Gargoyles: Day and Night.
Chapter 25
Preston Vogel followed his boss Halcyon Reynard into Xanatos' headquarters, keeping a wary eye out. Usually Halcyon remained in their headquarters, but tonight they were attending the Christmas party there.
"Welcome," Owen nodded to them. "Right this way."
They took the elevator up, and Preston felt a twinge of concern. It was out of character for his boss to be attending... which might mean trouble. What kind of trouble was hard to say.
They stopped a few floors short of the castle itself. "Follow me," Owen lead them off, Halcyon following willingly.
'Why are we not in the Castle itself?' Preston wondered.
Owen lead them to a meeting room, where David Xanatos, Fox and Dominique Destine were there waiting. Rather alarmingly, Halcyon rolled over to where they were standing, then the group faced Preston.
'What the..?' Preston thought.
"We know, Vogel." David said flatly.
"And I must say I am very disappointed in you," Halcyon sighed.
"Sir? I...," Preston started.
"We know about the weapons and cybernetics smuggling," Dominique cut him off. "The weapons and systems are all banned for civilians."
"Its all documented," Halcyon held up a zip drive, "so much so even I couldn't argue."
Preston hesitated a second, then he continued, "I did everything to benefit the company, sir."
Fox snorted.
"All of this stops. Now," David said flatly.
"I say we turn him over to the cops," Dominique suggested coolly.
Halcyon shook his head, "He's my employee, and my responsibility." He added, "I assure you, he will cause no more trouble."
Preston puffed out a sigh of relief.
"And I assure you, he WILL be punished," Halcyon added.
Preston gulped.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Alicia Sevarius had, annoyingly, been forced to fend off several executives from Xanatos Enterprises and other companies while waiting for Dominique to return. While the party was fairly exclusive, a certain number of rising star executives were there.
"Look," Alicia told the young man, "I'm here as the date of DOMINIQUE DESTINE. The woman who was last here fighting off cyborg monsters with a sword."
The man blinked.
"Do you want to see what she'd do if she found you hitting on her guest?" Alicia pointed out to him dryly.
"Eeep," he quickly fled.
Alicia made a mental note to tell Mr Xanatos about the mildly aggressive young executive. Mind you, she suspected he'd like that kind of pushy, aggressive guy. On the other hand, Fox might not like it...
"Oh, thank god he left," a warm, faintly amused voice noted.
"Dominique," Alicia turned with a smile. She pouted, "You ran off and left me at the mercy of the wolves."
"Sorry. It was an urgent meeting, and our only chance to get everyone together," Dominique explained apologetically.
Alicia wondered what the meeting was about, as she usually scheduled all of Dominique's meetings. She had noticed Xanatos and Fox had been absent too, it might have been a very private executives meeting.
"No, we didn't sneak off for a quickie," Dominique added wryly.
Alicia had been sipping a drink, and nearly choked. "I wasn't thinking THAT," she yelped.
Dominique laughed, "It's not an uncommon rumour."
Alicia blinked, "Seriously?"
"Apparently," Dominique shrugged. "Clearly the rumour mongers have never met Fox or David, as they are madly in love."
"Aww. That's sweet," Alicia smiled.
"No one was rude to you, were they?" Dominique clearly recalled the 'wolves' comment and was not pleased.
"I handled it," Alicia reassured her.
"Again, sorry," Dominique smiled wryly.
David Xanatos headed up to a stage set up on one side of the room. "Sorry for the delay," he said breezily, "welcome to our Christmas Party."
"Hello, everyone," Fox added as she cheerfully plopped a Santa hat on David.
"Must you?" David asked.
"Yes," Fox smirked and kissed his cheek.
David adjusted the hat, "Merry Christmas! Thank you all for coming, I hope you all enjoy the drinks and food!"
"Well, that was a short speech," Alicia noted.
"Well, that's a good thing really," Dominique decided. "Let's dance, shall we?" she suggested.
"Hmm," Alicia agreed. "Who leads?" she asked reasonably as they walked.
"Me?" Dominique suggested. "I'm taller."
'And are in a very nice suit,' Alicia thought. 'She smells nice too...'
They swayed together to Christmas music, their bodies flowing together. No one seemed bothered by two women dancing, though Alicia noticed a few jealous looks.
"You dance very well," Dominique noted, smiling. "Unlike myself."
"You haven't stepped on my feet yet," Alicia noted cheefully.
Dominique just laughed, "Give me time..."
Alicia snuggled close, breathing in the perfume. It was a spicy, wild scent... and weirdly, being in her arms felt surprisingly safe.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Mace Malone frowned as he got the message, "Preston is cutting all ties with us? What?"
"His boss knows about the weapons smuggling, etc etc. He's apparently decided to finally take steps," Dimitri noted calmly.
"Fuck," Mace sighed. He looked off in the distance a moment. "Could we stage a hit on Halcyon?" he asked.
There was a beat of dead silence. "Are you nuts?" Archie, one of his leutenants, blurted.
Mace frowned at him.
Archie, surprisingly, didn't back down. "Seriously, Boss. The man LIVES in a flying airship, does 90% of his business via video link. Just getting to him is nearly impossible," he explained.
"Huh," Mace murmured. He hadn't realized how hard the man was to reach. "Okay, Archie. Point taken," he conceded.
"And even if we nailed him," Dimitri poited out, "that'd just put her daughter in charge. And she's married to Xanatos."
"Yeah, we'd be even worse off," Mace conceded.
(They had, cautiously, reached out to Xanatos to provide them arms and such. Owen, the bastard they were dealing with, had covertly recorded several conversations and passed them on to the cops! They were still dealing with fallout from that.)
"So. Tony Dacon," Mace changed the subject.
"I think our trying to push around the smaller families and gangs backfired," Archie delivered the bad news.
Mace grunted.
"Resistance to us has really firmed up, and they're joining Tony," Archie finished.
"Good," Mace said.
His soldiers looked at him in surprise. "Huh?" Archie asked.
"Now we know who our enemies are," Mace shrugged, "and we can start planning to destroy them all."
To be continued...
Notes: I had mentioned earlier that the heroes knew Cyberbiotics and Vogel were the source of illegal arms and such in the city. So wanted to deal with that.