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Brood of a New Age

75.

Dante's evening-greeting-shriek echoed in the large conservatory, empty except for the plants and the seating area. Immediately he felt the hazy warmth around him, even sensed the warmth of the vanished sun on his wings and arms after his skin had been blown off. He stretched extensively and yawned loudly - which also echoed. That was another thing that bothered him. He had largely disliked the other gargoyles. But waking up in community, or at least having someone there when you woke up, was nice. This, what he had now... was often a little lonely. It was really not much different from his life in Italy. He had always woken up with his sister there but often they had gone off to do different things or jobs. Dante was good at being alone and good at doing his work alone. But ... his thoughts wandered back to the strange people he had been on stage with yesterday.

He still couldn't quite grasp it. He - on a stage. Ria had said they were his band. His friends. Dante briefly thought about what it would be like to be the only gargoyle, but to have something like friends. But the idea that maybe Ria would be with him right after he woke up to give some pep talk or talk to him about music. Or Vittorio, who was jumping around exuberantly and building air castles with his thoughts. Or Ron, who yesterday had already shown good signs that it was possible to have a bit of a spat with him without it seriously coming to blows ... all these thoughts made Dante, now in the solitude of the bright, beautiful, magnificent but very very empty house, smile and hurt at the same time. They were just fantasies. Such a thing would be no way for him. He was a mobster. A murderer or at least a torturer. He was good at that and as deviant as that sounded - that was his comfort zone so far. That had been his life and it was again now. The experience yesterday changed nothing.

What was he supposed to do? Throw away his "stable job", which he could fulfill with ease and which gave him the protective cloak of a family, to become a rock singer? Not even twelve-year-olds would come up with a storyline like that. Not to mention that you couldn't quit a mafia job as easily as you could quit a summer job at Foot Locker. Once you were in and knew certain things, the only way out was death. Your own death or that of the boss and ideally also the successor of this boss if you wanted to be on the safe side. A nice long prison sentence for all the heads of a syndicate was sometimes also good so that everyone lost interest in the pursuit of a renegade family member and one simply booked this loss as expenses and wrote it off.

He saw a plate on the couch next to his suit, pulled away the aluminum foil and saw a fresh piece of cake. With it was a small note with a child's heart painted in a scrawl. He grinned. Graziella was adorable all around - even to someone like him.

Dante ate the sponge cake with the pine nuts and powdered sugar right off the plate. It tasted really good and reminded him painfully of home again. He looked around. Why wasn't Graziella there to hand him the piece herself. He would have liked to praise her. He lit a cigarette and trotted down the second floor to her bedroom. He knocked - loud enough that she would have heard him if she had been awake, but quiet enough not to wake her if she was asleep. But when he slowly opened the door and stuck his beak into the room, she wasn't there. Maybe Maria or one of the other employees had taken her somewhere- maybe to a kid's birthday party or to some other bullshit.

Tony Dracon's newest employee had to start getting ready for work. Tonight he and some of the human goons would pay a visit to Slaughter's meth lab. He smuggled the stuff halfway across the country using his videotapes as a cover. Dante didn't know yet if Tony was just trying to send a message or if he wanted to take over the industry, but he should be at the freight yard in half an hour. The action wouldn't take long - either way. He stubbed out his cigarette in one of the big pots and buried the butt so the house dragon wouldn't see it. Something in here was different, but he couldn't put his finger on it, and it didn't bother him if it didn't affect him directly. He took off his jeans and slipped into his dark suit pants. His vest landed on the couch and when he picked up his shirt (remembering at the same time that he had to put on another one because he had torn the button off yesterday) he noticed that the button wasn't gone at all. Or it had been gone. And now the shirt was sewn. There was a handwritten note hanging from the fabric. Not a child's heart. Rather the opposite.

Mister Dante - and that with an exclamation point. Exclamation marks were never good!

Mister Dante, a kind written request to sew something would be more acceptable than just laying down your damaged clothing and expecting me to do it. I am NOT your servant. The wine in this house is NOT at your private disposal at any time. And the doors and cabinets in this house are not for you to drill your knives into or sharpen your claws on. If you need something like that Tony will surely get you a scratching post! Remember that you are not living here alone and are NOT in a hotel. Kind regards, Maria. P.S. The cake is from Graziella. In my estimation, you don't deserve a piece of it.

Dante laughed cackling at the message. "A scratching post! You got it, thunderstorm witch."

He retrieved a ballpoint pen from the coffee table and wrote on the back of Maria's love letter Mille Grazie for the shirt! with three exclamation points and pinned it to one of the upholstered cushions by the couch where Maria would surely see it in the morning, along with the emptied plate. Then he put on the shirt, taking special care not to rip the buttons off when buttoning it.

Dante lifted his eyes from his once again flawless shirt. And realized for the first time what he had noticed before as changed but what he had not been able to name. All the flowers or flowering plant parts were gone. Cut off, mostly sloppily. More sloppily than an adult would have done. He ran his hands through his hair in agitation. "Shit Graziella," he whispered, " -you want Maria to smash me to dust, don't you?"

.

.

He landed as silently as his wings allowed on the roof. He had circled around the house a few times, so high that no one could see him. To be really sure that no danger was threatening. He could have picked her up on the roof of her own house, but she had already refused on the phone. Because often her father's staff met there in the yard and they could have seen a larger shadow landing on the roof. There it would be easier to sneak out. When he saw already from above that there was no one on the roof, he still worried. Nashville was young and inexperienced and clueless in many things. That he had exposed the human child to this risk was foolish, albeit forgivable. That they, as adults, had not insisted on picking her up at her home, however, and instead she had to walk through evening Manhattan, was foolish AND irresponsible even if she had persisted and assured living only a few blocks away. He landed, straightened up with a massive intake of breath, and looked around in the glow of the yellowish fluorescent lighting, worry lines creasing his forehead. He didn't like this whole plan, which wasn't really a plot - of course not when it came from Katana, who knew how to bend Bushido rules without breaking them - but it wasn't quite playing with an open hand here either. He had to trust this clan member at this point that she knew how to proceed in order not to deepen the tensions in the clan and especially those of her mate with Nashville.

He perceived from the noisy cacophony of the city around him all at once close sounds. Approaching sounds. Shoes with hard soles on a fire escape. However, too quiet to be a heavy adult. Nevertheless - ancient gargoyle instinct - he disappeared behind the brick entrance of the staircase to see and assess the newcomer from concealment first.

A small, panting figure in a red cloak came into his field of vision, a wicker basket cracking under the weight of its contents in his small hands. The figure looked around without seeing him but it seemed to have perceived something, for its voice, hushed but worried, reached his ears.

"Nashville? Nash? Are you there yet?"

A low-key grumble, half relief, hab amusement erupted from his throat as he stepped from his cover just as the child turned to look in his direction again. He stopped under the gaze from her big eyes as if tendrils had shot out of the ground and were holding him. He heard the child gulp and could even hear her small, fast beating heart in the face of a being that, while a gargoyle like Nashville, had to be so much bigger and scarier to a small child than the youngest and most delicate member of his clan. After all, the Quarrymen had been striving for months to plaster the entire town with a less flattering photo of him that made even him uncomfortable.

He heard by the crackle as her small fingers tightened around the handle of the wicker basket that held a pie carrier and a beautiful bouquet of flowers, which looked so exotic as to be alienating and must have been very expensive in a flower shop. She looked up at him and although she was still standing almost two meters away, she had to tilt her head back.

He stared at the child as she stared at him. He was surprised - to say the least. A human child - yes. A girl - yes. But that he would meet such a lovely creature here - he had not imagined. She was not surreally perfection like a child of Oberon - like the Lady of the Lake or the Wyrd Sisters - but small asymmetries like the mole under her eye gave her something tangibly enchanting. She wore a spotless white dress with a flared skirt that came to below her knees, along with white tights and white patent shoes. Over all, a red vest with a hood, which she had pulled over her head, from which, however, left and right thick dark curls peeked out and gently blew in the wind.

Goliath was reading Nietzsche and Dostojewski, Shakespeare and Balzac, travelogues, historical novels and fantasy. But he kept getting his hands on books that anyone would say were beneath him or beneath his intellect. At the same time, he drew a benefit from almost all the fantasies that humans dreamed up. And the supposedly straightforward lessons of fairy tales, he found if not droll then mostly universally instructive as the characters were often placeholders for something else. And was he to be blamed that this particular fairy tale stole into his mind at this sight? The maiden with the red cape - an allegory for the child becoming independent and for the mistakes that are made in this process. The wolf as a symbol of the devious evil.

Oh, Grandmother, what big ears you have!

All the better to hear you with, my dear.

And Grandmother! What big hands you have!

All the better to hug you with, my dear!

But! Grandmother! What an enormous, scary mouth you have!

But NO- he was not a wolf. There were no wolves here. And this lovely Little Red Riding Hood would now be under his protection. Under the protection of the whole clan. If she was important to Nashville, she was important to everyone else. It would be immensely harder for the child and Nashville to see each other regularly as it was for Elisa and him (that was already cumbersome). But eventually, little by little, the girl's parents could be coaxed into the facts and convinced that the children were no threat to each other, and that it even benefited them if the child spent a few hours in a safe environment some evenings instead of being alone without any supervision - because obviously these parents were working beyond their means.

Goliath did what he had done a thousand years ago to a maiden to show his respect and manners (perhaps also a little to displease the people who denied him these two virtues without knowing him), swung out his mighty wing and flung it in a movement that blew the child's hair back over his chest so that it looked as if he were offering a courteous greeting with his wing alone. But in contrast to the at the time chilly, implacable princess Katherine, this girl showed a wonderfully broad smile.

We are approaching the traumatic event that will lead to the showdown. Many will not like this chapter, but I need it for the whole universe.

Thanks for reading, Q.T.