October 1, 2001
Stu Jameson stands on the bridge of the tour boat as it floats down the Lower New York Bay. An assistant, Herbert Peters, reads the various gauges. The sky above is decorated with cumulus clouds. The statue Liberty Enlightening the World stands tall and is clearly visible. Behind the statue the crew of the tourist ship can see the skyline of lower Manhattan.
"I've been working this boat for ten years," says Jameson. "I just can't believe they're gone."
Peters nods silently. He looks in the direction where the World Trade Center used to be.
Ooooooooooo
Elisa Maza steps out of the yellow Ford Crown Victoria taxicab, paying her fare. She notices hundreds of people standing on a sidewalk, in front of a wooden wall. Ribbons and photographs are pinned to the wall. Many of the people lay flowers on the base of the wall.
She glances upward, and sees the twisted metal ruin than was once the World Trade Center. The events of the previous month surface in her mind.
She remembers the darkness, the inability to move, with only a light coming from above.
She walks to a particular section of wall, even as a woman lays a bouquet of red roses at the base of the wall, tears flowing down her face. The NYPD detective knows that the woman is a widow of one of the officers from the 23rd Precinct killed in the collapse of the towers.
It could have been me. It almost was me.
Elisa looks at the messages written on this particular section of wall "reserved" for the 23rd Precinct. She knew so many of them by name.
She glances to her left, and recognizes four people standing a few yards away.
"I can't believe she's gone," says Fox Xanatos as she looks at the makeshift memorial. "I used to have her over for slumber parties when I was twelve."
Her husband, David Xanatos, places a hand on her shoulder. The terrorist attacks last month still affect them greatly, especially since Fox learned that one of her close friends from childhood had been on American Airlines Flight 11 when it crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11.
Fox looks to the right. "Isn't that Detective Maza?" she asks.
"Probably paying her respects to those from her precinct," replies David.
"Why did this have to happen, Mommy?" asks Alexander, their five-year-old son.
"People make choices," says Owen Burnett, assistant to the Xanatoses. He has a much longer perspective than anyone else here.
Ooooooooooo
The sun sets in New York City, the sky getting redder and redder. Among the many cars packing the city's streets, one of them, a green Ford Crown Victoria, pulls into a parking garage located below the Eyrie Building, a skyscraper located in Central Park South. The Eyrie Building is best known for the Scottish castle that was restored on its very top.
The Crown Victoria stops in one of the many parking spaces in the concrete parking structure. The doors of the sedan open and dress shoes hit the concrete pavement.
Over a hundred stories above, stone figures adorn the castle's parapets. As the last of the sun's rays disappear, the stone figures crack, the cracks growing like fractals.
Suddenly, they move and yell out a loud roar as they awaken.
The gargoyle at the top of the tower jumps down to a balcony fifty feet below, wiping off the remains of his stone skin to reveal a lavender hue.
"Good evening," he says to the other awakened gargoyles. They all look towards the south. The change in the Manhattan skyline last month is still unsettling.
The gargoyles walk down to the great hall of Castle Wyvern. The hall is a huge room, with a marble floor and a fireplace that is over a thousand years old.
"Seven years ago, we awakened," says the lavender-skinned gargoyle that had been named Goliath by a Scottish prince back in the tenth century A.D. He looks at the other gargoyles in his clan – a brick-red gargoyle with a cone-shaped snout and white hair, a balloon- shaped blue-green gargoyle, a lavender-skinned gargoyle who is clearly female, a small olive-skinned gargoyle with web wings, a huge bearded gargoyle with white hair, and another gargoyle of a different species, a four-legged beast. There are also two others who were once gargoyles; after a chain of events, one of them became a combination of undead flesh and cybernetic body parts, and the other became a golden-colored robot. "We entered a new world, leaving the ashes of the old. Let us remember those who had fallen."
Goliath's thoughts shift briefly to the past, when he found the stone remains of his rookery brothers and sisters. That evening had been the worst night of his life, as so many people that he had cared for perished.
He and his clan had had many experiences since their reawakening in 1994. Only one event is as tragic as the massacre of their clan one thousand seven years ago.
"So what do we do now?" asks the red-brick gargoyle who had chosen the name Brooklyn.
"Excuse me," says a voice.
The gargoyles turn and see two men. The voice had come from a blond haired man wearing a black business suit on his body and glasses on his face; they recognize him as Owen Burnett. The other man wears a green outfit that is a Class A United States Army uniform. Two silver stars are pinned to his shoulders. While Owen appears ageless, the man in the uniform appears to be in his early fifties.
"So you are the one called Goliath?" asks the man in the Army uniform.
"Yes," replies Goliath.
"Major General Charles Crump," says the man, extending his hand. "I come here on behalf of CENTCOM."
"Welcome to our home," says Goliath. "Allow me to introduce my clan."
After Goliath introduces his clan, the general asks, "So, you wish to ally with us in our fight against Al Qaeda."
"Yes," says Goliath. "We all want to destroy Osama bin Laden."
"And we can help you; we have the best equipment money can buy. Why don't you all tell me about yourselves?" General Crump takes a seat at the main table, listening to their story for an hour or so.
"You've all have interesting stories," says Crump. "I'll have to discuss this with the CENTCOM, of course. I will vouch for all of you."
"We'd be honored to work with you," says Brooklyn.
"We'll send you the travel arrangements as soon as CENTCOM makes its decision," says General Crump. "Word is that the invasion of Afghanistan will begin within a week. We've got ships in the Indian Ocean already."
General Crump then leaves the dining hall.
"So this is it," says the female, whose name is Angela. "We're really going over there."
"We have discussed this before," says Goliath. "We have all agreed to take the battle to the terrorists."
There was, of course, much debate as to whether the clan should leave their protectorate to hunt down those who were behind the massacre. One of the objections was that it might result in a cycle of violence.
"They hold their own lives without worth," Goliath had said. "They will attack again and again, and their next target may very well be here. We must destroy as many of them as we can, make them know what true terror is."
Ooooooooooo
Paying the fare, Elisa steps out of the yellow taxicab and into the autumn evening air. Seeing a winged figure gliding above, she enters the apartment building in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.
Walking up the stairs, she opens the wooden door to the loft in which she had lived for ten years. Standing on the carpet in her living room, she looks up at the upper window.
"Goliath," she calls out.
The lavender gargoyle steps into the loft. He clasps his wings together, making them resemble a cloak. "How are you doing, Elisa?" he asks as he gives her a hug.
"Fine," replies the raven-haired human as she walks towards the three-year-old Kenmore refrigerator in the kitchen. She opens the refrigerator door and pulls out a glass bottle filled with a brown liquid. "My medical leave ends this month."
"Are you sure you are okay?" asks Goliath. "I mean…"
"Of course I'm okay," replies Elisa as she uses the Kenmore's ice dispenser to put ice cubes into a small glass. "Why wouldn't I be okay? I mean, look at what we've been through the past seven years since you awakened."
"We will be hunting the terrorists who attacked Manhattan," says Goliath. "We won't be here for a while."
"I see," says Elisa, pouring the brown liquid into the glass. "I'm not surprised."
"The terrorists must be denied sanctuary. It is no different than you going into someone's home to arrest a suspect."
"But you won't be arresting them, will you?"
Goliath sits down on a couch and pauses. "No. We are dealing with a new type of enemy here. The Hunters and the Quarrymen at least valued their own lives. Al Qaeda holds life to be of no worth."
A former Quarryman became a friend to the clan, after a series of events starting with Angela saving him from a fall. John Castaway had surrendered to the police, and is still in prison for his role in destroying the clock tower above the 23rd Precinct.
There is almost no possibility of any Al Qaeda terrorist befriending the clan, and Osama bin Laden would never surrender.
Oooooooooooo
October 3, 2001
The stone castle in the Swiss Alps overlooks a valley containing farms and villages. Snow decorates the highest peaks, even in early October. This particular castle had once been a hideout for a renegade fay.
Currently, twenty people meet around a round wooden table. The room has stone walls, the only light coming in through narrow glassless windows. Runes prevent both electronic and magical eavesdropping.
"Let us begin," says a man.
"The gargoyle clan in Manhattan will join the fight against Al Qaeda," says Mr. Duval.
"It is expected," says a woman. "It was their protectorate that was attacked last month."
"I must wonder if this is a wise course of action," says a man wearing a blue suit. "Ideas can not be defeated by force of arms. Nazi sympathizers still exist, after all. Attacking Al Qaeda may strengthen their resolve."
"The idea is to make sure people with those kind of ideas are not in a position to commit aggression," says another man. "All the resolve in the world won't help you knock down a skyscraper if you don't have the resources to do it. And that is what we must do. Deny Al Qaeda resources."
"We are currently tracking Bin Laden's finances," says a woman with tightly-curled black hair. "Perhaps someone can do a little embezzling."
"Very good," says Mr. Duval.
Ooooooooo
October 5, 2001
David Xanatos looks at the monitor screen of the computer on his desk.
"So the force field would not be enough to repel such an attack," he says.
"Yes, sir," replies Owen. "We would need advance warning." Owen hands his boss a CD. "We can set up a radar dish at the castle, and we would have to rent rooftop space in several key locations around Manhattan."
"Do you think they would try the same method of attack? Hijacking an airliner to crash it into a building?"
"Not exactly the same method, sir. But there are other methods of acquiring aircraft."
David swivels the chair to look outside the window, towards the south. He still remembers the spot where the World Trade Center once stood.
ooooooooo
Two black and red helicopters land in McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey under a partly cloudy night sky. The door on one of the helicopters slides open, and Goliath and his clan step out.
"Welcome to McGuire Air Force Base," says a man in a BDU. "Your plane is on the taxiway."
"The other helicopter has some of the equipment we're bringing," says Goliath.
"We'll take care of it," says the man, a chief master sergeant.
The gargoyles hop into the back of a truck, which takes them to a Lockheed C-130H Hercules sitting on a taxiway. The interior of the jet is a huge metal alloy cavern.
"Hope you like the deco," says an Air Force airman, looking at the insulation that covers the bulkheads of the aircraft.
The Air Force personnel load labeled boxes into the Hercules. The door is shut, and the plane's four Allison T56-A-11 turboprops warming up. The pilot and copilot check their instrumentation.
"Skycap Three-Niner to McGuire Tower, we are ready for takeoff," says the pilot, an Air Force captain.
"Copy that, Skycap Three-Niner," says an air traffic controller inside the tower. "You are cleared for immediate takeoff."
"Here we go," says Broadway, the chubby blue-green gargoyle.
The C-130 Hercules takes off into the night sky and to the gargoyles' campaign against Al Qaeda.