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Brood of a New Age

87

Nashville lay curled up on the floor of the cage, trying to ignore the three henchman Tony Dracons standing around the cage, gawking at him like he was an animal and talking about him or the other gargoyles like they were parasites. Most of all, he tried to ignore the fact that one of them had picked up a dead pigeon from somewhere, stuck it on a stick, and had been poking him with it for a while now. No matter how he twisted and turned, this one guy seemed really obsessed with him responding. But he wouldn't do him that favor again. Not after the guys had come in right after he woke up and he had snarled and tried to reach for them through the bars. Not after he had painfully learned that he was wearing a thing around his neck that gave him an electric shock when he got his head too close to the bars. Now he had his arms folded over his head but the guy with the pigeon carcass skewer wouldn't stop himself from stabbing it against his torso.

"Come on, you little monster! Show us your ugly face. Not hungry? Here's din-din."

"Gee Joey. You really are a sick bastard. What if these freaks don't eat dead animals at all?"

"Yeah. What if it has to be alive and wriggling." The other two guys laughed and this Joey guy laughed too but so somberly you'd think he cared about more than just "feeding" Nash.

"Man, like it doesn't piss you guys off too. First these critters spoil one deal after another for us, then we have to work with such a freak. And now Tony's sweetheart even has one of these as a pet. We'd be doing everybody a favor if we shot this ugly thing right away. Who's going to say no to a million from this Castaway psycho just so the little princess here can get her way?"

"Oh, you're just mad because this little princess punched YOUR little princess on the nose."

The other two guys laughed and Nashville, through a gap between his raised arms, saw this Joey pull the stick out from between the bars so abruptly that the spiked pigeon fell and landed in front of his beak with a lifeless plop. Joey stomped with the stick to his colleagues.

"Stop laughing," he barked as the two of them strolled out of the garage.

He stayed behind, fists visibly balled in annoyance. Once again he looked at the cage with a disgust in his eyes that said a lot.

"The boss is so smitten with the little wench that he doesn't care about anything else. A gargoyle as a pet...as if a thing like you would ever walk on a leash. All this shit is going to blow up in Tony's face if no one does something about it."

Nashville didn't let on that he heard or understood what the human was whispering. He saw him pull a phone out of his pants, dial, and talk to a Dino on the phone. Dino ... Dracon? Nashville thought this one was not in Tony's good graces. Or vice versa. The conversation lasted less than thirty seconds.

Joey approached the cage one last time, and Nash was almost glad that the spaces between the bars were barely large enough for an adult to reach through when he felt the human looming over him. Even if he had dared to raise his arms and look up, he could barely make out more than a silhouette. They had turned on all the lights in the garage. The spotlights above his cage, however, were set to bathe that whole area in harsh, painful-to-Gargoyle-eyes light from every damn angle. Despite the iron plate that formed the top "lid" of his cage, he was spotlighted from all sides. This limelight hurt, even more than the dull ache of his healed skull where someone had hit him last night and more than the pulling sensation of his already regrowing teeth - for whatever reason they had pulled teeth from him last night.

"Be glad you're in your cage. You won't like the alternative, you abomination!" hissed Joey, kicking the bars so hard Nash winced and walking away. Shortly after, the roar of an engine was heard and a car drove away. Then the human walked out, too, and a few moments later Nash heard the roar of an engine and the sound of a car driving away.

For a few more moments, he lay cramped. Then, when he was sure he was finally alone, his muscles relaxed. But with it came no peace and no relief. Just this all-swallowing anguish, so much more painful than any physical pain. Nashville sniffed and forbade himself to cry. But he felt so miserable. Because he was in a cage. Real bars instead of walls, a real, painfully tight electric shock collar, glaring lights that deprived him of the shadows and darkness he so craved. Everything robbed him of the air to breathe, everything pressed on his head and chest that he thought his heart would burst. But he knew in his core that these external circumstances were not really the cause of this more mental than physical pain. Everything, imprisonment and imminent death, he could have endured. If it had not been for Graziella. At the thought of her, a whimper came from his mouth and he clutched his beak with both hands so that it would not happen again. But the thought of her made it so hard for him. Broadway had been right. His dad had been right.

The image of Graziella jumping into Anthony Dracon's arms. How he had held her in his arms and they had smiled at each other, how she had showered him with kisses and expressions of love with that mouth that Nashville had wished to kiss himself! How could he have been so blind? At least after it had come out that she was Tony Dracon's daughter ... how could he not see it? He didn't want to see the danger. Because he had fallen in love with Graziella. And because he thought she would ... somehow ... love him, too. And HOW fond she had been of him, Nashville had seen yesterday.

She had shown her true intentions. For the first time. Her eyes! How they had beamed. The tears of happiness that had been in them. He had been so horrified in those last minutes before sunrise by her appearance and by her behavior - which contradicted everything he had thought he knew about her - that he had simply watched. She had been so beautiful and confident, had felt so comfortable in her joy and superiority, and yet he had not recognized her in those moments. Because she had looked so much like Dracon that he had felt almost sick with fear. Her eyes had sparkled - with excitement now to possess a gargoyle of her own. Not as a friend who could run away from her. But as a pet, as a slave, as whatever. In a cage. His cage Joey had called it. His chains. His collar. How could he assume that a girl like her would want an ugly deviant monster like him as a friend. As an equal. Catch the ball! And on a leash he should walk - probably on all fours! On a LEASH! And she had patted his head as if he were a dog!

At the mere memory of her words he involuntarily croaked long-drawn soft sounds. Lonely hatchling cries to attract adults who would free him, press their brow bones against his, and hug him tightly-very tightly. Although the part of his brain that wasn't just instinct told him that none of the adults were around to hear his calls. And none would come either-at least not until it was too late. Now that this Joey had called Dino Dracon, someone would soon come to kill him. His clan didn't know which Dracon house he was in. Even if they realized tomorrow or the next night that he was gone and they split up, they wouldn't be able to track down and search all the hiding places. And he didn't even know if he was still at Graziella's mansion in Manhattan. He had been unconscious-perhaps they had taken him away.

Shaking desperately, Nashville again felt for the collar, but when he tried to break it, he had received a shock that had sent him to the ground. At the back of his neck he felt a cover that hid something, but he couldn't get his claws under it without being shocked. And each shock left him half unconscious and his muscles spasming. Not as bad as an absence but enough that he couldn't do anything with his hands. And there was a hole in the side of the collar. Like for a small key. It was hopeless. He was really nothing but a stupid hatchling! The adults, and especially his dad, had been right. He had been fine. Fantastically even. He had been lonely but so were a lot of people. He should have just accepted it and tried harder to distract himself. He could have lived that way. Without this pain that had brought him the acquaintance with Graziella Dracon.

It was as if he could sense her smell. Her human child fragrance of milk and warmth. All lies. Everything only in his head. Even now his head was still playing tricks on him. Although he would soon die. In these points, the images of his vision would come true. The blood - would be his. And the laughter - Tony Dracon's. And as if that was not bad enough, he now imagined he could hear Graziella's voice. Like a human child who didn't want to go to school in the morning, Nash pulled his wing over his head instead of the blanket.

"Nash."

No, he didn't want to hear her voice. He didn't want to think about her and her betrayal anymore. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and curled up even more into a ball.

"Nash? Nashville, can you hear me?"

He felt a warm hand on his wing and, startled at the tangibility of his mixture of horror vision and wishful dream, jerked his wings up so that they flapped against the bars. He jumped up and retreated to the other end of his cage. In shock at suddenly seeing Graziella kneeling in front of his cage, he didn't notice the barely perceptible vibration that signaled the activation of the shock mode, and less than two seconds later he was forced to the floor by an electric shock that made him roar and his eyes light up. Panting and gasping, saliva running from his mouth, he lay there for a moment before leaning on his elbows and rising to a half-kneeling position. But unfortunately, when he looked up, Graziella was still there. Which probably meant that she was not a mirage. She was real. And had probably come to marvel at her pet.

She seemed quite shaken by the light show with the electric shock. She looked tired. And cheesy pale. Like a sallow, otherworldly figure of light, which was emphasized by the spotlights and her unaccustomed dark clothes, including the unaccustomed ponytail.

"Nashville. Is-is everything okay?" she asked softly, and if Nashville hadn't known what she was really like since yesterday, he would have loved the "concern for him" in her eyes.

"It ... isn't everything okay," he croaked, trying to sound more resentful than hurt. How did his dad do that?

"Nash, I know it looks bad," she said, "but don't be scared. Everything's going to be okay."

"'So,' is it going to be? You should know, being Anthony Dracon's daughter."

For two or three seconds Graziella looked puzzled. Then she dared to smile at the situation and reached aside.

"I brought you food." She slid a cup through the bars and two large pieces of baguette topped with tomatoes and some kind of meat. Without really wanting to, Nash's mouth watered. Now he realized how thirsty and hungry he was. But no - he turned his head away. And his eyes fell on the carcass of the pigeon. Wherever Joey had found it, it was no longer fresh. No blood had run out of the hole with which he had impaled it on the stick and that now looked like a frayed bullet wound. But it was also not yet so rotten that a hungry gargoyle would have categorized it as no longer edible. Nashville grumbled lowly.

"Your dad's people were about to feed me," he said, enjoying Graziella's repulsed face as her eyes fell on the dead pigeon beside him.

"I'm so sorry about that, Nash. The others are assholes. And Joey's the biggest asshole. But ... I had to wait until they left. Otherwise, I'm sure they would have called Maria about me walking around here at night. I'll...I'll get you out of the cage soon. Honestly, I promise you!" she said, sounding really desperate and pleading.

"I'm not that fast through the leash training," he joked mirthlessly. Her voice alone brought tears to his eyes. How could someone who had looked at him with such insane pride of ownership last night speak to him so lovingly? As if she were playing a role. Like maybe she had been playing a role all this time, all these nights since she knew he was a gargoiyle. And she made it worse by reaching through the bars, probably expecting him to come up to her like a good little gargoyle, grab her hand and let her pet him.

He powerlessly slapped her hand away.

"Don't touch me," he grumbled, wanting to curl up again in hopes that if he wasn't interesting, she would lose interest.

"What?"

"Go away, Graziella. I don't want to be fed. Not by them and not by you. Go to bed where you belong."

He heard her get up and move outside his wing cocoon. But the door didn't slam. instead, he suddenly had her hand on his head.

He had wanted to hold back. Didn't want to give her the satisfaction of freaking out. But it was all her fault. It was her fault that he couldn't stop sneaking out of the castle. It was her fault that he had been a bad boy, even committing a crime by letting the birds loose. It was her fault that he had been in Times Square and nearly beaten to death. It was her fault that he had fought with his dad and his whole clan, that he had betrayed them, that he had snuck away and was caged and would die, causing a war between gargoyles and Dracon Syndicate and turning all the humans of the world against gargoyles- so much so that they would all be wiped out. And it was her fault that he had fallen in love with her, fallen in love with a lie, and now that he saw more clearly, thought his heart would break. And he wanted to hurt her like she had hurt him.

"I told you not to touch me!" he yelled angrily, lunging at the bars, and Graziella fell back as his shock collar came to life and white-blue electric bolts shot along his body, making him shriek and collapse.

"You need to stay away from the bars, Nash!"

He spat out metal-tasting saliva.

"So? My mistress's first order?"

"Huh?"

"Now you have what you wanted. What you've always wanted. You're already comfortable in your role as my owner, aren't you?"

She looked at him in horror. And for the first time tonight, her sweet child facade broke and she showed something very close to disgust and revulsion. Oh yes, Nashville was much more familiar with those facial expressions. "What are you babbling about!" she asked under her breath, and it sounded like a threat.

"Ain't that the truth! Great conception! Your own monster. That protects you from mean boys and Quarrymen or the creatures under your bed. But let me tell you something. I'm the monster you should be afraid of."

"That wasn't real, Nashville! I was fooling the grown-ups. For you! So they wouldn't hurt you. Do you know how yucky that made me feel? How awful it was for me to have to adore Tony like that, when the truth is I wanted to claw his eyes out!"

Her voice had grown louder and he adjusted his.

"Nobody can act like that, Graziella!" he spat back at her.

"They always do on TV!"

"'Cause they're actors! You ... are just a girl."

"I stopped Mr. Glasses from shooting you."

"Only for me to spend my life as an animal in a cage. Stared at and poked with sticks by criminals and used as a plaything by their filthy spawn."

"I would never let the other children-"

"I'm not talking about OTHER KIDS!"

Graziella looked at him with widened doe eyes unable to immediately fire anything back. She couldn't believe he had said that. She couldn't believe he thought everything she had said yesterday in front of the adults was true. Nash clasped the bars with his hands, careful to keep his head away. Threateningly, he let his claws scrape across the iron, wishing he were an adult. Goliath would have made short work of that cage. Broadway, too. Probably even his father. He snorted, snarled as inhumanly as he could, and was highly pleased with how deep and grim his voice sounded.

"I don't care what you say to Tony, Graziella. I'll never be your docile pet."

The little girl gasped and stamped her foot.

"You're talking crap, Nash! You don't get anything! I just-"

"I do get it! You Dracons think you can break me but you'll break your teeth on me. Gargoyles are warriors - never your lap animals! Except for the fact that Joey just spoke to Dino on the phone and they'll probably put a bullet through my head tonight. At this point, I don't think the little doll is getting what she wants."

"Nashville! You're the dumbest boy on the planet!" screeched Graziella, her face finally colored with anger.

"I probably am, if I trusted you!" screeched Nashville. "But YOU are the stupidest girl ever. A stupid human child. You never understood what gargoyles are really like. Do you want to see it? I'll show you."

He grabbed the pigeon, grinned maliciously even though tears burned in his eyes, made sure she had a good look at everything and bit into the carcass. Graziella's angry face instantly went blank with horror. He heard quills breaking, skin ripping, bones cracking, and when he tore a bite out of the body - almost tearing the animal apart because a normal bite from a gargoyle with a beak could be quite enormous - it was as if the tearing of blood vessels and tendons and the popping of cartilage was more inside his head than outside his body. As if with this act, which he imposed on himself but which he forced his former girlfriend to witness because it seemed impossible for her to take her wide eyes off him, something was tearing inside him.

Although he was nauseous and a pigeon had never tasted more bitter and disgusting, he delayed the act of swallowing, chewing sloppily that he knew she saw the bloody downy mass in his beak. When he finally swallowed, he took another bite, now of one of the wings basically just getting feathers in his beak. But that was what it was all about. He arranged the scratchy little suckers in his beak, leaned forward as far as he could with the collar, and spat two dozen feathers at the other kid, right in her face. That finally made her fall over. She toppled backwards and gasped for air, feathers of various sizes slowly sinking to the ground around her. She even had a few bloody and saliva-damp feathers stuck in her hair, on her face and on her dark hoodie.

Nashville laughed bitterly even though he wanted to howl aloud and forced himself to grin broadly, aware that blood and saliva were running from his beak.

"That's how Gargoyles are. That's how I am! And I swear to you, Graziella Dracon, if they ever let me out of this cage and you try to lead me around on a leash, you will envy this pigeon! You hear me? You will envy it! I hate you, human! I'll bite you if you touch me again. My clan will find you, drag you out of your bed and tear you apart!"

Graziella had crawled backwards during his speech, out of the brightly lit cone of light and thus out of his sight. He heard her jump up and got louder again that she could hear him even as she was out of the garage and the door slammed shut. "I'm going to hurt you!" he yelled after her as he sank to the ground and pressed his claws into the iron floor. "I'm going to hurt you so bad, Graziella Dracon, that you'll wish you were dead. Just like I wish I would be dead."

Then he curled up, hiding from the world with his wings, and cried.

.

Where Sonny had had extreme trouble obeying his boss's order not to interfere or show his face during Graziella's "conversation" with the gargoyle child, he now chased after her as she ran into the house. But she didn't rush into her room to throw herself on the bed crying because she had apparently had a fight with her ... whatever he was and that little monster had done and said really disgusting shit. Instead she stopped in the kitchen yanked one knife after another from the kitchen block and hurled one after another with hell for leather at the already punctured door to the storage closet. Each time she let out a bloodcurdling scream of rage. Until all ten knives, including the cleaver, were deep in the wood and the little girl just stood there in the kitchen, breathing heavily and trembling. With her head down and her fists clenched.

Sonny took a deep breath. And then another. And another.

And then he found words, and they weren't even good.

"Wow. That was. I didn't think they were like that. He did- the pigeon - wow."

Slowly, the girl who had her back to him raised her hands to her face, put them over her eyes. Now she took a deep breath, and it sounded like a tremendous effort. Still she did not speak. Sonny stepped up to her, as concerned as he was unsettled.

"Graziella? Graziella, say something. You're scaring me. ... You ... if you want to have a good cry, that's okay. That was really scary just now."

She whirled around and again Sonny backed away from the younger and weaker child. Again, that look that so contradicted her appearance. Not resentful. Not even hateful. Her smile was a snarl even if she didn't have every muscle in her face under control right now.

"I'm not crying! I have to stop whining. My Nonna said that, Tony, Dante said that. I'm not crying." She turned and stomped out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Sonny followed her.

"Dante!" She shouted loudly upstairs. "Dante!" She yanked open the door to the winter garden. Then the one to his guest room. Then she ran the up the stairs, even looking for him on the roof. After three breathless minutes and many calls, they were back downstairs, Graziella now huffing and puffing like a small steam boiler.

"He's not here," Sonny commented on the obvious just to get her talking as she trudged back into the kitchen.

"Yeah. He's not here."

"Maybe he's out for Tony."

"We can't count on him. After what he did to me last night."

"What did he do?"

"Never mind. But we can't do it alone."

"What?"

"Free Nashville."

"You still want to free him."

"Of course."

Sonny stroked his frizzy, almost orange hair, snorting.

"... Okay, bossgirl. Tonight, then. If Joey really did put Dino on Tony's trail, we'll have to be quick. That snitch. If Dino gets involved Tony will buckle if he's smart enough not to risk a war within the family. No gargoyle is worth that. And neither are you or I worth it to them. That means before the adults get involved, we have to get him out of there."

Graziella's smile had something spiteful about it even if it didn't lose its determined note.

"I'm going to free Nashville. He hates me now. But I'm going to prove to him that I'm NOT a stupid little girl. That I'm not like Tony and I'm not like Dino. After that he can do what he wants. We don't have to be friends - if that's not what he wants. But I'm going to prove to this idiot with his ... dinosaur brain what I'm capable of. Even if I am a Dracon." She grabbed the phone receiver in the kitchen and searched the magnetic board with her eyes where phone numbers of craftsmen, delivery services or whatever hung.

"What now?"

"I'm going to call a cab. But -"

Her lower lip was already protruding when she seemed to notice that there was no cab company among the many numbers. Why should there be. If there was no lack of one thing on the estate, it was vehicles.

"Shit," she muttered, slamming the phone back down on the fork. "Next phone booth, then," she growled.

"Actually -" Sonny said, "-I could help there."

.

Sonny turned on the light in one of the other garages. They had given the one where Nashville was incarcerated a wide berth. Sonny even imagined that he heard whimpering and crying coming from it, but he didn't let on, and if Graziella heard, she didn't let on either. This particular garage was more of a storage room. Full of boxes, furniture disassembled or covered with blankets and sheets. Sonny lifted two boxes to the side.

Graziella watched him do it, irritated. She didn't think Sonny would find a cab here.

"You saw my room at my house?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

"Well. My parents managed to take away pretty much everything I enjoyed."

He lifted another box aside in which there was metallic clanging. Then he pushed away some folded beer tables with his hip, heaved another party tent out of the way, and then stood in front of something covered with a yellow water-stained tarp.

"They pretty much took everything away from me," he said, looking again at Graziella to be aware of her full attention, putting his hands on the tarp and pulling it away with a whoosh.

"This is the only thing I was able to keep safe here, thanks to Maria."

For the first time tonight, Graziella's smile was as genuine as it was devilish.

.

The engine howled squawking in sync with Sonny's tiny hand movements at the throttle. Despite her hood and even though Sonny's back shielded most of the wind from the ride, her hair, which the hood had been unable to grasp, was tangled. It was no comparison to gliding. But incredible nonetheless. Graziella clung to Sonny's T-shirt to keep herself from being jerked sideways on the narrow seat at every turn and tossed up at every bump in the pavement. Sonny had wanted to give her his helmet but she had refused. He was sitting in the front, after all. It didn't scare her. For someone who had already been carried 500 meters up in the arms of inhuman creatures, this was an almost ridiculous risk. Nevertheless, her heart raced at this new experience.

Only four weeks ago she had been thrilled to be allowed to sit in the passenger seat of a car. Now they were racing through Manhattan under the deafening rattling noise of a 1991 HONDA XR250L, sometimes reaching 70 or 80 mph. Sonny had the machine under control, letting it roar to shoo stray pedestrians aside or making abrupt maneuvers to meander between the crawling cars of evening traffic. Graziella heard, over the four-stroke engine's occasionally shrill nagging, outraged shouts and constant honking by the dozen. Sounds of which she never knew whether they were really triggered by a law transgression on Sonny's side or simply due to huffy acts of defiance because of their faster pace. She didn't care. This was a matter of life and death. This was about Nashville. He hated her - but she was the best he had. She was Graziella Dracon. She was strong. And she would triumph. Against the wickedness of the world and even against Nashville's stupidity.

Boom! Gosh, I sat on that chapter for a long time - almost three days. But ... has turned out quite okay I think.

My dragon-like knightress is on her way, although the maid in distress - er, the gargoyle in distress - has quit her friendship. Let's see what my other knight is up to.

Thanks for reading, Q.T.