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Brood of a New Age

30.

One evening later, Elisa and Matt stepped out of the room Xanatos had made available to them for Dante's questioning. As soon as the door closed behind them, she groaned in annoyance.

Matt had an idea how she felt. He was irritated himself. They strode down the hallway and he opened the door to the adjoining room. Where a large one-way mirror similar to the one in the police station allowed a view of the interrogation room. However, it was only similar, because the next room did not have to be darkened so that the suspect couldn't see his audience. If Elisa hadn't felt nauseous at the thought of tapping her billionaire former enemy for such technological gimmicks, she would have liked to have such modified mirrors in all of New York's precincts. Why David Xanatos had such rooms in the lower levels of the castle (very close to the medieval dungeon), Elisa really didn't want to ask herself right now. Goliath and Brooklyn were both standing there with serious faces. They had been following the interrogation, of course.

"Not very talkative."

"Not what we haven't heard from Grace already."

"He's not the least bit responsive to the bad cop good cop thing either," Matt remarked. The red-haired detective had actually been looking forward to his first interrogation of a gargoyle criminal. It was supposed to be special, perhaps exciting. And then he ended up being so bitterly disappointed. This guy acted human - far too human. Worse - like a human gangster, arrogantly taking in every detail of their investigation, smirking so unpleasantly smugly as if he knew so much more than the cops. He had threatened Dante with the Gargoyle Task Force and a lawsuit. And the gray Gargoyle had just shrugged his shoulders casually and said that this would be bad publicity for the other Gargoyles. He hadn't even become hot-tempered like Matt and yes, also Elisa had often experienced from their other contacts with gargoyles. You could love gargoyles as much as you like - they could quickly become loud and physically agitated which could really scare you if you were not used to this temperament. Not once angry, not once loud, instead the gray perpetrator of violence had shown maybe not a friendly but yet an easy-going manner. Without sharing any information they had not already heard from Grace or Luca. His answers had been concise and to the point, and although his Italian-accented voice had a pleasantly velvety, yet hardened raspy sound, where tone and prosody could captivate one, his body language and words were somehow ... greasy. Now Dante lounged quietly in his chair, fuming, as if waiting for his lawyer to bail him out. Someone who really thought he was guilty didn't look like that.

"Strange how human he acts," Goliath muttered thoughtfully.

"He's not acting human. He's acting like a mafioso.", Elisa said in frustration, running her hand through her long hair. "Damn, if I had closed my eyes in there I could have almost imagined I was sitting face to face with Dracon or one of his thugs. `No comment. I didn't have anything to say. It was self-defense. Heat of the moment`, yada yada."

"At least he didn't call you Sugar," Brooklyn said glibly, and about that - though she shuddered - she had to grin. Brooklyn returned the grin. At moments like this, it was easy to forget that he had danced through forty years.

Then she shook her head. Sugar - Bwähh! She didn't want to think about Dracon. Nor of Dante, that strange gargoyle who looked at her in a patronizing way, as if he knew something she didn't. With every sentence she almost expected to hear something stupid like: `Sorry honey, I'm just a businessman.` As if the Quarrymen thing was business as usual.

"Maybe he's just been watching too many gangster movies. The way Broadway plays the good detective, this Dante plays the mobster. Maybe he thinks that's cool - being Italian," Brooklyn opined but turned around when a voice from the side spoke up.

"Well, I'm not so sure about that." Lexington was crouched at a table and had put on one of Dante's bracers himself, which, thanks to strong Velcro straps, fit even on his arms and barely interfered with his flying skins. By now he had figured out the mechanism that could make the knives dart into Dante's hands. He let a knife slide into his hand and within a blink of an eye the blade also extended because the button with this mechanism was pushed along when it was ejected from the bracers.

"So..." Lex had to admit while weighing the knife in his hands. "This device in his bracers is simple - almost intentionally pre-industrial. Just springs and the like. But so sturdy and cleverly designed that this couldn't possibly be anything other than the work of a professional. These bracers used to be really expensive. Would still be. Precisely because they are made of components that even a layman could replace. Even a web-wing could work with these bracers."

"Sound like you've taken a liking to them?"

Lexington snorted in amusement looked up with a defiant smirk. "Nothing of the sort Matt. Knives really aren't my style - I use my brain. With those things ... you don't have to think much. You just need accuracy of aim and practice practice practice."

"More practice than would be normal for the ... foster son of a Huntsman?" asked Brooklyn.

Lexington pulled off the black strap with a loud crackle.

"Yes. I think so. Even if this hunter had been a gun nut and wanted Dante and Grace to be able to defend themselves eventually."

"Something's fishy there," Elisa muttered.

Matt had to try hard not to clap his hands in glee but from his triumphant look she saw what he was thinking.

"Matt, wipe that grin off your face."

"What?" asked Goliath and Elisa pointed at her cherished human partner.

"Mister Conspiracy thinks Dante is a hit man."

After the remark, the others fell silent for the time being.

"For a hit man, those bracers would be fitting, of course," Lexington muttered quietly after a few seconds.

Goliath wiped away his remark with a rough hand gesture that made the smaller Gargoyle sheepishly duck his head.

"No! That would go against every sense of self that gargoyles possess. Against our pride, against our nature."

"Are we still assuming that Dante has any sense of self as a gargoyle?" Brooklyn rubbed his temple. The thought that they might really have let a wolf into their little flock was worrisome. He didn't like the idea at all but that was no reason to sweep that off the table as easily as Goliath.

"If he were a professional killer - he'd have a employer," Lexington noted. "But gargoyles don't care about money. They can't really spend it at all. Not without human middlemen."

"Do you think Luca De Santis-? My research has revealed nothing out of the ordinary. He is who he says he is. Just released from his duties after being injured in a case against a Camorra guy named Della Marra, presumably this Giuliano."

"Camorra?" asked Goliath.

"The Italian mafia," Matt enlightened him. "Very old organization. Very powerful especially in southern Italy. Even part of the population and the regional government are behind them because they - " he made quotation marks in the air, "- keep order and regulate things."

"'Regulating things. Uh-huh. As if Dino and Tony Dracon are on a first-name basis with the mayor or governor and sing in the same church choir," Brooklyn muttered.

"And if Dante and Luca are into something then so is Grace." Elisa speculated. „You think she's a hired gun, too? You found her praying in a church. Praying - would a killer do that?"

"Maybe a repentant killer," offered Matt, who just couldn't let go of the idea.

"Who would have hired gargoyle hitmen?"

Everyone fell silent, at a loss. Only the red-haired detective, head of the GTF but first and foremost a conspiracy nut who eclipsed even Fox Mulder from the X-Files, breathed a sigh of realization.

Elisa almost growled in gargoyle style.

"Spit it out, Bluestone."

"Castaway," he said, and everyone stared at him. Until Elisa groaned.

"Okay. I'll call the loony bin. That's it for you with the double shifts. You need a vacation - but far away from me in a hotel with soft-padded rooms."

"No, partner. Guys," he looked to Goliath, Brooklyn, and Lex. "Think about it. This makes perfect sense. Nothing Castaway pulls off really has any resounding success. Your court case the month before last stirred up a lot of citizens- but some in city and state government, maybe even people in the Senate and House of Representatives have taken notice. We all know how slowly legal cogs spin but it is not impossible that Castaway and his organization will soon be the hunted. At least more hunted than you are. What would be better for the Quarrymen than really dangerous Gargoyles to tilt the mood completely in his favor again. Or maybe even to infiltrate you guys? Maybe not this Grace, but that guy in there," he pointed at the culprit behind the one-way mirror, who was emphatically stubbing out his third cigarette on the iron tabletop only to light another one.

"Castaway is supposed to have hired gargoyles to beat his own people half to death? Maybe even kill them?" asked Goliath incredulously.

"Why shouldn't he? He has no conscience. He's a lunatic. Not out of the question that he'd resort to desperate measures."

Brooklyn took a deep breath. Actually ... it would be an extremely clever move on Castaway's part to resort to means so absurd that they would never be associated with him. Then he thought of the conversation they had eavesdropped on yesterday (not eavesdropped, but overheard with sharp gargoyle ears). A conversation like this Dante had only been able to have with his sister. In which he had appeared like a completely different gargoyle. Remorseful, thoughtful, perhaps even fearful. How often had his gut instinct saved his life and the lives of others on his time travels? How often had he fallen for seemingly obvious facts that complicated or ruined the lives of others? Clues and seemingly logical conclusions were one thing - but there was also instinct. And Gi and Jin. A leader should not only be strict and assertive, hard as a rock. He had to grant chances. Flexible as bamboo. God, he spent too much time with his mate's teachings. But they were good teachings even if he couldn't always follow everything.

"We don't know what the real Dante is like," he then stated his thoughts aloud. "He could be a danger. But we can't write off a conspecific before he's had a chance to prove himself. No matter what he is ... or used to be."

A satisfied low-frequency grumble escaped Goliath, and from his equally low-frequency smile, his satisfaction with his deputy's assessment was also evident. Brooklyn knew that he had basically outgrown the Second role and that he, like Goliath, would have to get used to thinking in terms of partnership. Still, Brooklyn felt his heart flutter in his chest as if he had just been intensely praised by his father. Somewhere deep inside him was still the teenager who wanted nothing more than to be appreciated by a father figure and his clan leader. And it had only taken forty years of torment in the stream of time.

"Since interrogations don't seem to work on him, we'll have to explore Dante and Grace's true nature over the next few nights. Little by little," Goliath concluded.

"How did you even get him to give up his knives and the bracers? Yesterday you told me he was so attached to them," Elisa asked as Lexington stowed the arm and leg bracers in a box and locked them in a metal cabinet.

"His sister mediated," the delicate web-wing said. But he had ... a requirement to give those away."

"Which one?"

Brooklyn grumbled. "He wanted a promise to get them back if there was an emergency."

"And we agree there will be no emergency where a knife-wielding gargoyle is needed. So what?"

"And five minutes with my laser handgun after the interrogation."

"Your laser gun?"

"The little laser gun. Luckily he didn't see my big blaster." Brooklyn had put on that sourpuss face again as he looked through the one-way mirror. "And now he's waiting for me to make good on that promise. Peachy concept, shoving a gun from the future into the paws of someone who has no problem almost killing people with his bare hands."

"I don't think he'll be satisfied if you explain to him that it's actually set on you," Lexington speculated.

"I'm going to turn off the genetically coded child lock for five minutes. And tune it down to the lowest power setting."

"Don't worry, I'll be watching him on the range," a voice announced. Katana stood in the doorway and smiled at her mate. He strode to her, enclosed her in a loose wing embrace, and kissed her on the cheek. He just needed some psychological strengthening and physical closeness after the conversation. A dose of Katana.

She kissed him on the side of his beak as well and gently ran her hand over one of his horns before turning her gaze to the others. Matt and Lexington were looking somewhere else, trying not to spoil the intimate togetherness by gawking. But Elisa and Goliath looked at them and flashed those goofy ohhh-we-must-do-this-as-well-soon smiles.

"Don't worry too much," the ice-blue female warrior said.

"Katana, I have faith in you. But you going into mother mode towards him sends cold shivers down my wings," Brooklyn muttered.

His mate smirked. "Dante is like a child in some ways. He's never had a mother figure. And if that gives us control over him-

"I agree with that. But don't get too attached to him. Or don't let him get too attached to you. He's still on probation."

They turned as Dante leaned back in his seat as if it were the most comfortable TV chair in the castle. He smiled mischievously, his gaze fixed on the One-way mirror, and although that was impossible, Goliath had the feeling he was looking right at him. There was a brown leather briefcase on the table in front of him.

"What's he got there?" asked Lexington, squinting his eyes as if his eyesight was too poor to see what it was.

Matt gasped and grabbed his butt in surprise. Or better - he grabbed his empty pants pocket.

"He stole your wallet, didn't he? During the interrogation? Even though everyone had their eyes on him. Oh man, we're going to have fun with this one," Elisa said, seeking eye contact with Katana whose mild smile now seemed almost apologetic. And maybe a little amused.

Thanks for reading, Q.T.