I am Adam… and I apologize for our little scene here."

"(Ahem) well, it's understandable; you have every right to be furious at a warrior who blatantly ignored your orders. But Rebecca told us about how you had been delayed in your journey here by nearly two weeks, and feared that by the time you arrived in Manhattan, the Quarrymen would have killed us all. I have to admit that if I was in her situation, I would have given hard thought to going out to join in the search for lost kinsmen, even if ordered to stay inside... There are times when a gargoyle's soul gives orders that just can't be denied. And in truth, she was gliding extremely high; she came at us from so far above we had no idea she was there until she surprised us. At that height, it wouldn't be too hard to see an approaching Quarryman helicopter and power-dive to get well away from them before they could get within effective range."

Goliath was silently impressed at Brooklyn's diplomatic skills, in defending a female he didn't know against a clan leader he didn't know either, and managing to do so without giving overt offense to either. Adam folded his arms and sighed, gave Brooklyn a wry smile, then turned that wry smile on Rebecca and said simply, "Sweeping duties, from now until we return home. Now go help Father Maurice prepare more tea for all our guests, hm?"

"Mais oui, chef de clan!" Rebecca said gaily as she shot to her feet again, and bounded over to where Maurice was busying himself at the counter. And she gave Brooklyn such an adoring look as she got to her feet, and cast so many admiring glances at him over her shoulder as she helped Father Maurice find more teacups and such for them all, that Goliath felt moved to casually sidle over to Adam and say under his breath, "Brooklyn is unmated…"

"So is Rebecca," Adam muttered back, with a small smile as he glanced over at where Brooklyn was standing. "Though perhaps not for much longer…?"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

The computer was a wondrous device, and Galena wanted to play with it some more, but after showing her some maps on it, Señora Demona had gently told her that she had some important work to do with it. But she gave Galena some paper from another device and some pens in different colors, so Galena could draw pictures while waiting for something else to happen.

Galena drew a picture of the whole world as she'd seen it on the computer screen, with lots of blue and green and brown, and some white for clouds… It didn't look quite right in the drawing, but perhaps Señora Demona would let her have another look at the computer's picture when the adult was done with her work. It was still amazing; to think of how far away she was going to be going, in just a little while longer! She was sad about having to leave behind the new friends she had made last night; Ramona and Isabel had been nice, and even the boys had been okay. But Señor Yama had said that there would be many hatchlings in the new clan, children just like her; it would be wonderful to have somebody really like herself to play with! Someone who stayed up all night too, instead of going to sleep before the night was half over; someone who was her age and would stay her age, instead of growing up so much faster than her. She'd had friends back in the village, too, but by the time she'd left, Carmen, Felicia and Anica had all been much more interested in giggling over boys than in playing with dolls and other games, and all too often she'd been alone with only her doll Carlotta to play with.

Galena drew another picture, this one of Señora Demona herself. She needed more blue to do it right… The blue lady gargoyle was so nice, even if she was scary sometimes. But it was a good kind of scary, the protecting kind, like her mama had explained to her long ago. Many humans were scared of gargoyles, because they had been told that gargoyles were monsters. But that was because the people who'd told them that had been bad people, who had been in fights with gargoyles because they wanted to do something bad; people like the drug makers and drug runners, who kept trying to force the people of the village to make or transport drugs for them. But Mama and Papa had always either scared them away, or killed and buried them, before the bad people could do bad things to their friends. Galena wasn't supposed to know about the dead men yet, but she'd surprised her Mama last year while burying one of them, and Mama had explained it all to her; sometimes, when the men were really bad and couldn't be scared off, they had to be killed instead, like a mad dog before it bit someone and the rabies spread. And last night, Señora Demona had killed or scared away lots of really, really bad men, people even worse than the drug men back home. Galena had always wanted to be just like Mama when she grew up… but now she decided she'd rather be just like Señora Demona. She was so pretty, and so kind, and such a fierce protector too…

Just as Galena was finishing her drawing, Señora Demona stood up from her desk and said something, and Carlos told them all it was time to go out the window and down to where the van was waiting; the one that would take them to Carlos' cousins and to another house before going to the airplane that would fly them all away. Galena nodded, drew one last heart on her picture, then handed it to Señora Demona for a gift. The señora got tears in her eyes, but she was smiling too; she stroked Galena's hair with a talon and kissed her cheek, and said something to her, which Carlos translated with a smile: "#She said it's a lovely picture, and she will treasure it always.#"

"#Please tell her, I want to be just like her when I grow up,#" Galena said to Carlos. And when he did, this time Señora Demona actually choked back a sob before hugging Galena so tight she could hardly breathe.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Back in the Bronx, Lexington had found a stool to perch on, and sat back to observe all the goings-on in this first meeting between clans. Five minutes after Rebecca had led them here, a middle-aged man named Marcel had shown up, after Father Maurice had radioed him to let him know that Rebecca had returned safe and sound. It was obvious to Lexington that this new clan from New Orleans was more comfortable with humans than the old Wyvern clan had ever been; Marcel and Rebecca were as close as rookery kin, just as Father Maurice and Adam the leader seemed to be. As soon as he'd arrived, Marcel had chewed Rebecca up one side and down the other, lots of it in a French-sounding dialect that Lex was sure was Cajun talk, but enough of it in English for them to get the gist of it. He'd evidently been out there freezing his tail off, riding around on the motorcycle trying to find her after she'd sneaked off to look for gargoyles again, even after she'd gotten herself shot by Quarrymen the night before (Shot! She hadn't mentioned that before, and Goliath and Brooklyn had both nearly jumped in to demand more details, but visibly restrained themselves.) Hadn't Adam throwing away her special body-paint during the day (during the day! Lexington decided he must have misheard that) been enough a clue that she was supposed to stay put? But nooo, she had to go out on her own, without a radio, and bright gold as a canary; why hadn't she just pinned a target to her chest and a "Please shoot me" sign on her tail!

But where Rebecca had cringed in submission at Adam's rebuke, she just gave Marcel a sheepish grin before introducing him to Brooklyn. Whereupon Marcel had looked Brooklyn over, nodded grudging approval, and informed Brooklyn that if he ever broke his little Becky's heart, he'd wake up one evening to find himself buried up to the neck in mud, deep in the bayou. And at Adam's half-laughing rebuke that Marcel shouldn't talk like that to their guests, Marcel replied, " 'Ey, I don' say I bury him all de way, do I?"

Even Goliath had smothered a smile at the exchange, though Brooklyn still looked kind of dazed, as if he still wasn't sure that he wasn't still stuck in a dream somehow. The dazed look didn't go away when Rebecca finished with the tea preparations, and after cups and mugs were passed all around, deliberately pulled up a seat next to Brooklyn and eased herself so close to him, he just about had to raise a wing to accommodate her. And sure enough, as soon as his wing shifted up and back, she snuggled in closer like it had been an invitation, and smiled adoringly up at him.

Lexington found himself jealous of his rookery brother. How come the ladies always looked to Brooklyn instead of him! In the next instant, he rebuked himself for the lie; less than an hour ago, Brooklyn had been the one to complain about being single. Maggie had turned him down flat even before choosing Talon, and while Angela might have considered him for a while, she had now obviously chosen Broadway. No, it was just the way that this one pretty little female was just swarming all over Brooklyn, while barely casting a glance in Lex's direction…

Lex sighed, reminded himself that while jealousy might be natural it never ever helped, and tried to find something else to focus on. Marcel and Rebecca were both focused on Brooklyn, so he worked his way into the conversation between Adam, Father Maurice and his own clan leader and elder. Adam told them that the New Orleans Clan had a total of forty-seven gargoyles and seventy-nine humans, and Lexington was impressed again. Not at the size of the clan; forty-seven might be nearly seven times the size of the current Manhattan Clan proper, but the old clan in medieval Scotland had numbered nearly twice that. No, Lexington was impressed at how humans were counted not just as clan allies, but as full-fledged clan members. In Manhattan, while they had many allies, only Elisa was officially counted as a clan member now…

… Was his own clan prejudiced! The thought had never occurred to Lexington before, but now that it had, he couldn't help but wonder and worry. The Labyrinth Clan that made its home beneath the streets of New York had not only cloned gargoyles and mutates as members, but at least a dozen people from the core of the human population down there as well; Whenever he visited, Lex saw them all working side-by-side with hardly a qualm. While he and his close kin had grown up in an age of intolerance, they had somewhat prided themselves on being more accepting of the humans in old Scotland than the humans were of them. But compared to this modern age, were they really that tolerant after all?

Oh, of course they were! So they hadn't accepted Xanatos, Owen and Fox as full members yet; that was because it was pretty hard to fully accept people who'd been doing their level best to destroy or cage you less than a year ago. If they behaved themselves for another year, surely they'd be declared full clan at an Equinox festival or whenever. Matt would surely become a full member if he'd come to live at the castle with them, or at least visit more often, and Anne and her daughter Bethany were already effectively full members; it just hadn't been recognized formally yet, not like Hudson had formally recognized Elisa as clan even before the wedding. The Manhattan Clan was plenty tolerant! No worries about their turning out to be as racist as Demona…

And why was his mind wandering like this! Shards, in the middle of a first meeting between clans! He shook his head slightly and refocused again. While Lexington had been off chasing moonbeams, the conversation between the elders had somehow shifted to talk of the clans that Goliath had found elsewhere in the world. But it was all information that Lexington had heard before, and soon his attention began to drift again. He found himself studying Adam more closely; there was something odd, something not-quite-right about that other clan leader, but Lex couldn't quite pinpoint it. It wasn't that Adam's black mane was made of tight curls; that was unusual, but one of Lexington's long-dead rookery sisters had been hatched with a mane like that, except for being red instead of black. Maybe it was the face? Adam's face was so soft it was almost hatchling-like, with its lack of prominent ridges anywhere; if somebody glued some bits of fur onto those tiny brow ridges he had, to make them look like human eyebrows, he'd could probably pass as a human from the neck up. But there was something else… something else, but Lexington couldn't quite put his talons on it…

Talons…

"Five!"

Lexington had blurted that word out during a momentary lull in the conversation, and immediately all eyes turned on him, in surprise, curiosity and/or admonishment. Goliath was giving him just such a look, as he said patiently, "No, there were four. Only four members left of the Guatemalan clan, as--"

"No, you don't understand; five talons!" Lexington blurted out, blushing but unable to stop himself from pointing and staring like a hatchling. "Adam has five talons on each hand!"

And immediately, all eyes turned from Lexington's face to Adam's hands. Adam heaved a great sigh, and obligingly held one of his hands up for everyone to see, splaying the talons wide enough to make it plain to even the most casual observer. "And my wings have an extra section in them," he informed them as he also flexed his left wing out, to show that his bat-style wings did indeed have one more vane and membrane in them than Goliath's wings did. He added dryly, "And yes, I was hatched this way."

"Adam's the Third Miracle," Rebecca told them, as if that explained everything, which it didn't. Then she added fiercely, "And everyone agrees he's the best clan leader we've had in centuries!"

"Thank you, Rebecca," Adam said with a wry smile. "Your support is appreciated."

Goliath was leaning forward and staring at Adam with wonder in his eyes, as he breathed, "Can it be? Are you…?"

Adam didn't seem to appreciate the scrutiny, shifting back on his stool, but met Goliath's eyes squarely as he said simply, "Half human." Then, with a wry twist to his lips, he recited to the room at large, "Yes, my father was a human. No, I'm the only one. Yes, there are other differences. I can stay awake during the day if I try hard enough. But yes, I turn to stone as soon as I fall asleep. No, I don't awaken before sunset. I've only stayed awake long enough to see a sunset once, and while it was beautiful, staying awake that long was agony. Yes, I age faster than the average gargoyle, but slower than the average human. My egg hatched three years before the others in my rookery. Maurice and I are the same age, sixty-six years old." He stopped then, and gave all the Manhattan Clan a gimlet eye as he said, "I trust that answers all potential questions?"

Goliath's look of hope and wonder had turned to a frown halfway through the recitation, but he said nothing. Hudson combed his beard with his talons as he eyed Adam shrewdly, then said, "No more questions yet, lad… but I'm sure we'll think of some later. And we'll ask them in a most civil fashion, too…"

Adam looked away, then back at Hudson with a wry smile. "My apologies. I should be used to it by now, but each new human to become an ally to the clan stares the same way, and asks the same questions, and it's more than a little irritating. I really should have been more prepared for such stares from fellow gargoyles, and more civil in return…"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Heinrich hadn't heard anyone nearby for over fifteen minutes, and he decided that it was probably safe to come out now. He'd already packed his bags, and now he eased open the lid and looked around, to make sure the coast was clear before tossing his bags out and climbing out after them. He hoped he could sneak out of the ship without attracting any notice; the way he was feeling right now, he was in no shape for either a good fight or a fast flight.

Why had he been feeling so lethargic and awful lately? Heinrich had never had so much as a cold in his life, but right now he felt like Karl and Andrea looked whenever they were laid up with illness. Was it the forced inactivity? While Heinrich had sneaked out of his crate almost every night of the two week journey, cautiously exploring the ship's cargo hold, he hadn't even tried to get outside and go flying. Or was it the lack of sunlight during the day? Before he'd died years ago, Gregor had theorized why his winged children had always been trying to sneak onto the roof before dawn, until he'd installed a large skylight in the attic; he'd decided they were instinctively seeking a perch that would let them soak up sunlight during the day. If Gregor had been right, and the sun that gargoyles never saw was somehow important to their health after all, then that would explain why Heinrich was feeling so poorly; he'd been sleeping in darkness for the last two weeks. Well, hopefully he could muster enough energy to glide to some place where he could roost in safety and soak up some sunlight tomorrow.

Keeping to the shadows and moving with the stealth born of long practice at dodging Communist patrols, Heinrich managed to sneak off the ship, escape the shipyard and scale the fence surrounding it. After seeing a few signs and consulting the booklet of maps for New York that Karl had bought for him, Heinrich determined that he was in Brooklyn. But the NYPD 23rd Precinct that the news article had mentioned was in Manhattan, across the East River. Ordinarily, he'd have no problem gliding across a river, but tonight, the way he was feeling, such a long glide would be out of the question. So how would he get there?

He dodged back into the shadows as a pair of headlights approached, and waited until the vehicle, a delivery truck, had passed by. And once it had, he emerged from the shadows with a sly grin, and a plan.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Matt arrived at the Aerie Building with his tie in one hand and his comb in the other, still trying to get dressed and still cursing himself for oversleeping. When he got the station, he fully expected to find that his desk had collapsed under the weight of all the paperwork that had accumulated in the last twelve hours, and Captain Chavez was ready to nail his ass to the wall and bust him down to beat patrol if he didn't produce some results ASAP. But first, he absolutely had to see David Xanatos… not only was Xanatos higher up in the Illuminati, and more apt to have information on any possible Illuminati connection to last night's battle, but he was the man who'd had those gargoyle costumes created in the first place, and he'd probably know if any had been specially made to incorporate flight capability.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

"Detective Bluestone has arrived in the lobby, sir," Owen reported as he walked into Xanatos' inner office.

"It's about time; I expected him to show up hours ago," Xanatos murmured, as he unconsciously patted a folder on his desk. A folder that Xanatos had prepared that morning, after hearing about what had happened last night.

Three weeks ago, a Xanatos Enterprises warehouse by the docks had been broken into just before dawn; the security systems installed there hadn't been able to prevent these very determined thieves from getting inside, but they had alerted the nearest police precinct that a break-in was in progress. The thieves had fled the scene in a black van when the police had arrived, after having apparently filled the van with their stolen goods: six laptop computers, two industrial low-level laser setups, four spectrum analyzers, and two programmable multi-function power supplies; at least, that was all that had been discovered missing during the inventory afterwards.

The folder on Xanatos' desk now held an updated inventory list, with a few more items missing. In particular, a trio of experimental personal jetpacks, much like the one that Xanatos himself used from time to time. And the exclusive boutique that had sold those top-of-the-line, electronically enhanced gargoyle costumes with controllable wings and tail, would find themselves missing three such costumes from their inventory and no idea of exactly when they had been taken.

These days, Xanatos preferred to stay within the law in his business dealings; while it made some necessary transactions much harder at first, it really did make things easier in the long run. No concerns about keeping track of who was being blackmailed versus bribed; no tracking cover-ups and worrying about who was sniffing too close to where the bodies were buried. There were still some long-ago illegal dealings that he had to keep a lid on, but other than that, things really were easier now. Yesterday, he would have proudly asserted to any other Illuminati member that the private account he called his 'bribe fund' hadn't been touched in weeks.

But when it came to dealings that concerned the clan… It was damned hard sometimes, protecting people who had no legal recognition, let alone legal protection. But he owed them his son's life, not to mention owed them for the way he'd treated them for years before, so if protecting them meant breaking a few little regulations and telling a few little white lies, then so be it. He had no real qualms about that, any more than Detectives Maza and Bluestone had qualms about protecting the clan from official retribution for their 'vigilante' tactics. (In truth, he probably had far fewer qualms than they did.) While the Illuminati may have painfully hobbled him in what he could do to ensure the clan survived and thrived, they hadn't prevented him from taking care of his own business dealings… such as correcting an inventory listing. And giving Owen a few thousand bucks from the 'bribe fund' to give to an …understanding police clerk, who promised to see that the new inventory list was quietly put into the correct file back at the precinct. And making similar arrangements at the costume boutique.

Xanatos actually had no idea of who was involved in that battle at the docks last night, though he strongly suspected that Demona was involved somehow; his corporate spies at Nightstone had reported that Dominique Destine was back in her office after a week's absence, and had issued some rather bizarre orders today. But he was more than willing to contribute to the theory that costume-wearing humans had been involved, instead of real gargoyles; anything to see that the threat to the clan, and incidentally his own home, was diminished.

But it could well be that Bluestone had more information than had filtered into the castle via radio, television and the newspapers; items that had been either shut off or tossed into the trash before the clan woke up. Xanatos would wait until he came in and they had a chance to talk privately, before telling the clan anything; they had enough concerns already. (There was always the chance that one of the clan would overhear something or chance upon a newspaper while on their patrols, but Xanatos was sure he could talk his way out of any unpleasantness.)

When Bluestone arrived, Xanatos would let him know about the changes in inventories; it just wouldn't do to confuse the people most likely to find out who was really behind last night's PR disaster. There was some minor concern over how much Bluestone would object to those little white lies, but… well, a few more minutes would answer that question. Xanatos sighed, loosened his tie, then settled back to wait.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

"Next stop, Brooklyn!" Vinnie announced as he put the van into gear and drove it out of the Nightstone building's parking garage. The girl-gargoyle in the back gave a cheer of sheer excitement, and the other four gargoyles in the back smiled at her enthusiasm.

Vinnie had played tour guide a couple of times before, for relatives who'd come visiting from out of town, so he was happy to point out some of the sights to Carlos, who was sitting in the front passenger seat. "This area's known as Chinatown, even if these days the folks here are only about half of 'em Chinese. Lots of Dominicans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Puerto Ricans, and probably a lot of Mexican folk too. You throw a rock in here, it'll prob'ly land next to a restaurant; they got all kinds, about every food you can think of… That's City Hall over there, and the park across the street is City Hall Park, naturally. A teacher told me once they used to hold public executions in that park, but these days you mostly see press conferences being held there, and public demonstrations against this or that…. And here's the Brooklyn Bridge! This bridge is over a hundred years old now; they've made commemorative stamps an' everything. Back when it was first built, it was, like, one of the modern wonders of the world; the biggest and baddest—whah!"

"¿Que?" Carlos had been looking out the passenger-side window, but now he turned to look at Vinnie with concern.

"I thought I saw… ah, never mind," Vinnie said with a shrug. "Some of these trucks have some pretty funky advertising signs on them. Wouldja believe, there's a pest exterminator that drives around with a giant metal cockroach on the roof of his truck!"

Carlos snorted in amusement, and went back to looking at the scenery. Vinnie kept on driving, having already decided that it would be for the best if he didn't mention what he thought he'd just seen: a gargoyle clinging to the top of an eighteen-wheeler, going the opposite direction on the bridge, from Brooklyn into Manhattan. There was no place to turn around until they reached Brooklyn, and by that time who knew where the gargoyle, if it really had been a real gargoyle, would be? And there wouldn't be all night to look for him, either; these people were supposed to be on a plane by midnight.

Vinnie eased his conscience by reminding himself that if it had been a gargoyle, it was probably a member of the local clan, who was already wise to the Quarrymen and knew how to take care of himself. It was more important right now to get the kid gargoyle to safety; 'women and children first', and all that.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

"Well, it looks like they were in the castle all this time, after all," Father Maurice muttered to Adam, who was carrying him through the night air on their glide to the Manhattan Clan's home. "Perhaps not the wisest decision, considering all the attention this building has received lately…"

"You know as well as I do how hard it is for a gargoyle to leave a home behind," Adam muttered back to him. "And at least they managed to lure that Quarryman helicopter away from it last night, before engaging in that battle that we read about in the papers this morning. …That's assuming, of course, that the ones fighting last night really were this clan, and not gargoyle imitators as the paper suggested…"

"Do you intend to ask?" Maurice whispered.

"After as many gaffes as I've made already tonight?" Adam rolled his eyes. "I intend to keep my mouth shut as much as I can, thank you." He was just thankful that his momentary and quite rude burst of bitter resignation, at being stared at like a freak yet again, had been forgiven immediately.

Very shortly afterwards, Goliath had suggested that instead of staying in the church, Adam and the others could come to the Manhattan Clan's home, where they could meet the rest of the clan. Adam had accepted immediately, and now they were just a few thousand yards away from that 'castle in the sky', the center of an escort of honor. Rebecca flew alongside him, though gliding far closer to Brooklyn than to Adam, and Marcel was being carried in Brooklyn's arms. Leading them in flight, Goliath reached for that radio device around his neck and called ahead to the castle, to let whoever was inside know that they had company coming.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Inside the castle, Broadway had spiraled far down into a well of depression, despite Angela's best attempts to cheer him up. She'd even managed to bake him a batch of brownies, all by herself in the kitchen… but he'd just shoved the platter of steaming-hot and aromatic brownies away, before turning to stare at the wall again. And after she finally crouched beside the chair and literally begged him to say something to her, he said only, "Angela… maybe you'd better choose somebody else."

"Choose… oh, Broadway, don't talk like that!"

"I have to," he'd said heavily. "Because, let's face it, I may never be able to fly as well as you, not now… And if I can't, then--"

Angela had physically hushed him, putting her hand over his mouth as she said fiercely, "Don't say that! You can't give up hope, Broadway, not when we haven't even begun your physical therapy yet! I don't want to hear even one despairing word from you, understand! Not one word! You have to be positive about this, to know you'll be in the air again eventually! You have to know that!"

"But--"

"No buts! Not one negative word!" she'd interrupted him fiercely. "I am not going to hear it!" And with that, she'd stalked out of the room, to stand on the battlements and stare out at the city for a while.

She was still out there minutes later when Broadway called out to her, with real excitement in his voice. "Angela, Goliath just called--we have company coming! More gargoyles! He said they're on their way here now, coming from the Bronx!"

"From the north?" Angela turned around and hurried for the northern battlements, as Broadway hurried out to join her. And sure enough, there were silhouettes in the sky, headed their way; the four members of her clan that had been out, and a few more!

Both gargoyles waved excitedly to the newcomers, even before any details could be discerned. Angela's waving faltered, when they came close enough that she and Broadway could see that the one gliding so close to Brooklyn's flight path was a female… But she and Broadway were both smiling in welcome as they landed on the castle.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Deep inside the castle, in Xanatos' office, he and Matt Bluestone paused in their discussion to look at what was showing on the security monitor, from the north-facing cameras. "One gold one—female, apparently—and one that's a very dark color… dark brown," Xanatos mused aloud. "And two humans, too… What were your descriptions again?"

"The Quarrymen said their gargoyles were dark green, blue, and gray… and the costume scraps were blue and green," Matt muttered, staring at the screen as if he could increase the resolution through willpower alone.

"Hm. Not exactly a perfect match…"

"But there might be more of this strange clan, still laid up after last night's battle and unable to travel," Matt responded. "Tell me, am I correct in assuming that you have hidden cameras and microphones stashed throughout the castle?"

Xanatos touched a few controls, and the view changed to one of the clan's living room. "Strictly for security purposes, of course; paranoia is pretty much prerequisite after the first billion is made."

"Of course," Matt echoed. "Would you mind if we just watched and listened in for a while, before introducing ourselves? If they did have something to do with last night's battle… People tend to be more talkative when they don't know there's a policeman present."

Xanatos nodded and gestured. "Just bring your chair over here…" Then he gave another of his infamous smirks as he asked, "Want me to send Owen for popcorn?"

"Ha. Ha. …What the heck; I haven't eaten yet…"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Heinrich rode the truck over the bridge and well into the city, looking up from time to time but mostly keeping his head down and his wings mantled over his body and bags, hoping that he looked like a big gray tarpaulin spread over some undefined object instead of a gargoyle hitching a lift.

When the truck finally came to a stop and shut off its engine, he managed to scramble off it and glide a short distance away from the warehouse it had stopped at, without any alarm being raised. After checking some street signs and consulting the booklet of maps, he oriented himself and started heading in the direction he needed to go. The police precinct, his first destination, was about six kilometers away; just an easy glide ordinarily, but tonight with his lack of energy, he would have to do it all in short glides and frequent rests. But he was determined to make it that far before sunrise; to make it there, and find out whether or not he and his family had kin here in this city, or were truly the last of their kind.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

The clan's guests had been introduced, brought into the living room, and generally made welcome; by happy coincidence, there was even a platter of freshly made brownies for them. Bronx had greeted the newcomers happily, and the newcomers were even more delighted to see him, making quite a fuss over him. After the initial greetings were over, Rebecca stayed crouched next to Bronx and scratched behind his ears, but Adam took the seat that was offered to him and made himself comfortable. "A very nice home you have here," he commented, looking round at the décor. "Though it must seem rather empty at times, with only seven of you here…"

Goliath nodded somberly. "There are times when it seems empty indeed. When compared to a thousand years ago, when our clan numbered over ninety strong and every perch was filled, with more down in the rookery…"

Adam blinked at them, went silent for a few seconds, then admitted, "I'm confused. We did some research on this castle when it was first mentioned in relation to gargoyles, and we found out it had been brought over from Scotland, back in late 1991. Are you saying that instead of being native to New York, you migrated here along with the castle?"

Brooklyn had finally come out of the daze that meeting Rebecca had put him in, and chuckled sardonically. "Yeah, we came over with the castle! In packing crates, probably, not that we were aware of it at the time."

All of the newcomers exchanged confused looks, before Adam turned to Goliath and said only, "It sounds like quite a story. If you'd care to tell it to us?"

Goliath nodded again. "It is quite a story, indeed." He took a deep breath, and began to tell it.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Vinnie decided that the Velasquez family were pretty nice folks; their kids welcomed Galena like she was a regular playmate, while the adults served everyone else coffee while listening to what Demona, Yama and Hiroshi had to say. Carlos had called them last night, to let them know why the gargoyle family wouldn't be sleeping in their living room during the day, so they already knew about the Quarrymen attack and the offer to come live in Japan instead. But they had a bunch of questions for Yama and Hiroshi, about what the clan in Japan was like, and a bunch more questions for Demona about what it was like to be gargoyle by night but human by day.

Yama and Hiroshi were willing to talk all night about how great their home was, but Demona was pretty closemouthed about her experiences, and finally asked them to stop asking questions: "I know you're just curious, but please… I don't really like feeling like I'm different, like a freak made of magic, and every question just makes it worse." Mr. And Mrs. Velasquez stopped immediately, and just about fell over themselves apologizing for being rude to her, until she said it was all understandable and okay.

Vinnie could kind-of see where she was coming from; last night, he'd sorta noticed that all the gargoyles were staring at her like she'd grown a second head, right after she'd told them her secret. And any other human who knew about Dominique Destine's 'night life' probably stared at her the same way at first, too. Vinnie remembered a handicapped kid he'd gone to school with, a guy who'd been born without a right hand; he'd been okay a lot of the time, but he'd gotten pretty nasty towards kids who stared at him or called him "Lefty." Maybe that was why Demona/Ms. Destine was supposed to be such a hardass bitch, in her job of running the company; probably some of the upper-level execs knew her secret too, and if they treated her like a freak she'd be nasty to 'em in return, and it would just filter down to the working folks. And it got exaggerated as it filtered down, like stories told around the water cooler always did; Vinnie had plenty of experience with that. Back when he'd worked for Xanatos Enterprises as a security guard, he'd heard all sorts of stories whispered around the water cooler about that company's CEO, David Xanatos, and his right-hand man Owen Burnett. Not that even half of them could possibly be true…

After an hour or so of talking, Demona said it was time to go; they still had to swing by Vinnie's house to get Yama's cat and the rest of Hiroshi's things, before going to the airport and sneaking aboard the plane that would take them to Japan. The gargoyles snuck out the window, followed by a chorus of goodbyes and promises to write, while Vinnie, Carlos and Hiroshi went out the front door with their luggage and a few farewell gifts of Mexican food and treats. Vinnie thought to himself that it would be a good thing to keep in touch with this family later on, to swap gargoyle tales and such. Mrs. Velasquez sure made great empanaditas.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

After Goliath had finished telling of the massacre over a thousand years ago, and how the Wyvern Clan had ended up in Manhattan, Adam had in turn told how his clan had come to America. It seemed that over two hundred years ago, there had been a clan living in Paris, in the upper levels of Notre Dame (and Goliath successfully suppressed his own memories of that place, and his encounter there with Demona and Thailog.) When the Notre Dame had been built in the twelfth century, the clan of gargoyles that lived by one of the stone quarries nearby had first come into conflict with the people mining stones for the cathedral, then somehow came to be on such amiable terms that the clan was invited to live atop the cathedral and help protect Paris. (Adam was deliberately vague on the details of that sudden change in relations and relocation, and Goliath wondered if Adam truly didn't know how that had come about, or if it was a secret he was unwilling to disclose just yet.) But in 1771 the clan had split, and twenty of its members had secretly emigrated to New Orleans with a family of minor nobles, the Dubois.

The DuBois family had acquired a large tract of land outside the town and built a mansion there, and the gargoyles had settled in quite happily, hunting the bayous for food and occasionally patrolling the town, mostly to act as secret bodyguards for the DuBois family. But they had retained contact with the old clan in Notre Dame, until the summer of 1793. All of France was embroiled in the French Revolution by then; the king and his family had already been executed as traitors to the State, and under Robespierre's Reign of Terror, thousands more people—some of them nobles, some of them bourgeoisie who happened to be a little richer than others, and some of them people who had just dared to speak out against the insanity—were being imprisoned and executed every month. The last letter the New Orleans Clan had received, from the Paris Clan's leader Valjean, said that they had been forced to evacuate most of the clan to an abandoned farmhouse outside the city, but they still had hopes of being able to return to the cathedral and their protectorate once the current madness died down. Then after that… nothing. A short time later, a visiting sea captain had told one of the DuBois family that Notre Dame had been sacked by the forces of the Revolution, and much of the cathedral's fineries—including several ornate statues—had been destroyed.

"We still hope that some of them managed to escape the slaughter, hiding out at that farmhouse, but we've never heard from them since then," Adam concluded with a sorrowful shake of his head. "After that, the gargoyles that had come to New Orleans vowed to maintain even more secrecy, and when the city grew to encompass the old DuBois homestead, they sold it and moved even further out. Our clan now lives about fifty miles from the city, at the edge of a bayou; we still have people patrolling the city, but only a half-dozen at a time, rotating in shifts that last four nights before returning home. The rest of the time, we patrol the bayou and homestead borders, avoiding exposure… except at Mardi Gras." Now Adam grinned, his fangs glistening in the light of the living room. "Have you heard of Mardi Gras?"

The phrase stirred a memory in Goliath's mind, but clearly didn't mean as much to him as it did to the Trio; they all sat up straighter and almost literally perked their ears. "Yeah, we've heard about that," Brooklyn said aloud. "Sounds like one heckuva party!"

"Oh, it is!" Adam grinned even wider. "And we even participate in it; since outrageous costumes are the norm during the festival, we simply dress up a little fancier or ornament ourselves a bit, and everyone thinks we're just humans in particularly good costumes!"

Rebecca threw in from where she was still crouched by Bronx, "I have golden feathered wing-covers that Marcel's sister made for me; I just put them on and paint on a couple of 'seam lines', and everyone calls me Canary Girl!" She smiled modestly while adding, "It helps that I have a good singing voice."

"A lovely singing voice," Adam assured her, before turning to the clan to continue. "It's the one time of the year that we walk right down the streets with everybody else, singing and dancing till nearly dawn for night after night, till the last big party ending at midnight on Mardi Gras itself. We even have our own parade float!"

Goliath and Hudson both stared at him as if he'd said he regularly ate plutonium for dinner. "Parade…float?"

"Yeah, you know, Goliath, a dressed-up wagon or car like they use in the Thanksgiving Day parade!" Brooklyn said with a grin. ( Matt had made a tape of last year's televised parade for Hudson and the Trio to see, since it all happened during the daylight hours.) "Too cool! Like a week-long Halloween!"

Halloween had long since become Goliath's favorite human holiday; it was the one night of the year that he and Elisa could walk down the streets together without anyone screaming. (He still somewhat regretted not going out in public with her on that night over two weeks ago, but with her fertile period coinciding…) But evidently in New Orleans, they had more than just one night to enjoy it all! But mindful that a clan leader shouldn't bounce in his seat like an eager hatchling, all he said was, "It sounds enjoyable indeed."

"It seems to me that your clan is prospering as well as any clan could ever hope to," Hudson said with a smile. "But tell me, do you have any watchbeasts?"

Adam looked over at Bronx before saying with a sigh, "The colonizers that left Paris had sixteen gargoyles and four watchbeasts, both mated pairs. But for some reason, one mated pair produced only males, and out of three breeding seasons the other pair produced only one female… who fought a 'gator and lost before she came of breeding age. Our last watchbeast died of old age over a century ago."

Hudson sighed heavily. "It seems watchbeasts are rare indeed these days. Goliath, how many did you say you saw, in all your travels around the world?"

"Only half a dozen, and all in Ishimura… seven total, counting Boudicca in Avalon," Goliath said with a troubled frown. "We really must go there to retrieve her before the next breeding season."

"Speaking of breeding seasons…" Adam straightened up and took a deep breath before saying, "Pardon the observation, but New York is seeming more and more like a particularly inhospitable place to breed the next generation." He looked over at Broadway and said, "From the way you're carrying that wing, your injury happened very recently, didn't it?"

"Just yesterday," Broadway admitted, looking down at the floor.

"I thought so. Just as Rebecca was shot last night while searching for you, and might well have bled to death before dawn had we not been able to find her, bring her to safety and give her emergency first aid. As I said to Maurice and Marcel this morning," he said as he nodded to them, "In New Orleans, we have crime aplenty for warriors to deal with… but we do NOT have open warfare between species. We expect that our next clutch of eggs and hatchlings will be raised in secrecy and safety… and to be blunt, I don't see how you can possibly expect that here. Not when your home is too well known to your enemies, and there are so few of you left to defend it… I know how hard it is to even think about leaving a protectorate; how it goes against the grain, against your very soul, to leave a place you call home. But for the next generation's sake, you should seriously consider relocating, to New Orleans." He spread his hands out to encompass the room as he finished, "I invite you to come with us, to combine our clans, and come to New Orleans to live."

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Back at the precinct, Detective Second Class Elisa Maza was not a happy little trooper. The phone was practically ringing off the hook with demands from both government officials and private citizens for the Gargoyles Task Force to do something about last night's 'incident'—'incident' being as much of an understatement as calling World War Two a 'conflict'.

The Quarrymen were screaming for blood, as loudly and often as they could; they'd already held one spontaneous rally that afternoon in Central Park, which thankfully had been dispersed by the police before sunset had come and the gargoyles had awoken to notice the disturbance. And right that moment, Jon Castaway was being interviewed on Night Watch about the deaths of eleven of his people.

But guess who else was going to be on that program? The Night Watch program director had contacted "Lennox MacDuff" to speak for the opposing side, since his 'debate' with Margot Yale had garnered such high ratings for the show a month ago. He'd agreed to step into the breach again, to defend the gargoyles, and his call to the precinct an hour earlier had been the only one Elisa had welcomed. She'd armed him with what data she could, without making it too obvious that someone in the department was leaking information. Right now Elisa was to busy fielding calls and looking through her ever-increasing pile of paperwork to watch the show, but she was confident that Macbeth would bring up whatever key questions the show's host Travis Marshall conveniently 'forgot' to mention, such as why scraps of gargoyle costume had been found at the scene… and by the way, what were those illegal machine guns doing mounted on that helicopter in the first place? By whose authority had they been fired within city limits?

But even with Macbeth and the P.I.T. doing what they could to divert the threat, this city was a powder keg with a sparking fuse. Eleven men were dead, and the city wanted someone to answer for that, one way or another.

"Dammit, Matt, where are you!" Elisa growled under her breath as she put the phone's receiver down again, just barely restraining herself from slamming it. The last call had been yet another insane 'canary', claiming that she'd seen last night's battle with her own eyes; seen a hundred pitchfork-waving gargoyles erupting from a fiery hole in the ground to wreak havoc on those innocent Quarrymen. Elisa redirected the call to one of the task force's two rookies—let them deal with the obvious cranks; Elisa had paid her dues back in her own rookie days—and told herself to take a deep, cleansing breath before trying again to get hold of her partner. Matt was supposed to have been in twenty-five minutes ago, and Captain Chavez had already come by demanding to see him twice in that twenty-five minutes. Elisa took a deep breath, held it, counted to ten—and on the count of six, the phone rang again. "#$#$&!" She picked up and gripped the receiver in a stranglehold, but managed to keep most of the snarl out of her voice as she rattled off, "NYPDGargoylesTaskForceDetectiveMazaspeakinghowcanIhelpyou!"

"Elisa, it's me," she heard Matt say on the other end.

"Matt, where have you been! Never mind, just get your ass in here! Chavez is about to--" Elisa started, then realized that Matt was still talking, trying to override her own tirade.

"…and get over to the castle now," Matt said. "Straight to Xanatos' office, and don't stop to talk to the clan on the way, okay?" And with that, he hung up.

Elisa swore again, slammed the phone down, and grabbed her jacket. "Following a possible lead; you stay and handle the phones!" she shouted at the rookies, while running for the back door—not coincidentally, in the opposite direction from which Captain Chavez was approaching yet again.

Less than sixty seconds later, Elisa was in her Fairlane and roaring into traffic. Her mind was boiling over with diatribes against Matt, the Quarrymen and all the 'canary' lunatics that came out of the woodwork at times like this, and besides, it had been months since the clan had moved out of the old clocktower above the precinct. That being the case, she didn't look up and scan the sky for forms gliding towards or away from the clocktower, as she used to do all the time. So she completely missed seeing the gargoyle approaching from the east…

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Heinrich absently noticed a large red-and-white car bulling its way through traffic below him as he glided down the street, but his attention was far more focused on his destination, now in sight: the 23rd Precinct of the NYPD. Even if Karl and Andrea hadn't pinpointed and circled its location on the map that Heinrich was holding, he would have recognized the silhouette of the building from the photos in that tabloid article two months ago.

He alit silently on a roof across from the clocktower and just stared at it for a moment, his heart constricting at the sight of the ruined structure. If restoration had indeed been begun already, it evidently had not progressed far; he could see masses of twisted steel and torn wooden beams still scattered and heaped amid concrete rubble. Such senseless destruction… It strongly reminded him of the ruins of Dresden, after the bombing in February 1945.

Even nearly fifty-two years after the Allied bombing that had leveled the city, Heinrich still had occasional day-mares about it. He couldn't recall a single thing about those beings who must have raised him from an egg; not so much as an image of an adult gargoyle's face or whisper of a name. All his memories began in utter darkness, and terror, and incredibly loud explosions that shook through the rubble he and his siblings had been coffined in, again and again, no matter how much they screamed for mercy, and that whatever it was they had done, they were really really sorry for it and please make it stop… And finally, it had stopped. But they were still in darkness, alone except for each other and the smoke that gradually permeated everything and made it hard to breathe; too young to dig themselves out, they huddled in utter darkness without food or water or hope… Until the faint sounds of digging and rubble shifting grew louder, and closer, and then that first shaft of blessed moonlight peeped in just over the astonished face of Anna Schoenburg, the woman they learned to call Mutti (Mommy).

Mutti and her sole remaining son Gregor Schoenburg had taken them from the rubble of their home--at least, they all assumed it had been their home, since they had been found there--and carried them to an improvised shelter, cleaned them up and given them a few scraps of what food she and Gregor had found so far. That was Heinrich's first comforting memory; Mutti's kindly human face smiling at him as she gave him a scavenged Bratwurst sausage. (Even fifty years later, he still got a little sentimental about Bratwurst.) Two nights later and for many nights thereafter, while parts of Dresden still smoldered and burned, the three gargoyle children had been out and picking through the rubble with Mutti and Gregor, searching desperately for drinkable water and anything edible to keep them alive until the Red Cross relief trucks came with food for the survivors. Gregor and Anna had grown to be quite thankful for their foundlings, for the gargoyles' keen noses could sniff out food for them all even when covered by rubble… so long as they weren't too fastidious, that is. But for weeks after the bombing, even a dead rat was considered edible. Virtually the only thing they found regularly which they simply could not bring themselves to eat were the human corpses; the victims of the bombings and resulting firestorm that had swept through the city. The ones they found, they dragged out into the open and left them with faces covered, to be found by the soldiers, civilians and POW's working during the day and taken to the mass funeral pyres being set up in the parks. So many dead, thousands of innocents, whose only crime had been living in a country ruled by Adolf Hitler and his Nazis…

Heinrich shook his head and growled at himself, shoving all his memories aside. He wasn't here to relive the past, but to find hope for the future! To find evidence of more of his kind… He took a deep breath, spread his wings and leaped, gliding across the gap and landing on the lip of a large hole blown in one wall, undoubtedly from the bombing. After pausing a moment to get his bearings, he dropped down from his perch to the floor inside the clocktower. His first impression was of the rubble, ruin and dust everywhere. And for an instant he could almost smell once more the stench of cooked human flesh; then he snorted hard to clear his nose of hated memories, and began exploring.

In one corner, he found an old overstuffed chair, lying overturned and covered with rubble and dust. He cleared the rubble off and righted it, and sniffed the cushions. That scent… this chair hadn't been used for months, and the dust over everything got in his nostrils, but he thought he could detect a scent a little like his own and his brother Helmut's. Ach, if only his nose really were as keen as a bloodhound's! Then he'd know for sure if he was scenting another gargoyle, or just his own wishful thinking.

He left the chair behind and explored further. No distinctive three-toed tracks in the dust… but this was odd; this one path showed clear signs of having been swept. Someone was erasing their tracks, perhaps? His heart hammering again, he followed the path out to a balcony, beneath what was left of the face of the giant clock.

More rubble out on the balcony… but the balustrade showed a little damage that couldn't have come from the explosion. Claw marks! The dents and scratches of multiple talons, talons just like he had on his feet! He knelt and stuck his nose to the marks and sniffed. YES! Scents of others like him, and only a few nights old! And right under his knee, that thin shard of stone… That was a remnant of stone skin, shed from a wing just like his, or he was a fledermaus! He picked up the shard and cradled it lovingly, tracing the faint impression of veins with a talon-tip while tears ran unheeded down his cheeks. "Gott sei Dank, Gott sei Dank… Mehr unserer Art. Schließlich mehr von uns."

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

For long moments, the entire Great Hall was silent. After Adam had spoken, all eyes had turned to Goliath, to await his response. Goliath sat very still, considering his options… and, once he had made his decision, just how he would phrase his reply.

Finally, he spoke. "That is a most generous offer... backed by both wisdom and compassion. And it is true, we have made enemies who have organized themselves into a deadly threat… but we have also made friends in this city, and staunch allies who have sworn to aid us as we have aided them." He thought first of his beloved Elisa, then of Matt Bluestone, and of the castle's human residents and the Labyrinth Clan. But he chose to say, "The People for Interspecies Tolerance may well become a counterweight to the Quarrymen; where the Quarrymen preach fear and hatred, the PIT speaks of hope and friendship, and every week their collective voice becomes stronger. The leaders of the group have already taken blows on our behalf, but have sworn to stand by us in our battle for acceptance by the rest of humanity. A battle that we must fight, openly and with all our hearts… for few secrets can be kept forever. Humanity must learn to accept the fact that it shares the night and skies with another sentient species. It was not our choice for this clan to become a 'test case' for all gargoyles, but now that we are in the spotlight, we cannot flee back into the shadows… not until the battle for acceptance is won. Otherwise, the next clan that is discovered and unwillingly cast into the spotlight may indeed find itself destroyed, by human fear and ignorance." After a brief cause, he finished, "So, while I thank you for the offer of a new home in secrecy, it must regretfully be declined."

Adam seemed about to say something else, but instead "Well said, Goliath!" Xanatos chimed in from the entrance to the Great Hall.

The voice had been unexpected, and everyone jumped a little before turning in that direction. Xanatos stood posed in the entranceway with his wife Fox for just a moment longer, likely relishing the moment of surprise, before striding confidently in to shake hands and grasp forearms with the New Orleans members. "I'm David Xanatos, the current owner of this castle, and this is my wife Fox. Our apologies for not being here to meet you earlier; we had other business to conduct. And you are…?"

After introductions were made all around, Xanatos turned to Goliath and said, "Glad to hear you're not planning to pull up stakes; I must admit, I've gotten pretty used to having you around. But let me ask you something: do gargoyles ever take vacations?"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

"And here we are; Casa Gregarino," Vinnie said as he pulled the van over to the curb next to his folks' house. "Listen, Hiroshi and I will just run in and grab the bags and the cat, and then we'll be right back out and on our way to the airport, okay?"

That was the plan, that Vinnie and Hiroshi had quietly agreed upon when they'd had a spare moment alone earlier in the day. Since Vinnie's family still wasn't cool with gargoyles, and the suburban neighborhood here wasn't quite as used to looking the other way and not getting involved as they were in that Brooklyn neighborhood, it'd be for the best if the gargoyles just stayed put in the van, out of sight, while Vinnie and one other guy went in to get the goods. Vinnie would carry the luggage, Hiroshi would carry that dumb cat, and they'd get out of the house before Vinnie's mom could think of something to talk about that would delay their trip to the airport.

But as he found out when he and Hiroshi went inside, the Gregarino luck was running true to form. Vinnie's mom met them at the door with a woeful expression, informing them that she'd locked the cat in the garage last night after it had ruined her best pair of dress shoes in the closet… And when his dad had gone to work in the morning, the cat had escaped when the garage door was opened to back the car out. She'd been looking for the cat all day, asking the neighbors if they'd seen it and leaving opened cans of tuna out on the porch, but so far it hadn't appeared.

"Just how attached to that dumb cat is Yama, anyway?" Vinnie asked Hiroshi with a worried glance.

" 'That dumb cat' is Manekineko," Hiroshi said with grim finality. "Yama considers her clan, as much as any human or gargoyle of Ishimura… perhaps even more 'clan' than many who live there. He will not leave until she is found, one way or another."

And before anything else could be said, the doorbell rang. Papa Gregarino went to open it, and beyond his shoulder Vinnie saw Carlos on the doorstep, standing next to a short figure draped in an overlarge poncho and topped by a sombrero. Carlos said to Vinnie's dad in an apologetic tone, "Excuse, but Galena, she need… use bathroom."

Then the sombrero tipped up, and the little girl gargoyle looked his dad right in the face as she said pleadingly, "el baño!"

And of course Vinnie's dad—the guy who used to brag about how cool he'd been under fire in Vietnam—shouted and jumped a foot in the air in surprise, and damn near slammed the door shut in their faces. Vinnie hustled over to intervene before things got ugly, thinking that if Ms. Destine (or Demona, or whatever she wanted to be called now) found out how his family was about gargoyles, he might end up losing yet another job… Jeez, why didn't he ever get a break! Did somebody up there have it in for him, or what?

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Back at the castle, Goliath was feeling a bit dizzy. What had just happened?

Gargoyles did not take vacations. The idea of leaving one's sworn home and traveling elsewhere for a while, purely for recreational purposes… It just wasn't done! Maybe humans did that all the time, with their near-constant dissatisfaction with their lives and their need to roam and explore… but that was what humans did. It was true that, back in medieval Scotland, unmated males and females of the old clan had traveled inland to their sister clan once every eight years… but that was in order to find mates, if no suitable ones had been found in their own clan!

Ordinarily, gargoyles only left their protectorate to either come to the aid of someone in trouble, to expand the borders of their own protectorate, or to establish a new clan and new protectorate somewhere else entirely. While his clan was now well established in Manhattan, they were certainly not large enough to need to split off and form another clan in farther territory, nor expand their borders beyond the island of Manhattan. And the New Orleans clan was by their own account doing quite well; there was no need for Goliath to go charging off to the rescue, as he and Elisa had gone off to Avalon.

So how, precisely, had David Xanatos just talked the entire clan into going on a vacation? …And make it sound so reasonable, too?

If Xanatos was able to turn that smooth talking on other humans, to charm them into doing something they wouldn't normally do, no wonder the man had a multibillion-dollar empire.

The idea did have its merits. It was true that Broadway's wing would take time to heal fully and regain its strength, if it ever did, and wide acreage over which to practice without fear of Quarrymen hunters would be best for that purpose. And Angela, while having been a hatchling herself once, had never been in an opportunity to mind one; some experience with gargoyle children would be good before she laid her egg after the next breeding season, so the eventual hatchling would have more than just Lexington to mind him or her. Also, Fox wanted to go along, to ask questions of the New Orleans clan's human members about gargoyle-human cohabitation. The Xanatos family was still new to the idea of cohabiting, and there were undoubtedly important things they needed to know before the upcoming breeding season; things that the gargoyles themselves simply might not think to tell them, since it was so obvious from their own point of view. And if Fox really had received death-threats from some crazed Pack fans who had taken her "fall from grace" personally, then of course she should have a gargoyle escort to see that she arrived and returned unharmed.

And Xanatos was still talking… "And of course, while you're gone, it'll be a perfect opportunity to 'muddy the waters' and confuse the Quarrymen so we don't have a repeat of what happened last night. Two or three nights from now, I'll have an interview up here during the day… and let a cameraman slip out to where he'd expect to find you, except of course you won't be here. And at night, I'll have a hologram projector mounted onto a mobile platform in a truck, and have it project images of you here and there about the city. Once they hear the news, the Quarrymen will believe that you've decided to find a new home elsewhere in Manhattan, and be much more apt to leave your real home in peace in the future. That'll be good for all of us, don't you think? I'm glad you think so, Goliath. Oh, and don't worry about Detective Maza; I'll arrange for her to accompany you, too. The lady really could use a proper vacation, since the last one was cut short. And since she enjoys spicy cooking so much, I'm sure she'd love New Orleans Cajun cuisine! Am I right about the cuisine, Broadway?"

"Huh?" Broadway shook himself out of an apparent daze. "The food? Oh, yeah, she'll love it! And I've been wanting to learn some of those Cajun recipes myself…"

"See? Another good reason to go! In fact, this is the perfect opportunity for the whole clan to relax and recuperate while strengthening inter-clan relations, before returning to fight the good fight. And in order to help you out, I have Owen currently checking on the availability of Xanatos Enterprise's cargo jet fleet. We usually have one or two of them going in that general direction every day; it'd be easy enough to divert one to New Orleans for a refueling or some other reason. With a little care in sneaking on and off, we could have all of you in New Orleans before sunrise!"

"Whah—oh, hey, mon, what about my rig?" Marcel protested. "We done rigged that trailer up to hold a dozen gargoyles 'n' more, an' I ain't about to jus' leave it up here!"

"An easy detail to fix," Xanatos waved his objections away. "I can have one of my own drivers take your truck back down to New Orleans, to arrive just a couple days after you do. Wouldn't you rather return home sooner rather than later? I understand they're forecasting freezing rain for tomorrow…"

Marcel shuddered, and said words to the effect that he much preferred a warmer climate. (At least, Goliath assumed that was what he said, amidst the Cajun words that sounded suspiciously like they might be profanity.)

"So it's settled, then! We'll find a plane for you tonight… Unless, of course, you have any objections?" as Xanatos looked over at Adam.

"Ah—oh, no objections at all!" Adam said with a smile.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

But in Xanatos' office, Elisa had objections aplenty. "Dammit, Matt, I am NOT running away from this! If we don't find some answers for what happened during last night's battle, and defuse the threat pretty damn fast, the city's going to explode in a war against the clan!"

"And we'll find the answers! But we'll have to do it without the clan's help this time," Matt said just as forcefully. "You said it yourself, this place is a powder keg, and any day now, ordinary citizens will start arming themselves and taking potshots at the gargoyles while they patrol! Hell, we're lucky they weren't been shot at already tonight, before they came back here with these other gargoyles in tow! Until we can either produce the people who really were in that battle, or find a way to completely discredit the Quarrymen, the safest way to ensure nobody gets shot is to get all known gargoyles out of sight, right now! I'll go talk to your brother and get him to keep the clones down in the Labyrinth for a week or two. But we need you to get the clan up here out of the city and down to New Orleans, before they find out about what happened last night! You know Goliath won't leave town without you, and the clan won't leave without him leading the way! After we come up with something to defuse the current threat, then they can come right back and start patrolling and protecting again. But you know as well as I do, there's a time to stand up and fight for what's right, and there's a time to lie low for a while and let someone else do the fighting."

For a few long moments, Elisa was silent. Then she said slowly, "You're asking me to say nothing about the battle last night, until long after we leave town… to keep a secret from my husband."

"Would you prefer that we ask you to go behind his back instead?" Owen asked coolly. "I might remind you, Detective, of the incident two years ago when you had the clan move out of this castle… directly against Goliath's wishes."

Matt thought absently that if she were a true gargoyle, Elisa would definitely have been flashing her fangs at Owen as she snarled, "I had to do that! They weren't safe here then!"

"And they're not safe here now," Matt said with grim finality. "The last couple of days should have proved that already… You heard Xanatos over the speaker; once the gargoyles are out of town, we can see about at least confusing the Quarrymen as to where their home really is. Another good reason to get them down to New Orleans…"

Elisa finally, grudgingly agreed to the idea of going to New Orleans with the clan… before raising another objection. "How do I do that without flat-out getting fired from the force? You know what a helluva time I had getting reinstated to full duty after I got back from the World Tour."

Matt did indeed know how hard a time she'd had. The NYPD tended to frown upon officers who went AWOL with no warning, particularly when the absence stretched to nearly eight months. In order to explain herself without mentioning the gargoyles, Elisa had been forced to come up with a truly wild story about being kidnapped by international gangsters, and taken to Paris as a "present" for an international crime lord with a taste in feisty exotic beauties (a crime lord who just happened to vaguely resemble David Xanatos). She told the board she'd finally escaped, after a pitched battle (citing Macbeth's mysteriously wrecked mansion as evidence). In Paris with no money and no passport, she'd hopped a freighter to escape that she'd thought would bring her home to America, but had ended up stranded in Nigeria, and… She gave plenty of convincing details about each event and country involved, but as she'd told Matt later, she didn't know who was more amazed in the end; the board of inquiry she spun her story in front of, or her when they seemed to buy it. In the end, she'd gotten out of it in one piece, her only penalty being the loss of all her accumulated vacation time for not calling the NYPD as soon as she'd had a chance after 'escaping'. That was why she'd only been able to scrape four recently accumulated days of vacation time together for her private bachelorette party, wedding and honeymoon, instead of the standard two weeks.

Xanatos and Fox came into the room just as Elisa finished speaking, and Xanatos stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Yes, that might be a problem, since the board of inquiry took all your vacation time as part of their reprimand." He noticed the look on Elisa's face and couldn't help grinning. "Of course I know about that; who do you think pressured the board to accept that cock-and-bull story you spun? And don't think I didn't notice the resemblance of 'Alexander Thailog' to yours truly, though I suppose you thought it was earned at the time." Elisa just stood there with her jaw dangling for a moment while Xanatos thought some more. "How about a nice case of something terribly infectious, with a mandatory quarantine of at least a week?"

Fox gave a wicked grin. "That's a wonderful idea, darling! And I have just the disease in mind…"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Back at Casa Gregarino, things had settled down a little, thanks to Demona's handy roll of bills. After Vinnie had come back out to the van and explained what had happened, Demona had given him four hundred bucks to give to his folks, with instructions for them to go out and find another really nice pair of shoes, to replace the ones that had been ruined, right now. And to follow the shoe-shopping up with a nice dinner and a movie, while they were out; that should keep them out of the house until midnight, and by that time the gargoyles would be long gone. She told Yama that they had until eleven o'clock to search the area for his precious companion; if Manekineko couldn't be found by then, she'd make some other arrangements via Vinnie to have the cat shipped to Ishimura whenever it did turn up.

So now the folks were out of the house, Cuarzo and Galena were in the living room with Carlos and Hiroshi getting more Japanese lessons, and Yama, Demona and Malaquita were all out silently scouring the neighborhood, looking for a calico cat with a stub tail. The folks hadn't left happily, and none of the travelers were particularly happy at the delay, but Vinnie reflected that things could definitely be worse; at least he hadn't been fired.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

"Oh, stop muttering," Fox said crossly to Elisa as they rode down in the elevator together. "You're basically getting an extension on your honeymoon! While I have to leave my husband and my son behind for at least a week, just to have one more excuse for the gargoyles to be out of town! And such a lousy excuse, too; the day I run from death threats, especially threats from some idiot disgruntled fanboy, I'm having my tattoo redone into a sheep's head! I should have told David I'd come up with my own reasons for needing an escort…"

Elisa contritely let Fox rant on for a few seconds longer; she was right, in that she was getting a worse deal than Elisa was. Then the detective pointed out, "Actually, he made a really good point, about you and your husband needing to learn the finer points of co-habiting with gargoyles. I'm still getting surprised by Goliath on almost a monthly basis. For instance, what would you think if a gargoyle rubs his knuckles on your forehead? He's not trying to give you a noogie and aiming too low; it's actually a gesture of affection, their equivalent to a kiss on the cheek."

Fox turned to face her with the beginning of a wicked grin. "Oh, really? And what's their equivalent of a really hot kiss with tongue action?"

Elisa blushed bright red. Fortunately, the elevator doors opened a moment later, saving her from having to make a reply.

Fox ushered her into the Xanatos family's master bedroom and directed her over to a vanity table, while pulling a hefty case off a shelf in the nearby walk-in closet. "I have to admit, this is going to be fun," Fox said as she opened the case to reveal a variety of pencils, tubes and applicators. "Back in my merc days, I used to disguise myself all the time, but I haven't had a good excuse to play with this stuff in over two years."

"Just keep in mind that this is my face you're playing with," Elisa said sourly as she eyed some of the wares Fox was setting out, next to the colored printouts that they had brought with them from Xanatos' office.

"Oh, relax; I guarantee it'll all come off with the right remover. But we can't have it coming off too easily, can we? Now take your shirt off; this always starts below the collar… Why, Elisa! Is that a hickey! My, my…"

"Can we just get this over with, please?"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

While Fox and Elisa were busy, Matt was speeding downtown, towards the 23rd Precinct. Once he got there, he contritely let Captain Chavez verbally skin and gut him for reporting to work nearly two hours late, especially when they had such a hot case on their hands. Then he asked somebody to go get the file on that Xanatos Enterprises warehouse robbery two weeks ago, saying he thought he remembered hearing something about some jetpacks being stolen…

While one of his GTF rookies ran off to get the file, he sat down and began going through all the other files that had appeared on his and Elisa's desks since he'd left that morning, hoping for some minor clue that would point him in the right direction for finding the gargoyles—or gargoyle imposters—that had been in last night's battle.

Half an hour later, another rookie came knocking on Captain Chavez' office door. Matt heard him say respectfully, "Captain? Detective Maza is outside the precinct, sitting in her car. She doesn't want anyone getting too close to the car, and she wants to talk to you…"

Captain Chavez came out of her office with a roar, and Matt decided to tail her at a discreet distance. The good captain burst out the front doors of the precinct and strode down to the red Fairlane parked at the curb with an angry, "Maza, what the hell is going on?"

"Don't get too close, Captain!" Elisa called out from where she was sitting in the driver's seat, hunched miserably over the steering wheel. "I'm contagious!"

Chavez came to a dead halt while still over six feet away. Considering the recent rise in cases of highly infectious diseases in the New York prison system, such as the tuberculosis epidemic that they were still fighting to get under control, "contagious" was not a word to ignore. She demanded, "What've you got?"

"chknpox," Elisa mumbled.

"What? Speak up!"

"Chicken Pox, dammit! I've got chicken pox!" Elisa twisted in her seat and tugged down the collar of her turtleneck sweater, so everyone present could see the rash spreading up her neck, onto the lower edge of her right jaw.

Matt leaned in for a good look, and had to admit that it sure looked like the rash that signaled an outbreak of chicken pox; Fox had done a very good makeup job. The street lighting outside enhanced the effect, making the rash appear darker than it probably was, as if it would turn into those ill-famed itchy pustules at any minute.

Elisa continued, "The rash started on my back this morning, but I didn't know what it was and just tried to ignore it until it spread and started appearing on my face a little while ago. When I left here earlier I went to an emergency room, and the nurse took one look at me and practically threw me into quarantine on the spot. She said I've been contagious since yesterday, so everybody I've touched or breathed on in the last 24 hours had better be checked. And after this, I have to go straight home and hang a Quarantine sign on the door, and stay put until the last pox disappears. It could take over a week…"

"Chicken pox." Chavez shook her head in mingled wonder and disgust. "That's a children's disease!"

"I know that!" Elisa wailed. "But I didn't catch it when I was a kid, and the nurse said it hits a lot harder when an adult gets it!"

"I hate to say it, but I've heard of adults getting really sick and damn near dying, after catching chicken pox from their kids," Matt said while wearing his best 'worried but trying not to show it too much' face. "That doesn't happen too often, but… Elisa, did you touch anybody or cough near anybody today? Think hard."

"I accidentally brushed up against Johansson, when he brought me another file from Forensics," Elisa said, looking worried. "And Morgan brought me a cup of coffee…"

"Morgan should be okay; his kid had chicken pox last year, so if he didn't catch it then, he was already immune," Chavez mused. "But I'll let him know anyway, and Johanssen. Maza, are you going to have anyone looking in on you while you're quarantined?"

"I'll do that, Captain," Bluestone interjected hastily, before the good captain got any ideas about being 'mother hen' for her one of her best detectives. "I had the disease when I was ten, so I'm already immune. Elisa, I'll look in on your twice a day, morning and evening, okay? It'll give us a chance to bounce ideas off each other about this Quarrymen incident. Did you read all the files before you went to the emergency room?"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

After leaving the precinct, Elisa went miserably on her way to her parents' house. She hated having to lie, and was disturbed to find out how good she was getting at it At least she wouldn't have to lie to her parents, when she let them know where she was going and asked them to mind Cagney for her while she was away.

Away from New York. Leaving again, when sometimes it felt like she'd just gotten back from that crazy World Tour! And no matter what Matt and Xanatos said, it sure felt like this time she was running away from trouble.

She despised herself for being, in truth, a little relieved at having an excuse to leave the city and the current mess far behind.

She squared her shoulders and told herself to practice putting a nice big smile on her face, and looking at the bright side to the whole situation. Goliath knew her moods—sometimes she wondered if he was able to smell her moods—and if she wasn't absolutely delighted to be going away with him to New Orleans, he'd want to know why. So concentrate on the positive, dammit! Think about that New Orleans cooking… think about warm nights under the stars with her husband… nights that should be warm enough for mating flights!

Oooohhh, there was a thought… but that assumed that she and Goliath could find a way to be alone together for the three nights of her fertile period. From what she'd been told, after walking into Xanatos' office to find Matt listening in on a meeting between clans in the Great Hall, the New Orleans clan counted both humans and gargoyles among its members, which was pretty tolerant of them. But would they be tolerant enough to accept a gargoyle-human mated couple? Halcyon Renard was a vivid example of persons whose tolerance of different intelligent species definitely had limits.

Well, if worst came to worst and their tolerance went only so far, like folks who said they were okay with gays but couldn't handle the idea of gay marriage, she could just say she'd always wanted to go camping in the bayous, and Goliath would declare his intentions to go along to protect her from alligators or something. Elisa made a mental note to grab her sleeping bag and other outdoor gear from their spot in her hall closet (gear she'd either brought back with her, after acquiring it during the World Tour, or bought soon after returning to New York—if anything like that happened again, next time she was going to be prepared!), and once she was in New Orleans, to stock up on extra-strength mosquito repellent. Now think about that wonderfully spicy Cajun cooking…

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

"Here, kitty, kitty… " Demona called in a low voice as she glided over an alley full of trashcans; she'd heard some movement down there just before coming into view, but there was nothing moving now. After searching for over an hour and finding a few stray dogs and several cats, but no calico cat with a stub tail, she was more than a little impatient to end the search and simply leave… but she persevered, for at least a while longer. As her old hunting teacher had often said when she'd been a hatchling, a hunter without patience and perseverance was often a hunter without food for his dinner, and Demona rather prided herself on being a good hunter. She alit on the edge of a roof overlooking the alley, and after a moment quietly called again. When that got no response, after a quick look around to ensure that Yama wasn't within hearing range, she whispered, "Arawareru, Manekineko…"

A shadow moved, and a calico cat's head poked out from behind a trash can to stare up at her. "((Come on out, Beckoning Cat,))" Demona repeated encouragingly. "((Yama is very worried about you…))" She'd never really understood the human desire for pets, and understood it even less when a gargoyle had one. But if Yama was so attached to this beast that he was willing to stay behind to search for it, then she'd try to be accommodating.

She went down to fetch it, but as she landed next to it the cat shied away from her, dodging back into the shadows. But Demona had spent centuries hunting and capturing prey in all sorts of environments, and wasn't about to let a mere cat get away from her in close quarters. After a bit of clashing, banging and snarling, she leaped up to the roof's edge once more, clutching the cat by the scruff of its neck. "The second we get to the van, you're going straight into that cat-carrier I bought for you," she told it crossly as she held it away from her, in order to dodge another swipe of its claws. The cat hissed and spat at her in reply, but otherwise could do nothing as she spiraled up into the sky.

That had been the agreed-upon signal; the first gargoyle to find the cat would glide high enough to see and be seen by the others, before returning to their temporary base of operations. Once she judged she was high enough, Demona circled until she found first Malaquita's silhouette, then Yama's gliding over the houses below. And after both gargoyles had looked up, waved in acknowledgment and turned around, Demona set a course for the Gregarino house. "Stop struggling, cat, or I'll drop you! And I might let you fall quite a ways before I catch you again…"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Back at the castle, things were moving along so fast, Hudson's head was almost spinning as he tried to keep up. Vacationing with another clan; what a concept! And they were to be leaving tonight; in only a few hours! Riding in a jet plane, no less; one that was scheduled to leave a nearby airport just after midnight.

Goliath was on the telephone, talking to Elisa; she had called just moments ago, not long after the New Orleans clan members had gone to pick up their belongings. Evidently, Xanatos had called her at her workplace with the news, and arranged some way for her to go with them to New Orleans. That was good to hear; Hudson didn't want to think about how Goliath would react to be separated from his mate for several nights, so soon after their mating ceremony. From what Goliath was saying, Elisa was evidently already at her parents' house, arranging for them to take care of her wee cat Cagney; she would meet the clan at the airport at midnight.

"…I look forward to it," Goliath said into the telephone with a grin. "…oh, I'm sure of it! But what? …Will they what?" He chuckled. "My lovely Elisa, I can virtually guarantee it! There's something I haven't told you about the New Orleans clan leader yet… No, it can wait until you actually meet him. Until midnight, my love…"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

A few floors down from the Great Hall, Fox was cradling her infant son in her arms, cooing over him and promising that she would call home twice a day, just to hear his sweet babble. The family's nanny, Anne Marsden, promised that she would keep the video camera handy, and if Alexander did any 'firsts' or something unbearably cute, she would videotape it for Fox to see when she returned home.

"Thank you, Anne," Fox said as she reluctantly lay her sleepy son back in his crib. "Right now, though, I need ideas. What are some games for a group of people that are easy to pack for a trip, easy to learn and teach others how to play, and might possibly interest a gargoyle?"

Ten minutes later, Anne was in a car with Owen, armed with Fox's credit card and speeding down to FAO Schwartz.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Up in Bronx, another telephone conversation was taking place. "…And a watchbeast!" Adam was saying into the phone with a smile on his face. "…I was told we'll be arriving at our own airport at about four a.m. Once we make it downtown, we'll stay at the safe house on Rampart Street for the day, and come out to the house at sunset. What? …Stephen, that's an even better idea! With only seven extra gargoyles and two more humans, the delivery truck should be able to hold at least half of us. Have the LeBeau family go out and rent another one the same size, if not larger, and keep it at their place tonight. Then go ahead and drive ours in… no, not to the airport; too many lights everywhere, particularly in the parking garages. Leave it at the Rampart safe house too, and Marcel and I will drive both it and the rental truck home. Even if we don't make it all the way home before dawn, they'll awaken right on our doorstep… That reminds me. Who's on patrol in town tonight? …Since we don't know just how tolerant this clan is, have Robert take Michelle's place on patrol. Yes, right now; she should be home before the first meeting anyway…" He sighed. "I know, it's unfair. But this will be the first mingling of our clans, and believe me, there have been enough awkward moments already. I prefer to err on the side of caution…"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

After returning to the Gregarino home with the cat, handing it over to Yama, herding the Mexican gargoyle family out to the van, losing the cat again when it struggled out of Yama's arms while he was trying to put it in the cat carrier, chasing the cursed beast all through the house, pulling it out from under a bed and stuffing it into the carrier, letting Galena back inside and helping the child find her missing doll Carlotta, and then making sure everyone was finished using the bathroom… Finally, finally Demona had all her strays and their belongings in the van, and on their way to LaGuardia Airport. She was rather proud of the fact that she'd managed to restrain her temper so well during all the delays. She hadn't snarled or hissed at anyone even once… and surely the thousand dollars she'd left sitting on the counter would replace the overstuffed easy chair that she'd inadvertently destroyed. As the van turned onto the 59th Street Bridge and headed for Queens, Demona realized that they were running slightly late for their scheduled flight, but she had no worries that the plane would leave without them; not when she owned the plane and the pilots.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Almost before Hudson realized it, the entire clan and everyone from New Orleans were all together down in the Aerie Building's parking garage, getting into a trio of matching delivery vans and heading for JFK Airport. Hudson chose to get into the van that Fox was driving, along with Broadway and Bronx. Even if the van was a far roomier ride than the cab ride he'd taken two nights ago, he wasn't entirely comfortable inside a moving vehicle. He wished they could have glided out to the airport under their own power, but the entire clan had silently agreed not to balk at Xanatos' suggestion that they use the vans. Broadway was simply in no shape to glide that far, and the fewer reminders of his current handicapped ability, the better.

"We're turning onto the 59th Street Bridge; crossing the river and heading into Queens," Fox said over her shoulder, giving a running commentary on their trip. "In less than half an hour, we'll be at JFK."

Bronx kept turning around and around, muttering and occasionally whining, clearly no happier than Hudson was to be riding in the van. "Easy, lad; we'll be there soon enough," Hudso nsaid soothingly. Though he privately wondered if Bronx would take to riding in a jet plane any better than he was taking to riding in a van. For that matter, the idea of letting someone else do the flying for him didn't fill Hudson with delight… but he was determined to take it all with a smile, or at least without a frown. Better to think about what lay in wait for them, down in New Orleans: a new clan they could see with their own eyes, instead of merely hear about through others' stories! He'd ride in a—a submarine, for more evidence that his clan was not alone in the world.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

"#Aw, don't cry, kitty,#" Galena said soothingly. "#You're going home now; Senora Demona said it will only be another night or two before we are in Ishimura. You want to be home again, don't you? And perhaps if we ask very nicely, Senora Demona will let us open the cage door once we are all on the plane together, so I can play with you…#" But no matter what she said, the poor cat in the wire-and-plastic crate just wailed and yowled. Carlos finally told her gently to leave it alone, and threw their thickest poncho over the cage, covering it completely; the way they used to quiet the parrots and other pet birds back in the village. Galena didn't think it would work on the cat; the birds in cages were mostly awake in the daytime and sleeping at night, while the cats she'd known back in the village liked to be up and about at night too. But she didn't say anything; after all, she'd never seen a cat in a cage before. Senor Yama looked like he wasn't happy about what Carlos had done, but Senor Hiroshi said something to him, and the Japanese gargoyle sat back down again. And while the cat didn't entirely stop crying, at least the yowls were muffled now.

And after the cat was covered up, Galena realized that she was bored. She really, really wanted to do something… while they had been riding trains to get to New York, Mama and Papa had kept her entertained with stories and games like matatena, canica and loteria, and when they'd told her to play by herself she'd had her balero and her doll Carlotta. But right now Carlotta and all the games were packed away in their bags, and Mama and Papa were busy talking about adult things.

There were windows in the van; blackened windows so nobody could see inside, unless they put their faces right up against the glass. And they were on the road now, and moving very fast; surely too fast for anyone except the fastest and most agile of gargoyles to come up alongside and look in. Surely it would be okay for her to go look out? Mama had told her no before, but right now Mama and Papa were ignoring her; they were talking with Carlos about what life in Ishimura might be like. Galena casually sidled over to the window, and put her face up against it to look outside.

Bronx was still restlessly circling, but now he'd added to the routine by periodically lurching up to stand on his hind legs while looking out one of the van's small, round windows. Hudson had warned him to get down before he was seen, but Fox had said casually over her shoulder, "Don't worry about it; the windows are polarized for privacy. It'd take somebody with eyes as sharp and light-sensitive as yours to see anything inside."

"Mama! Papa!" Galena shouted, as she jerked away from the window. "El Monstruo!"

"#Galena, what are you doing! Get away from the window before you're seen!#" Malaquita commanded sharply.

Galena scurried from the window over to where Malaquita was sitting, to hide behind one of her mother's wings as she babbled, "#It was a monster; I saw a monster in another truck! Its eyes glowed like Papa's when he's really angry, and it had ears as big as hands!#"

"Hey, is the kid okay?" Vinnie called back in concern, as he turned the van left onto 31st Street, heading north; part of the shortest route to LaGuardia Airport.

"She… she saw something that scared her, but she is fine," Carlos replied.

Malaquita and Cuarzo comforted their daughter, but almost absent-mindedly, trading glances with each other as they did so. Once she had quieted down, Cuarzo muttered to his mate, "#Remember the watchbeasts? Their eyes always glowed, and white for both males and females. And Galena has never seen one …#"

Two seats away, Demona looked on in silent concern. She'd understood enough of Galena's babbling to know that "ears as big as hands" and white glowing eyes were a fair description of the Manhattan Clan's watchbeast, Bronx. But what would he be doing in a vehicle driving down a street in Queens?

She finally told herself to just put the question out of her mind; she had far more immediate concerns to deal with, such as getting all the gargoyles aboard the Nightstone aircraft and behind the passenger cabin's privacy curtain without any other humans seeing them.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

What in the world had gotten into Bronx? On his third look through that window, he'd suddenly started barking excitedly, and throwing himself against the side of the van until Fox shouted that if they didn't restrain him, the van might tip over! And even now that he'd been nearly wrestled down to the van floor, he was whining and looking up at Hudson pleadingly, as if he was trying to convey something very important. But when Hudson got up and looked out the window himself, he saw nothing except a few other cars on the street, all of them piloted by ordinary humans, and none of them familiar to him as either enemies or allies.

"I dinna know what ye saw, or thought ye saw, lad," Hudson said as he settled back in his seat, "but it's gone now. Just ye be still, and patient; we'll be at the airport soon enough."

"And once we're in the airplane, I'll give you the soup bone I packed just for you," Broadway promised with a smile.

"Aye, and I put your tugging rope into the bag, too," Hudson said with a grin. "Think about all the hatchlings in the New Orleans clan who've never had a watchbeast to play with; I can guarantee ye'll have no end of playmates while we're there!"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

The guy's name was Igor Something-or-other; the last name started with a G and had too damn many consonants afterwards for the average American to pronounce. Since he'd been one of Tomas Brod's chief henchmen, Glasses and the other men working for Tony Dracon had simply referred to him as "Igor" when his name had come up in conversation, and thrown in the occasional Frankenstein joke.

Glasses fingered the Immigration ID card in his hands, considering, then tossed it to one of his guys and said, "stuff this down inside one of his boots or something. It'll save the cops time in identifying the body."

Joey caught the card, but asked, "Since when are we making it easier for the cops?" even as he walked over to where Igor lay dying, while clad in the tattered remains of a green gargoyle costume.

"We're not; we're just making it that much quicker for Brod to get the word that he's lost another one."

Still wearing the plastic surgeon's gloves he'd been wearing for the last few hours, Joey grabbed one of Igor's legs and wedged the ID card deep inside the gargoyle-foot-shaped boot he was wearing. Igor didn't react in any way; he was pretty much beyond reacting. After being snatched from his apartment, forced at gunpoint to don a bloodstained gargoyle costume, and then shot in the shoulder, beaten with an electrified sledgehammer, given a couple of shallow knife wounds where the costume had already been slashed, and finally shot in the gut, there wasn't much of anything that Igor could do except slowly bleed to death from both internal and external injuries.

Over in a corner, Hank had finally gotten the hang of that hovercycle, and was making it rise up and sink back down without actually touching the warehouse floor before rising back up again. "Hey, did your contact say we could keep this?" he called out from about twenty feet up.

"Sure did; it's our toy after we do the drop-off," Glasses reassured him. "Speaking of which, it's time to do it; our contact was really specific about the body actually dying on the dump site."

Hank nodded and steered the hovercraft over to where Igor lay, then brought her down and waited while Joey and another guy loaded the body aboard. The plan was that they would take Igor over to the roof of an apartment building nearby, drop him off and let him bleed out and finish dying all by his lonesome. After a couple of days, past the point when a coroner could establish the exact time of death, Glasses would place an anonymous call to the building's super and have him go up to the roof to discover the corpse.

Glasses wasn't stupid; he knew exactly what Ms. Destine was trying to accomplish. She wanted the police to find a body that was apparently from last night's battle with the Quarrymen; someone that had gotten away from the fight still breathing, but had died afterwards from his injuries. The body of a known criminal, one working for Tomas Brod, would throw the police off the trail of whoever had really been in that fight with the Q-Balls.

Glasses had a strong hunch that the former wearer of that costume, the one who had originally died in it, had been a Nightstone employee doing some testing of a Nightstone jetpack and some other weapons and armament; goods that would be marketed to armies and guerilla forces overseas, since Nightstone was a munitions manufacturer. (In addition to bloodstains in the front, the back of the costume clearly showed fabric ripped off the back between the wings; as if somebody had pulled a jetpack off before Ms. Destine had stuffed the costume into a case with the Quarryhammer and given it to Glasses.) And the employees flying around last night, wearing gargoyle costumes so nobody would realize they were flying with jetpacks instead, had had the bad luck to run into Quarrymen on patrol…

Glasses hadn't made the decision to accept the contract right away, even after Ms. Destine had doubled her offer. Fact is, his organization was no friend to the gargoyles, and anything that got those winged freaks into more trouble was a good thing as far as he was concerned. But as Ms. Destine had pointed out, the Quarrymen were rising in power rapidly… and any vigilante organization that came to power, no matter what their intentions had been in the beginning, soon came to crave that power more than any ideas of 'protecting the innocents'. The Klu Klux Klan down South had started out a lot like the Quarrymen… and now they were funding their operations with illegal weapons sales and drug trafficking, and other unsavory activities. Activities that the Dracon organization was currently engaged in, and had no intention of sharing turf with anyone else, thank you very much. And word had reached Glasses' ears even before today that the KKK heartily approved of the Quarrymen, and their Grand Wizard had sent the Quarrymen's leader a letter promising assistance if needed…

So what Dracon's men were doing tonight might end up taking some heat off those winged freaks that were making themselves such a nuisance, but the more important goal was making sure that the Quarrymen didn't turn into another Klan and take over the city. Glasses waved to Hank as he flew out of sight with Igor's still-breathing body aboard, then turned to the other men and said, "Okay, let's clean this place up. You know the drill, guys; let's make it look like we were never here."

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

After packing her bags and arranging for her cat to be taken care of, her mail to be picked up, her rent and other bills to be paid, and her phone to be forwarded to the Xanatos' home (for further forwarding down to New Orleans, once she had a viable phone number there), Elisa took a cab to JFK International Airport, and arrived only twenty minutes later than when she'd told Goliath she'd arrive; she hated being late for anything, but considering all she'd done so far in so little time, she didn't beat herself up about it. When she arrived at the private hangar containing the Xanatos Enterprises cargo jet, she discovered that nearly everyone was already aboard the aircraft and waiting for her. The sole exception was Goliath, who was waiting for her in the shadows behind the cargo jet's left landing gear assembly.

"Elisa!" he called out to her with such joy in his voice, and as they hugged and kissed in the shadows under the aircraft's wing, all of Elisa's concerns vanished for the moment as she felt herself wrapped in her husband's loving embrace.

After their private greeting, Goliath led her up the stairs to the jet's entrance, where the rest of the clan and four strangers, two gargoyle and two human, awaited them. But before Goliath could introduce her to them and vice versa, Fox hustled up with a pad of paper and pen in hand, and said brightly to Elisa, "Great, you're here; you can help me out with explaining the games! We're playing 'Mad Libs', and some folks here have never heard of the terms 'adjective' and 'adverb', let alone know the difference between them. Or would you rather explain the rules of Crazy Eights, for the folks who don't want to play Mad Libs?"

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

"Tell everyone to prepare themselves; we're taking off now!" Demona said to Carlos and Hiroshi with a smile, as the taxing plane's engines changed the pitch of their whine even higher.

Galena was at one of the windows, waving madly to Vinnie where he was standing next to the van that had brought them all here; through another window, Demona saw him wave back before he vanished from view.

Moments later their acceleration increased, and shortly after everyone took their seats, the plane gave that final little bump of wheels against pavement before rising smoothly into the sky. Galena cheered, and began babbling excitedly in Spanish about their being on their way to Japan, and to another clan, and to gargoyle children just like her! Yama and Hiroshi assured her again that they would all be welcomed and would have a wonderful time, before beginning the Japanese language lessons again. Demona sat in on the session this time, reminding herself to speak the words with an American accent instead of pronouncing them exactly as Yama and Hiroshi were; it wouldn't do for anyone to suspect that she knew the words already, let alone that she had lived in Japan for several years, a long time ago. She wondered how much Ishimura would resemble the home of the deceased Yatsushiro Clan…

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Over in one corner of the aircraft's cargo area, Elisa was teaching Brooklyn, Hudson and Marcel how to play Crazy Eights, while Fox led the rest in another hilarious round of "Mad Libs." When they'd had a moment alone earlier, Elisa had whispered a question to Fox: why was she acting like a rabid cruise director?

"To keep these people from having any real conversations," Fox had said bluntly. "From what Adam said earlier, we think he and his people heard or read about the battle last night, and they think our guys were involved in it because of Broadway's injury. Do you really want them talking about current events yet?"

Elisa had shut up, grabbed the Crazy Eights deck and started shuffling. Now several minutes later, Brooklyn was taking an early lead in the card game, but they had paused in their play momentarily to listen to the latest Mad Libs results. Goliath had been chosen to read the results since he had the best speaking voice, and even their normally solemn leader couldn't keep a straight face as he read aloud, "Tex sprang from the saddle of his sewer rat, pulling his own ladle and aiming it straight at the villain. He walked with uncanny aim, and New Jersey Pete went down with 27 shots right in the toenail, falling over into a pool of mead. The townsfolk thanked Tex for ridding them of such a terrible vase, before he (snicker) rode off into the tree once more." Everyone was howling with laughter by the time he was finished, even the card game players; so much so that they hardly noticed when their plane actually took off.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

Back in the Labyrinth, Talon was listening to Matt and promising that he and the mutates would keep 'the kids' down below ground, until Matt sent word that the uproar from last night's incident had died down enough to make it safe for them to emerge again. And in the clocktower over the 23rd Precinct, Heinrich was sound asleep. The emotional catharsis of finding evidence of others of his kind, combined with the lethargy he'd already been experiencing from so many days without sunlight, had quite simply worn him out. It was highly unusual for a gargoyle to sleep in flesh instead of stone, but since nobody was watching him, Heinrich decided that just this once wouldn't hurt. He'd decided that he would nap for a few hours, then go out searching for the gargoyles that used to live in this building… blissfully unaware that they had already left town…

THE END

(except for a wee epilogue, in another posting.)

Cajun French translations:

chef de clan: clan leader

fils de putains: sons of bitches

Mais oui : yes, absolutely!

Poo-yaille : an exclamation of great dismay; it translates roughly to "Holy shit!" (Yes, it's surprising that an aged Catholic priest would use such words, but Father Maurice is full of surprises.)

très : very, highly

German translations:

Drache: dragon

Fledermaus: a bat

Gott sei Dank: Thank God

Mehr unserer Art. Schließlich mehr von uns: More of our kind. More of us at last.

Mutti: Mommy

Piraten: Pirates

Japanese translations:

Arawareru: come out; appear

Mexican Spanish translations:

Balero: a Mexican toy made from a stick with a heavy cap which fits over it and is tied to it. The idea is to catch the cap on the stick, by tossing it in the air and thrusting quickly.

el baño: bathroom

Canicas: a game of marbles

Loteria: Mexican version of Bingo

Matatena: Mexican term for a game of 'jacks'

Monstruo: monster

¿Que: What?