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Brood of a New Age

35.

Luca De Santis grunted loudly as he was startled by an unknown noise. A terrible tinny melody that shattered his dream.

He was about to tell whoever to turn the damn ringtone off when he realized that there was no one else in his guest room here at Wywern Castle that he could order to do so. He blinked. Bright daylight fell through the closed wooden shutters. It was daytime? Who was calling him, if not Grace? Then he remembered the girl. The sweet little ... what had her name been? He stretched his arm and groped for his cell phone with a drowsy scowl, found the button to accept the call, and pressed the bone to his ear.

"Dipartimento di Investigazione Criminale di Napoli, Luca De Santis, pronto," he croaked, clearing his throat. On the other end of the line, however, it was not the voice of a sweet girl that answered. But that of the American detective Elisa Maza.

And succinct and a little snotty as he had already come to know her, she passed over his greeting, which sounded gruff to foreigners (but HE was the foreigner in America!).

"Luca. This is Elisa Maza."

Luca's brain jumped in three seconds from blank Italian confusion to awkward but eager American friendliness.

Of course - he had also given Mister Xanatos and her his card (He had had a hundred printed. He had to get at least a few of them out to people in his American adventure. )

"Sure. Detective Maza."

"Elisa."

"Of course. Elisa. Scusi. What can I do for you uhh at-" He turned on the lamp on the nightstand next to his very comfortable guest bed and squinted at the digital clock display.

"At two o'clock noon," the American detective helped him out and Luca fell back on his pillow, groaning.

When he said nothing for a few seconds, he heard a soft somehow precocious chuckle from the beautiful woman on the other end of the line. Before he had met Grace, such a call, such a chuckle would have made him act more charming, more courteous and generally more attractive. Now that wasn't the case at all. He just wanted to sleep to be fit for Dante and Grace (but especially for Grace) the next night.

That's why he grunted politely into the receiver.

"You're laughing, Elisa?"

She sounded apologetic now but you could hear the smile from her words. "I was just remembering," she said.

"Remembering what?"

"That I used to be where you are. Sometimes still am."

"Huh?"

"This day-night rhythm reversal - it wears you out. Doesn't it?"

"Well," he said, rubbing his forehead. "You haven't just been on the night shift since yesterday. And I was mostly on the night shift in Naples, too."

"That's not what I meant. Outside of our shifts and on our days off, we could at least try to get a few hours of sleep at night. But when you're the familiar of gargoyles ... that gets lost, too. But it's a voluntary, gladly accepted loss, isn't it?"

Luca held the phone away from him for a second and stared at the receiver, puzzled. Then he held it to his ear again.

"Yes. That's right. So why ... does one voluntary night owl, call the other?"

"I thought we could have lunch together."

"Lunch?"

"You know - that meal that happens in the middle of the day when the sun is at its highest. Getting a little daylight like the gargoyles do. People like us need the vitamin D and at least once a week a daytime meal among other people. Lest we forget what that's like. To stay reasonably healthy and literally earthed. My first tip for you as a longer served familiar."

Longer served. Luca grinned at the expression. And thought the idea of having a casual dinner with Detective Maza to get more information and tips out of her might not be so bad. After all ... she was ... sort of the girlfriend (or mate?) of the clan leader. And that seemed to work. Just the thought of him and Grace-.

"Well- how about it? There's a pretty good diner three blocks from the Eyrie Building. I reserved us a table there," the detective urged.

"Okay, I'd love to," he replied mechanically.

"Okay. Rise and shine, then, colleague. Meet me at the Brooklyn Diner in an hour. Near the intersection of 7th Avenue and 43rd Street West."

With that, Elisa Maza hung up. Luca grumbled.

How could this woman be so lively, almost bubbly? And in the middle of the day! As if she hadn't been awake the previous night, too.

Luca opened his eyes in a fit of sudden realization and was suddenly much more awake.

As usually when he went by his professional gut feeling, he could not directly put his finger on the thing that tipped the scales for him to be suspicious. Two people with an apparently very similar secret, who went to dinner together to exchange ideas. That sounded good. It sounded like what he needed. But he realized all at once that this foreign detective would use this opportunity to snoop around. To elicit things from this strange Italian colleague with the strange Italian congeners of HER friends that he and Grace had not planned to divulge. HE would have tried the EXACT same thing in Elisa Maza's position.

"Damn," he muttered, and would have preferred to call her back to cancel. But with what credible excuse? He didn't have one.

He had to go there willy-nilly (he LOVED that funny american idiom) and have what was sure to be a strange but definitely forced conversation under the poor disguise of a casual get-together among "fellow sufferers." He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at his watch. But he now had 56 minutes to put his lies together again so that it wouldn't come out which life Grace and Dante had really led in Italy. Yesterday's practice fights (if you could call the near bloodbaths that) had gone badly for Dante AND Grace. Way too treacherous. His dinner with Elisa could turn things around for the better or the worse. He would try his hardest.

He got up, took off his boxers and jumped into his tub to shower. In the process, he almost slipped on the soap that Dante hadn't put back in the dish after his bath last night. This hooligan had left the bathroom in a mess anyway, without taking into account the people he lived with. Just like in the hotel although there had been only a shower. The gray crook still thought he had staff that cleaned up after him. And maybe - Luca thought to himself as he got out of the tub and picked up one of the wet towels from the floor - there was a spark of truth in it. Hopefully, this was one of the wrinkles of character that this American clan could iron out.

While Luca hurriedly shaved, he thought back to the dream from which he had been awakened. The dream hadn't been great anyway, just a montage of bad or depressing impressions from the last few days. Dante's twitching figure after he had been shocked by the robot ... no, rather the cyborg-gargoyle Coldstone. And Grace's icy voice, mechanical yet somehow suffering as she had ordered Angela to give up and she hadn't. He had never seen her like that. He loved her anyway but ... there she had caught him cold too. But worse had been the suffering of his Queen of Hearts afterwards. Her despair in the chapel.

He knew that it had not really been decent to follow her, because she had hardly been able to look at him out of shame after her "accident". But he had been so worried. But she hadn't needed him. She had needed the gargoyle boy Nashville. An ear that listened to her, that didn't reject her like adult gargoyles might have, but also didn't want to cuddle and kiss her all the time to dry her tears. Someone who just let her cry her frustration away. THAT was what the child had automatically done right. Probably not consciously but rather out of childish helplessness in the face of an adult who suddenly showed himself so vulnerable in front of him. But nevertheless that had done her much better than a man softened by love.

And she had kissed him in the end. He was much too young for her and that kiss had been equal to the ones Luca had received from his aunt as a child. But still ... it had reminded him what they were here for. To find a new family. And maybe partners. New lives. In the evening, just before sunset, he had climbed the battlements where this whole clan slept together, Grace had rested on the perch next to Lexington. And even though her eyes had lit up (not with adrenaline but with joy at seeing Luca) when she had turned around, he had to admit to himself that both Dante and Grace looked SO MUCH more natural and right when they slept among their own kind. That hurt. But it was a fact.

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45 minutes later he was at the Brooklyn Diner (although as an Italian he should always be granted 15 minutes tolerance regarding punctuality). There were only three tables at the window front of the long stretched diner. Conveniently, a dark panel screened the patrons seated there up to the level of their faces. Low enough for guests to see out, but high enough that when they ate and bowed their heads accordingly, they were not on public display.

Elisa Maza (her mop of hair) he saw there and briefly he feared it would be terribly hot in the store so close to the window. But instead he stepped through the doors and was enveloped by pleasant cooled air. He came to her table and after a greeting sat down across from her in one of the brown leather covered benches. Now he had the front door in his back and didn't like it but Elisa Maza probably felt the same way. Every cop preferred to have the entrance of a store in view. But he wasn't a cop right now. Not a detective. He was, after all, on "vacation" somehow. And what would be the likelihood of someone coming into the store to shoot around. In the middle of the day ... in America ... in New York ... in Manhattan. Luca slid unsteadily in his seat, grateful that there was a map he could grab and hold onto. Elisa, in front of whom was already a Coke, smiled as if she knew exactly what was going on inside him. She was younger than him but she was in her element here. He felt like a dolt since he had boarded the plane to America.

When Elisa noticed that he was studying the menu with the many dishes a little helplessly, she sipped her Coke and said:

"I recommend the waffles with grilled cheese and pastrami."

"Waffles for lunch?"

"Does that matter to people like us?" she asked, grinning broadly, and he grinned too.

He ordered a Pepsi (and received a wrinkle of the nose in return from Elisa who was obviously part of the Coke brigade) and the aforementioned waffles.

We won't have to wait long," the American announced.

"I'm glad we can talk among ourselves for once," Luca lied politely and Elisa confirmed it in her turn.

"We have to keep looking at ourselves. We tend to forget us because of all the friends" she murmured and Luca realized that they would not drop the word Gargoyles even once in this conversation (of course). The place was not overly crowded now in the afternoon - but you never knew who was a Quarryman.

As if his thoughts had summoned evil spirits, the waitress arrived with her orders. She was a sweet older lady whose hairstyle indicated that she struggled every morning - as she probably had for 40 years - with curlers to look neat. But when she bent down a bit to set down her plates and his drink, Luca saw a pendant around her neck. Though mostly hidden by her dress, it flashed briefly in the daylight and Luca's horrified eyes found Elisa's, who thanked the waitress before the latter turned away again.

Luca was about to open his mouth when Elisa said quietly without looking at him while she shook up her serving dish. "Never stare so horrified when it comes to something like this, Luca. Some members are very paranoid and suspect shadows on the walls to be race traitors. I've been seeing these damn hammers everywhere for months. I can't avoid all the places where someone wears something like that. If I do, I won't have anywhere to go."

"Sorry," he mumbled affectedly, pulling his plate more toward him and grabbing silverware from a container on the table. He turned briefly and was glad that no one was sitting behind him in the bench at the moment. Still, his voice was quiet.

"It's just ... they're handing these things out everywhere. I'm from Italy- I know about fascism. Like the lictorian bundle and the axe with Mussolini. Symbols have incredible power. These hammers. It's ... like a call for genocide. The citizens don't even notice the brainwashing."

Elisa looked at him sadly.

"Let's eat. After that, we'll talk. But maybe about something else."

"Okay," he said, feeling like a schoolboy. Maybe he'd be more comfortable with a full stomach.

.

.

"That was really good," he said again as they sat in front of the empty plates.

Elisa smiled while the nice Quarrymen waitress cleared their plates.

"Order the apple pie, it's fantastic," his counterpart said and Luca did as he was advised. With it a small coffee, which Elisa also ordered. He doubted that the coffee here could even begin to compete with an Italian one. He had yet to find anyone in America who made him a coffee that tasted like home.

After three minutes, they had their orders and Luca, like Elisa, put milk and sugar in his black brew because he suspected she knew already how to bring it down the best way. In return, the first bite of the juicy apple pie reconciled him a little with America.

"So-" Elisa said, and she probably deliberately didn't look at him while she clinked her coffee spoon in her cup. "- I think we can all agree that the training sessions yesterday went horribly."

"Oh, yes," he admitted, both pleased and unhappy that the matter had been brought up.

"I have no idea what you must think of us now. Otherwise, these practice sessions don't derail like this. They really don't."

Luca sipped from his coffee while thinking what to say in response. And thought some more while he put even more milk and sugar in the cup. Then he had collected himself enough.

"I can see why your friends were so eager to do these fights. I can also put one and one together even if I am a little out of my element here in America."

"I never, assumed that this would NOT be obvious, Luca. This kind of friends is rarely subtle," Elisa admitted and Luca nodded. For months, he and Grace and Dante had rehearsed their tall tales. Dante was much better at lying than Grace but also mediocre by human standards. His gangster attitude still gave away way too much.

"They want to size up Dante and Grace. Whether they fit in with them. Do you think this would be the case in a similar way if Dante had never had that bad encounter with the six you-know-who."

"Not in that extreme way. But I hope Grace and Dante are not too repulsed now. My friends, you have to know, they've been through a lot. So much betrayal, so many lies. And are therefore now- distrustful even of their own kind."

"I understand that. My two-" he searched for the right word, then grinned, "-my two charges have their experiences with betrayal, too. And now that I've met the others ... Grace and Dante must seem really strange to them."

"They were raised differently. That's what it comes down to. Different upbringing."

"Yes ... different imprint. I assume ... " and it was noticeable to Luca how carefully he weighed every word. "- that they've probably never practiced with uh friends like Grace and Dante either."

"Yeah, right."

"They also have no experience practicing with other sparring partners. As far as I know, they've barely practiced with each other either."

"Grace seems stronger than Dante."

"Could be," Luca muttered, poking at the remains of his cake. "I'm really sorry about Angela. Believe me Elisa, I know Grace in that regard. She already feels guilty when she eats a steak."

"How bad must it be with live prey then," Elisa said cheerfully but her smile faded as Luca looked up wide-eyed and she could literally watch the blood drain from his face. Had he not known that gargoyles sometimes ate living prey? She had also been shocked by this fact, even though she had known gargoyles for over a year at that time. It was long before she had kissed Goliath for the first time and long before they had agreed that he would brush his teeth five times every time after such a "snack". But after that it had seemed only obvious to her and had shamed her as a friend of the clan and as a detective with alleged powers of deduction. Yes - she had filled the refrigerator in the clock tower for months from her meager detective salary. But for a clan of six and then seven adult non-humans, that had ALWAYS been too little. Of course the gargoyles at that time (and today) had not taken it so seriously with the ownership of the contents of unguarded fast food stands and had plundered certainly also more often the garbage containers behind the supermarkets in which always also still good unspoiled food was thrown away. But especially in terms of meat, such beings simply needed more. But how Luca looked at her now. Did ... these human-raised Italian gargoyles not eat fresh animals at all? Did they not give in to the urge because they could not classify it. But then, what was Luca De Santis thinking about, staring at her in such a stunned way? Hired Gun, whispered the voice in her head and she shook the same one, trying to appear innocently cheery towards the Italian detective and waved it away laughing softly.

"Oh, not so important, forget it."

Luca obviously didn't forget but was thankful he didn't have to go into it as he lowered his head and stared into his cup as if he could read the future in the light brown broth. "I don't know if we can get Grace out of the chapel the next few nights. She's so ashamed."

"Well, she'll have to get out. She and Dante have to fulfill their duties like all family members. Their protectorate- their rules."

"Protectorate?"

"Manhattan," Elisa whispered, vigilantly watching the patrons who were just entering the diner but thankfully sitting down farther back in the store, then continued speaking. "And a little bit of the outer boroughs. They protect people when they observe or witness crimes of any kind. Sometimes I can direct them over the two-way radio to such scenes. But most incidents they stumble upon themselves and have apprehended the culprits before the police arrive or before anyone even notices. Where we as police only respond to crime- they really prevent crime."

Luca didn't seem overly happy with the typical gargoyle calling and rubbed his temple thoughtfully. "So it's not just a rumor. They protect people."

"Didn't Grace and Dante do that in Naples?" asked Elisa, and Luca cleared his throat.

"There was ... one or two incidents where they happened to prevent crime when they stumbled upon it. Like when Grace meeted me and then they helped me."

"With that mobster that Dante referred to as his cousin. What was his name again?"

"Giuliano."

" Yes, Giuliano -"

"- Della Marra. But ... I don't think they ever consciously searched for lawbreakers. Grace would have told me that."

"Mmm, strange."

"What?"

"Protecting is an instinct within my friends. Not just a reason for being, not just a duty or passion. It's downright a psychological and physical urge. But now I'm wondering - honestly since I met Dante and Grace - if that's the case for other clans."

"I think ..." Luca pondered aloud. "I think they've just directed their focus differently so far."

"In what way."

"I know they've been protective of their father. Very intensely. Family was above everything with them. Well, yeah, I guess that's an Italian thing."

"And a G thing (the G was obviously meant to stand for gargoyles and made Luca grin) - so typical after all. But their need to protect never extended outwardly? To other weaker people they were watching?"

"I... don't really know," Luca muttered, sliding on the warm leather upholstery.

"Then it will be a whole new experience for them to be assigned to patrols and act as Guardians of the Night."

"Guardians of the Night?"

"...Why do you look so indecisive?"

"I know Grace will be able to handle it. If the others can get her out of the chapel. But Dante is so squirrelly and maladjusted. He doesn't really have a ... guardian attitude. And he's not a team player."

"Yeah-it's hard to miss that."

The Italian detective seemed to be thinking hard. One corner of his mouth twitched up as he looked up.

"I think they should be put in a patrol group together," Luca said seriously. "Grace can keep Dante on track. He can be a good protector- I know that, I've seen it on a previous occasion but-"

"Because he saved your life?"

"That too- but there was something else. He saved a girl who- oh it doesn't matter. If he keeps getting called to order by the right people, he'll get it done. I'm sure he will."

"The right people? Like Grace?"

"Or... or Signora Katana. Maybe - but I wouldn't count on it - Signor Hudson too. You just have to know how to approach him."

"So elders and women? He allows them to tell him what to do?"

"Well, he's Italian." Luca smiled mischievously and all of a sudden didn't look at all like the coarse brute everyone who didn't know him thought he was.

Elisa smirked as well.

"Another subject, Luca."

"Yes?"

"You and Grace are a thing, aren't you?

Luca's fork fell out of his hand with a loud clang as he choked on his pie, coughing frantically and thumping his chest.

Elisa calmly watched him catch his breath.

"So yes," she said with a grin.

"No!" retorted Luca, earning an eye roll in return.

"I didn't win my detective status in a lottery. I see how you look at her."

His face was almost as red as Grace's normal hue by now, and it wasn't because he had just choked. "It doesn't matter how I look at her. This - her and me. We're friends. After all, that would go against the whole point of why we came to America."

"What point?"

"To find others. Their kind." he added much more quietly because he noticed the waitress eyeing them from the counter.

"And what does one have to do with the other?"

Luca stared at her for a moment. Then he put down his fork and smiled.

"Elisa. I was really gobsmacked when Goliath said so freely that he and you were a couple."

Elisa smiled at the mention alone.

"Mates yes. We haven't had ... an official commitment ceremony like my friends usually have. But ..." she raised her head and looked out. Out where at this hot afternoon hour less people were out but where it was still very busy. Even now, hardly a ray of sunlight penetrated the canyons between the buildings. But the daylight that fell on Elisa's features gave her something youthful. A longing. At that moment Luca knew she was a dreamer. Maybe that's what it took to live her life without breaking. She had dreams. Of a time that might come. Or would never come. But she dreamed.

"Someday," she whispered as if to punctuate his thoughts.

Luca - man and Italian but at this moment seemingly most insecure teenager in love - dared not look at Elisa and turned the coffee cup in his hands. "If the question ... is not too private. How does a mixed relationship like this work?"

Elisa made a thoughtful sigh and looked at her hands herself. Five delicate fingers and ridiculously harmless fingernails. Yes - how did it work? She didn't believe for a second that Luca was asking about the physical aspects of her relationship. And that was the only reason why she could stay so serious and honest. Because he had earned seriousness and honesty. Because every time you saw him together with Grace, and every time her name came up, it showed where he stood. He may lie to everyone about other things. But not in this. His body and face were far too honest for that when it came to the red gargoyle female.

"My mother's ancestors came from Nigeria," she began. "My father is from the Hopi Native American tribe. And not even exclusively," she added with a smirk as if there was more to those words. "All my life I've been ... the half-breed. That's not what the other kids called me - they found better names from their point of view. I was the oldest of three and I had to learn to defend myself or to stand above it. But for some years I think - even if this sounds arrogant - my origin, my early experiences made me ... not necessarily strong but resilient. Not blind and jaded to seemingly irreconcilable diversities. But ... more open. I was and am often ridiculed or insulted for who I am. And our friends experience hatred and rejection for who they are. But these people don't hate blacks- or Indians, or horns, or claws. They hate the foreign. They hate their ideas of the unfamiliar- and so they hate illusions in their heads. But this ... " she tapped her chest at the level of her heart. "what's going on in there between two individuals is real. Mine and Goliath's relationship is difficult for so many reasons. But one minute of being with each other, guided only by our hearts, can outweigh days of ugliness in the outside world. It is worth it. Everything is worth it. If it works for me and Goliath," she continued to whisper, "why not for you and Grace?"

Luca sighed and looked out the same way she had just done, if only to avoid her gaze so she wouldn't pull more secrets out of his nose than he was willing to share.

"Grace deserves a chance at a life among her own kind."

"But why can't she have both?"

"She doesn't want me. I'm sure she loves me - but only as a friend. Maybe as an extension of her family. But not ... beyond that."

"Then you're stupid AND blind," Elisa said, standing up, pulling a few bills out of her jeans, and placing them under her saucer.

Luca looked up at her with his mouth open.

"Was that it?" he asked, the fairest of New York's finest showing her straight teeth as she smiled.

"What did you think when I invited you? That I would question you like a criminal? I'd have other methods. I'm going to get some Z's now before I have to go to the night shift. Goliath knows how to contact me but for the next four nights I will be seen less at the castle. It was a good talk, Luca. Keep your chin up and don't worry so much about your friends and mine. They'll handle most things among themselves anyway, with or without us. Ciao," she said, and was already walking out the door when Luca uttered the typical Italian greeting and farewell word himself. He was too perplexed by Elisa's last words about him being stupid and blind, which left him completely confused.

He looked at the bills and realized that Elisa had paid for him as well.

"How awkward," he said aloud, meaning more than one thing.

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Elisa sat at her computer in the 23rd Precinct a few hours later, trying to concentrate on the person she was talking to, despite the Friday night buzz around her. The eighth person she had spoken to in the last hour, as she had been pushed from one department to another and back again, from one employee who barely spoke English to another who barely understood her. By now she was completely exhausted. There was nothing she hated more than having to wait, be put off or argue on the phone. Fortunately, this foot-slogging and door-knocking didn't add to her own phone bill. But just as with her telephone odyssey before -ultimately, she had to grudgingly give in, politely say goodbye even though no one had helped her further and hung up. It had not so much failed because of the language barrier of the European, first Italian, then French, colleagues. But because no one understood why a detective from America was interested in files and data that contained not only closed cases but actually only dead people. The matter was closed for everyone.

Elisa leaned back in her desk chair and closed the Internet pages. She had laboriously scoured through digital Italian news sheets from Naples, searching for words that rang bells with her. But few papers had accessible news archives. One of her Italian colleagues in the Precinct had translated one or two headlines for her. The article that caught her eye the most - a small local paper from Naples, as if the big dailies had been too good to print such mindless nonsense at the time - was entitled Come la camorra fa ballare i demoni. roughly translated: How the Camorra makes its demons dance. It sounded promising. And worrying. Elisa knew it would take her hours to translate the article back home onto her slow home computer. But she couldn't ask any of her Italian colleagues to translate it for her anymore. If it was about Camorra- yes. But nothing about "demoni". Otherwise, there were rumors about gargoyles in Italy. And why Elisa Maza in America was interested in them.

She had been feeling Captain Sanchez's piercing gaze on her back for a while now, and knew that soon she would be given tasks that were really part of her job. Part of the job she was paid to do. But she was fed up anyway and was about to turn the corner voluntarily to get out to the good old criminals.

She opened her email program and grumbled to herself:

"Okay, overseas guys. No authorization? No serious justification for giving out the information? If you don't let me play clean, I'll play dirty."

The following email was short but would be understood.

Naples Criminal Police Archive and Interpol Communications System X.400

Search queries:

Giuliano Della Marra. Camorra. Della Marra clan. Demons. Demon saves girl. All files. All testimonies. All rumors.

The American detective clicked "send", then immediately deleted the email, cleared the Recycle Bin of her emails and her browser history, turned off the computer, and smiled to herself even though she should feel bad about spying on her international colleagues. But this was about serve and protect. Not necessarily of humans. But nevertheless.

The best hacker in town (maybe in the state) would love this job.

All the places I mention I try to research as best I can (even though for some I don't know if they were in the same place in 1997 as they are now). I look at the location on Google Maps - even the surrounding area, I read the menu, like here, read reviews, click through a thousand photos ... actually these shops should pay me an advertising fee. On the other hand ... I would then also have to pay all the reviewers and Google Maps something (except that we all pay anyway with our data). So let's leave everything as it is. Thanks Internet.

Thanks for reading, Q.T.