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Brood of a New Age

74.

Graziella jerked out of her sleep because a window banged. If she was still as woozy as she was earlier in the week, this wouldn't have happened to her. She could have missed a bomb hitting the room next door and not woken up. This way, though, she was able to slip out of bed, make it into her slippers, and was in the hallway just as Dante walked by.

"Buona notte, Dante," she said, smiling as the gargoyle she shared the house with turned around.

Immediately her smile disappeared.

"Did something happen?" she asked worried and instantly awake because his tie was torn and he looked somehow ... completely disturbed. He also had a scratch on his cheek. Had he gotten into a fight with someone? Had he gotten into trouble with any of Papa's other people? She knew that Mister Joey's sons loved to smash gargoyles and show their heads around. Her father seemed to think that was okay, even encouraged it. If any of Tony's people hurt Dante , Graziella wouldn't let that happen. The adult Gargoyle wasn't as close to her as Nash but he was kind of her friend too. As good as an adult could be a child's friend.

She came to him and took his free hand. In the other he carried a CD player with a dangling cord and big headphones.

"Did you have any trouble with humans? Quarrymen?" she inquired, and though her words were gentle, her eyes sprayed pure hatred and a desire for retribution.

Dante let out a laugh at that, even though he didn't feel like laughing. Or did he? Would he feel less torn if he broke into a manic fit of laughter like a madman now? The whole thing earlier in the club, now reduced to stardust by laughter and never thought of it again. Of that feeling.

"No quarrymen. No people giving me any trouble tonight. On the contrary," he muttered.

The child stroked his hand and when he lifted it, she snuggled comfortingly against him so he could stroke her soft, somewhat wild hair.

The gargoyle's tense posture relaxed somewhat because of her obvious compassion.

He smiled tiredly, seemed to think what to answer, then laughed softly as if something almost slipped out that would have been stupid.

He liked this little clueless yet smart person.

But he refused to settle into the role of responsible child-sitter - so far. Even though Graziella clung to him by the hour like peanut butter to jelly and he increasingly enjoyed the conversations with her in his native language (more so, in her cute Naples area hillbilly dialect) because she was so delightful and cheeky when she wasn't totally off her rocker. Like right now. No, responsible Dante really wasn't. She was just a kid and needed her sleep but he needed to talk to someone. And even if there had been adults around (human or non-human) she would still have been his first choice.

"Do you know where your old man's liquor cabinet is?" he asked.

"The bar?"

"I really need a drink."

Graziella didn't know where Tony's home bar was. But she knew the kitchen and storage room well. Dante examined the bottle of red wine that the child pulled out of one of the lower kitchen cupboards. It was only two-thirds full because Maria had put some in the spezzatino di manzo, but Dante shrugged. He didn't seem to have a problem with the fact that the bottle was unscrewed, but wrinkled his nose at the fact that it had a screw top and no cork. Nevertheless, he sat down on one of the high stools at the kitchen island and drank directly from the bottle in large gulps. Graziella wanted to tell him that it wasn't good to drink so much alcohol so quickly but she didn't dare because Dante was so odd. If she pestered him, he wouldn't say anything, or he would lie to her like adults did to children all the time. So she tried to be cool and unobtrusive and climbed onto the countertop next to the stove where she could dangle her legs. Her ribs still hurt but it worked.

"You had a bad night?" she asked, hoping that was a good, adult opening.

Which it probably was.

The gray gargoyle looked at her, not really grim (though she had learned that "grim" was simply his normal expression for almost any situation) but rather confused.

"I don't even know what my night was like," he admitted, staring at her as if hoping for an answer. She wanted to help him. She knew what it meant to have feelings that contradicted each other.

"Was the night good or bad?"

He took a deep breath.

"I think ... it was fantastic. But I'm so confused."

"About what?"

He put a hand to his face and thoughtfully stroked his scratch there with a claw.

"You know that -," he began, without looking at her "- when you think you're where you're supposed to be but you're still not satisfied? And you don't know why. And then you experience something that makes you feel ... completely different than before and it's wonderful and perfect but it's so DIFFERENT. But this time it is not a bad different. And I don't even know what to think about it."

Graziella waited a moment for Dante to tell her WHAT wonderful and perfect thing he had experienced. But nothing more came. But she also didn't want to push if he didn't want to say it.

"If it was wonderful and perfect what you experienced, you should try to experience it again," she said, feeling pretty smart and grown up.

"But if it was something that doesn't want to fit me at all? Doesn't want to fit a gargoyle at all?"

"Who decides?"

"What?"

"Whether it fits you? This wonderful and perfect thingy. Who decides what suits you?"

Dante looked at her questioningly. Then a smile tugged at his lips.

"I discovered a talent today that I had no idea how big it really was. And everyone was delighted with it."

"Sounds great to me. Did it make you happy?"

He expelled the air and seemed to think some more. Then he shook his head again as if just thinking about it was too much for him.

Graziella looked at the clock on the wall. It was half past three. She had slept better the last few nights. She still had aches and pains, but they were better and she wasn't so out of it during the day anymore since Dante gave her a quarter of a pill every night after awaking. Still, she had to go back to bed because she had to do something important tomorrow to prepare for an even more important night. That's why she tried to cut a long story short.

"If this talent made you happy, it's always better than mine."

"Yours?" The gargoyle's eyes widened, probably looking for something to distract him from his "problems". "What kind of talent do you have, bambina?"

Graziella smiled rather patronizingly, revealing to a uninformed witness for the first time the Kinship to Tony Dracon. Although Dante knew about it, of course, the sight was still disconcerting.

"See that calendar there on the door to the pantry?"

Dante glanced to where she was pointing. The DIN A4 sized calendar with the month of July 1997. Each day with a small box in which to write appointments or reminders.

"What about it?" asked Dante.

"Say one of the numbers. One between one and 31."

The gargoyle slid off the stool and strode over to the calendar, wine bottle in hand. He looked at it to find out what it had to do with her "talent."

"A number," the child pressed from behind.

"Okayokay, 13!" he muttered. And jumped back a yard in fright, catlike, as a knife landed in the calendar right in front of his beak and stuck there, vibrating.

"What the fuck!" he gasped out and was about to rant at the girl when he saw her grinning. A knife was missing from the knife block next to her. He looked at the calendar again. The knife was right in the box with the number 13.

A few seconds passed.

"27."

The next tool flew and hit where it was supposed to.

"One," he indicated. Then 15. Then 20. The knives got bigger and bigger. The last was almost a cleaver and landed in the seven as Dante indicated.

"Fuck," he muttered, smiling now too. "Now that's what I call a talent! If I could have done that at your age, my dad would have freaked out with pride and sent me out on assignments right away. And I perhaps wouldn't have put up with everything from my cousin."

Graziella's look had become unreadable, her smug smile gone, which had the same effect on Dante.

"I understand," he said. "You don't think that would be an appropriate talent for a little girl."

She grunted and looked down at her small hands. "Tony said he thinks it's great. He made a bet with his co-workers ... how well I could hit a target. And he gave me a lot of the money he won. But ... " She bit her lower lip.

"It doesn't make you happy to be able to do that."

"I don't know what it's for," she said.

"'Accuracy of aim can be pretty helpful,'" Dante muttered, and began pulling the knives out of the calendar and out of the wood underneath. Graziella, of course, didn't know what he was talking about.

"Being good at throwing sharp or dangerous things is not a good talent. It's just a trick that weird adults cheer about. Or ... with a skill like that, I could hurt others. But I don't want to do that. Not even... Quarrymen, I guess. Nashville and Maria both said they're just scared, normal people. I don't want to hurt anybody."

"Sometimes you have to hurt others to protect the ones you love," Dante said, wishing the bottle contained something stronger. Then he could blame his perhaps confusing or harmful comments on drunkenness now. But even without that, the words had to come out. "Sometimes you have to hurt one person to protect or help another. Sometimes you have to hurt someone to protect that very person with it. Or even sacrifice something yourself to make others better off later." The gargoyle tugged at his goatee, lost in thought, perhaps to silence himself. He had digressed. Of course, his fleeing the castle and under Tony Dracon's wing was not an act of self-sacrifice so that Grace could have a freer path to becoming the gargoyle she thought she had to be. That was purely an end in itself to find his own way. Eventually all this shit would hit the fan.

"I want to get stronger. But this skill doesn't help me with that."

"Maybe it will someday."

He came to her with all the knives and put one after the other back into the knife block.

"Why do you want to get stronger? Your dad's already pretty strong. Well - not strong strong but he has people who do everything for him and through them he's powerful. And no one would mess with you because of him either."

"And that's what sucks!" she said rather venomously. "I need to become strong myself so I can help myself and others."

She lowered her head under his gaze. She was probably spewing some pretty stupid stuff. With Nashville, that wasn't a problem. But Dante was an adult and had to think she was dumb.

He leaned against the kitchen counter next to her.

"So we both have talents that are weird."

"A weird talent for a gargoyle. And a weird talent for a little girl. But yours at least makes you happy."

"And yours might help you be stronger someday," he returned, taking the last sips from the bottle.

Graziella sighed and slid off the countertop.

"Maybe...I'm going to bed."

"Sure bambina. Do that. It's almost sunrise for me too." He glanced again at the rather ruined calendar. The wooden door underneath certainly didn't look any better.

"Maria's going to give you trouble for puncturing that door."

He heard Graziella in the hallway chuckling.

"I'll tell her you did it. She'll believe me more than you."

Dante laughed at the sassy perky girl - before he realized she was absolutely right!

.

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It was Saturday morning. Maria was still worried about having a real gargoyle as a houseguest, but she had to admit that it was half as bad as she had thought. At least there were no corpses or half-eaten animals lying around since Mister Dante lived here. And her little girl didn't seem to be severely traumatized or dreaming any worse than before - on the contrary. She seemed more rested than ever before. As if she had pulled all-nighters BEFORE the gargoyle appeared and slept better since he was here. Whereas he was hardly ever there at night - supposedly. In the first nights she had often sneaked back into the house because she herself had not been able to sleep. And had found Graziella peacefully in her bed and the gargoyle out and about. As it should be.

Nevertheless, her first thing every morning was to go to the conservatory to see if his statue was there. It was this morning. Mostly the gargoyle wore torn jeans and an open front vest to sleep, which gave him a wilder, though no more unkempt look as a statue. Wilder than anyway because of the attacking snarling poses he took - whatever was comfortable for gargoyles to sleep in. She was about to throw the My little pony blanket over him, as usual, when she saw the empty wine bottle and his suit lying on the couch. It was her good wine that she used for cooking because yes, you could taste the difference if you used cheap piss booze for it or something of higher quality. That everything boiled away from the wine was simply not true from Maria's point of view. And his suit! The tie was torn beyond repair and a button was missing from his shirt.

Maria grumbled as she lifted the shirt. She knew exactly what had happened. The gargoyle got drunk and didn't pay attention with his claws. And had left his good custom-made shirt - whoever was crazy enough to make this wild creature a custom suit - for the faithful housekeeper to sew. It matched the mess he had made in the master bathroom in the middle of the week. She didn't know how Mr. Dante had lived in Italy before, but she would teach him that she wasn't his damn servant and he wasn't a little prince in this house. Especially not when he made chaos and brought unrest into the house. The next time he stepped out of line, his blockhead would make acquaintance with her iron frying pan.

She carried the shirt to the first floor where her sewing basket was and heard noises from the kitchen for the first time. Was one of Tony's boys here? Normally they avoided coming into this house without Maria knowing, because they were aware that she would be annoyed and wouldn't spare with scolding and fuss. Grown men had no business in a house when a little girl was there alone. That was ... not okay. But instead of one or more adult people whom Maria had to scold, she found a little girl ... that she had to scold.

"What the hell, Graziella! What are you doing?" the housekeeper asked in horror, almost falling over at the state her kitchen was in.

"I'm baking," said Graziella, who was standing on a stool at the kitchen island, which was barely visible from all the baking utensils, cooking utensils, spilled ingredients. And Graziella, who was leaning over the stainless steel barrel of Maria's home stand mixer with a critical eye, looked as if the package of flour had exploded in her face. The child spoke without looking at her.

"Do we have pine nuts?"

"Graziella, here it looks like-"

The child glanced up with a frown on her face. "I know how to bake. Honestly! But my grandma taught me with grams-. And your cookbook says everything with cups! Now what's this? Every cup in this house is a different size, how are you supposed to know what cup size is meant?" Maria put down the shirt with a safe distance, strode to the scene of the devastation, and lifted up her once-good cookbook of classic Italian recipes. Milk splatters were on it and flour trickled off the pages. There was even a dictionary on the table because the child had probably been looking for the Italian names for the kitchen utensils mentioned in the book. Graziella stood on her stool with her arms folded, staring sulkily at the mushy mass in the mixer.

Maria didn't know if she should scold the child for doing something that would make her so much work and handling kitchen tools she didn't know how to use and with which she could have hurt herself badly. Soon she would have turned on the stove, of which she did not know exactly how it worked. What if she had stuck her little fingers into the barrel while the machine was running and the flat beater was spinning? At the same time, she knew that Graziella probably wouldn't be that stupid, but the worry and horror still remained. Whereby it was in a hard fight with the laughter that was stuck in her throat. Because for the first time her girl was behaving like a rash, careless child and was really "making trouble". Maria decided to laugh in agony while rubbing flour from the child's face with a wet towel.

"If you wanted a cake, I could have made you one. Any cake!"

"But I wanted to make it," Graziella said defiantly.

"For whom?"

"For ... friends."

"Oh, sweetie."

Maria smiled. She would probably never feel so much like a mother again like she did now. She was glad that Graziella had obviously made friends with the wives' children (even if she didn't know any of the brats except Sonny very well, and didn't feel the need to change that). Maybe the cake was just for Sonny and herself. Which Maria hoped not, because a whole cake for two kids - even if Sonny certainly had a healthy appetite - would give her a little girl with a bad tummy ache tomorrow.

"You could have asked me for help, you know that," Maria said, gently pinching the child's snub nose, who giggled at that.

"Can you help me?" She then asked, smiling shyly.

"Sure. We'll bake whatever you want. I'm sure we have a package of pine nuts in the utility closet."

She squirmed toward the storage closet, now really clutching her head in horror.

"For heaven's sake. The calendar!" She stepped up to the closet, lifted the calendar. "The door! ... That brute!" she spat angrily, taking off the ruined calendar and tossing it into the trash can.

"It was actually me, Maria," Graziella said, somewhat sheepishly.

She clicked her tongue. "Oh, come on, Graziella. It's sweet that you want to protect Mister Dante but he's a gargoyle and you're a kid. Besides, I've seen him play around with his knife. He's just ... I just need to housetrain him," she finished the sentence very quietly and very frustrated.

"Don't be mad at him," Graziella said, kneading her hands. Even in her hair there was batter.

"I'm not angry with him, my darling. What would you expect from a gargoyle. But ... I'll lock away all the alcohol in the future. Uhhh..." She made a face as she realized that with his claws and superhuman strength, Mister Dante would probably be able to smash any lock along with its accompanying cabinet. She had to reconsider her position that having a gargoyle in the house was no big deal.

I just need a few more filler chapters to prepare for the showdown sections towards the end. They are nothing special but cogs in my logic clockwork.

Thanks for reading, Q.T.