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Brood of a New Age

5.

Dante and Grace had been practicing waking up quietly for the past few months. Nothing could muffle the cracking of their stone skin or the sound of them blasting off their real skin, which always sounded a bit like hail. But the screeching and hissing, the growling and shrieking were kept to a minimum. Quite different from the first time he had seen them wake up. Eva - no, Grace! - had explained to him that it was even wanted and encouraged by their father if they looked and sounded as scary and bestial as possible when they woke up. Perhaps old Della Marra himself had been amused by this spectacle, perhaps the Camorra monarch had sometimes invited hostile gangster bosses to scare them (or friendly gangsters to remind them that Della Marra's hell-spawn were truly monsters, who were better never to be antagonized). Luca didn't know, and Grace had never gone into it. Just as she and Dante rarely talked about their lives before Luca's appearance. Sometimes that hurt him - especially when he had to assume Grace was shutting him out but maybe she was doing it to protect him. Because she knew that a lot of what she (but especially probably Dante) had done was incompatible with the conscience of a detective. He took comfort in the fact that her silence about some things was also a form of affection, and returned that affection by not probing and pestering her with questions.

Instead, he smiled as the two gargoyles shook off the last of the stone shards, and where Grace let out a delighted yawn - her full red mouth wide open and white fangs showing - Dante's first impulse was to curse in Italian because he was still in the restraints he had put himself in before sunrise.

He looked to Luca with glowing eyes.

"THAT was the worst trip I've ever had to endure!"

"It was your only trip, Dante," Grace said, smiling at Luca as she undid the straps from her arms, legs and torso. Dante simply slashed them with his claws and kicked them aside.

"Good evening, Luca," said his lady of the heart.

Luca immediately felt his face widen as well. He was relieved that they had both survived the trip without any breakage.

"Good evening Grace. Hello Dante. You'll want these? "

He held out a pack of his cigarettes to the gray scarred gargoyle and where a more polite person might have thanked or been impressed that Luca had tracked down the same brand in a foreign land, his opposite now simply snatched them from his fingers.

"You damn well better believe I want that," he growled, also taking his Zippo from Luca's hand since the lighter had not been able to remain in the shipping crate.

Dante lit his cigarette and then jumped off the back of the van. Directly into a dirty puddle.

"Great!" he hissed, looking around. Whereby there was not much to see. Luca had steered the van backwards into an alleyway and the van almost completely blocked it, thankfully. He himself had had to climb over some iron garbage containers to get to the loading area with the crowbar in order to pry open the box there shortly before sunset.

So the first impression Dante and Grace got of the supposedly best country in the world and of the most impressive modern city in America was rather-.

"- Crap. I see you want to roll out the full tourist program with us," Dante joked, sounding, as he usually did, not particularly amused. Grace raised her eyes from garbage cans and dingy masonry walls on three sides. She raised her eyes higher and higher - and saw the dark blue sky eight stories above them.

"I wish I could have let you wake up in a nicer place, too," Luca said, stepping up to the lady of his heart.

"It's okay. It's safer this way. And we can climb up and take off from there."

"Eat something first," Luca said, pulling out the plastic bag of subway sandwiches and water bottles he had bought earlier.

"Oh yeah, that's the breakfast of champions," Dante said, and Grace nudged him roughly so that his cigarette fell out of his fingers. "Don't be so ungrateful. Without Luca we would be wasted here." She kissed Luca gently on the cheek as she accepted her sandwich and Luca tried hard not to blush and look like a schoolboy. Dante gave him a tired look and grunted.

"Yeah, it's all right. Jesus Christ, get a room," he grumbled, unwrapping his sandwich and starting to eat. Luca tried to steer Dante's ambiguous comment in another direction.

"Speaking of rooms. A block away is our hotel. I booked the top room there with a rooftop terrace that can't be overlooked."

"Not observable? In a city full of high-rises?"

"Which I guess means it has a great view of the wall of the neighboring building - Like this," Dante opined. Luca had to remind himself again that Dante and Grace had not only been trained to be killers by Della Marra. At a certain point, he had also considered them his heirs, successors, even children. They had lived in a luxury mansion with all possible comforts. Grace never let on, but with Dante you could tell he appreciated the more pleasant, high-priced aspects of life. Luca and Grace had tried to drill into his head over the last few months that this life was over. No more expensive wines, no more private rooms, no more four-course menus from private chefs Della Marras. Dante was not stupid and knew it but ... despite the ordeal he had endured at the hands of Guiliano Della Marra and his right hand, he was sometimes quite spoiled in his own way.

"I've attached a white sheet to the railing of the terrace so you can find it right away from above," Luca continued while he himself finally bit into his sandwich and sat down next to Grace on the loading ramp of the transporter. "I'll bring the van back tomorrow. After that, we'll have to rely on flying and public transportation."

"Sure- I'll enjoy my first subway ride," Dante said sarcastically between bites, and his sister grumbled and gave him a frustrated look. Then she leaned toward Luca and he stiffened as her shoulder touched his. "Dante is a little fussy and wants to get up in the air as soon as possible to find the others. After the trip, we both need to stretch our wings."

"You must be careful," Luca repeated as he had so many times before the trip. "The Quarrymen are still highly active. Their leader, this Castaway, poses as a decent guy who wants to rid the city of a plague but he basically just incites fearful citizens."

"We've had experience with decent guys fighting a plague," Dante growled, and Luca saw his eyes light up frost white in the now nearly dark alley. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up every time he saw this strange physical reaction to excitement or anger. And he was grateful, for the umpteenth time, that he wasn't (no longer) on Dante's and Grace's hit list. "This city is a powder keg right now. Dozens of stone statues have been destroyed by self-appointed vigilantes or by Quarrymen in uniform."

"Oh no, you think-!"

"None of them were real gargoyles!" assured Luca to his beloved though honestly he had no way of knowing that. "Almost all of these vandalism incidents happened at night. And real gargoyles aren't stone at night. And if these others are half as smart as you are, they know to fall asleep out of reach."

"Yes. Yes, you're right," Grace muttered, opening one of the water bottles to drink from it. When she put her head back, Luca saw in the dim light how her larynx moved as she drank. He licked his lips, which he realized were completely dry. Why was he suddenly so thirsty? Luca winced as the crumpled paper of the Subway wrapper bounced off his head from Dante's direction. The gray gargoyle rubbed his hands on his jeans but obviously refrained from another biting comment. To repeat. Dante wasn't stupid. And he wasn't blind, either. He really had to think him a pervert. But probably a harmless pervert since Dante hadn't killed him yet. Or he trusted that his sister could take care of herself if Luca made a careless gesture in that direction.

"So - I'm assuming I'm not allowed to kill any Quarrymen for now if they come at me stupidly", Dante said and now poured water into his own beak.

"We don't kill anymore unless it's absolutely necessary, Dante!" hissed Grace.

"They're almost all ordinary citizens. You have to stay out of their way, Dante. You have to stay out of everyone's way," Luca advised. "Stay together, cover your backs but if you are attacked then flee."

Dante laughed and it sounded like from the depths of hell itself.

"Fleeing wasn't my major in the Camorra forge, detective."

"I don't doubt that you can kill anyone who gets stupid with you. But you must not fight. We can't have the newspapers full of gargoyle victims when people are already so agitated now. Despite the court ruling, your standing in New York is very shaky."

"We will not tip the scales when it comes to the acceptance of our species", Grace said with a look at Dante that was as well-fired as one of her bullets.

"First, I want to know how the other gargoyles handle the people who approach them with murderous fervor."

"I'll find out in the next few days," Luca promised.

"Then secondly, Father taught Grace and me to kill with human means. Claws and teeth are only the means of last resort. So it won't be on my head or hers if bodies covered with claw marks show up here."

"Not mine anyway," Grace said softly, making the sign of the cross. Luca made an inner note at this gesture to find churches the next day that a gargoyle could get into more or less easily. Grace needed her regular prayers to come to terms with her past sins, and the best place for her to commune with God was in a Catholic church. In his suitcase was an Italian Bible (a parting gift from Don Armano) and an English edition which was already quite tattered itself from Eva's claws because she had translated this Bible word for word.

"And thirdly, these idiots - no matter if they are crazy locals or Quarrymen in clown costumes - can't get a hold of us. We're on top and they're waaaaay down in the streets."

"This city is bigger, MUCH bigger than Naples. Even as the economic and cultural center of southern Italy, Naples has a population of only three million. New York has nearly seven and a half million, and that's not even counting all the neighborhoods where the Gargoyles might now live. Area-wise it is the largest city in the world and your wings will get tired and eventually you will have to land. Look for houses that are higher than others around it. That should be reasonably safe. Never fly too low, here in America many ordinary citizens have a gun too."

"And in Naples they don't or what?" muttered Dante, and Luca wrinkled his nose. He knew there was quite a difference between what the authorities in Naples knew about the guns in circulation. And that what was really under every counter and in every bedside cabinet.

"In Naples, everyone who knew about you guys was scared to death. And those who didn't know about you never looked at the sky. Here it will be very different."

"These Americans. No respect for hellspawn. Ow!"

Again Grace had prodded him.

"We really need to get up in the air now. We're both getting restless," she said, pushing her brother to one of the walls where he began to climb up. "Thanks Luca. We'll take your advice to heart and if something happens to us or we find the other gargoyles I'll call you. Get some rest, you must be tired," she said and gave him goodbye kisses on both cheeks.

"You're not jet-lagged?" he asked, and she smiled indulgently.

"I feel like I've been chewed through. But every night is precious."

Then she began to climb herself.

"Do you have the map?" he called after her, and she paused again at first-floor level, pulling one of her hands out of the stone and fishing the folded-up city map out of her jeans (one of Dante's) and showing it to him before tucking it back in and climbing toward the roof.

Grace's actual "clothes" had been much (VERY MUCH) skimpier, and he was grateful that she'd traded them in favor of something less ... agitating. Partly so as not to frighten the other gargoyles, since she had seen that the female among them was NOT only wearing a bunch of SM leather straps, but also because she didn't HAVE to or WANT to frighten anyone else (Della Marra had known that what frightened most men even more than monsters were half-naked busty monsters). In fact, he himself had initially dismissed the first reports of gangsters talking about a "succubus", naked except for a few strategically placed belts, as perverted or drug-induced male fantasies. But like this, with jeans and a gray high neck bikini top that fit her really well, she looked wonderful. Even if that had been the most embarrassing purchase in Luca's life and the saleswomen - delighted that Luca didn't want the skimpiest outfit like most men who bought something for their girlfriend, but something practical, sporty - had "advised" him for an hour.

When both gargoyles were out of sight Luca took a deep breath. Now it was up to the two of them.

He prayed they wouldn't get shot down.

He hoped they would not clash with humans.

He hoped Dante would not kill anyone.

What he also prayed for was that they would quickly find the other gargoyles. But secretly, he wished they wouldn't.

Thanks for reading, Q.T. (Reviews (and kudos on AO3) are still welcome)