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Brood of a New Age

89.

"Oh boy. You sure got yourself in a mess there."

Nashville opened his burning eyes and blinked hard. His cage was so intensely lit that the rest of the room was in deep dark shadows. He heard the typical snapping sound of a Zippo lighter and saw a cigarette holder light up. The fact that he had spent the last hour crying and howling with rage and anguish at Graziella's true colors didn't make it any better. He was so angry... but the grief for Graziella was just as great. For the Graziella he had thought he knew. He knew he was probably mourning a girl who had never really existed ... but it still hurt.

"Who-?" began Nash.

"We don't have much time," the voice said with urgency. "We both have to play the roles of our lives now so get a grip. The humans with their cars will be soon here so we have to rely on their gullibility. They have to believe that you're a stupid little animal and I'm - well - what I am. They'll be coming in soon. You must really hate me. But don't worry, I'll make it easy for you. Things like this have never been hard for me."

The speaker took a drag on the butt and smoke was blown into his light-filled area. Nashville sniffed and recognized the brand. "Da-Dante?" he asked although he had already recognized this unique voice. The dark figure puffed deeply as if it had to brace itself for an upcoming strain, then Dante's voice sounded quite different from a moment ago. Not strange, but chilly and more indifferent.

"Yes … and no, kid."

"Can you come into the light, please?"

The gray scarred gargoyle covered the distance between them by circling the cage once. Nashville sat up and followed him with his eyes. Then Dante stood in front of his cage.

"I don't see any major injuries. That Maria is one hell of a woman. That's the way a lady of Italian blood has to be. You're lucky there's nothing else physically wrong with you."

"They pulled my teeth."

Dante smirked in a strange way without commenting that. So Nashville didn't either and hung his head sadly.

"My injuries - are more psychological."

"Oh, I know the type. Hurts, doesn't it?"

Dante made that face again between being pissed off and lacking interest while he took a drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke in Nashville's direction. Even if some of the others didn't understand him, maybe even loathed him, Nashville was grateful for any help.

"I'm so glad you found me, Dante." Still a little dizzy from his last electric shock, he put his hands through the bars. But Dante made no step towards him, no movement to take a look at the cage and smash it. Maybe he didn't understand what he wanted. He was, after all, as he had said, not really a team player.

"Could you?" asked Nash, and knocked on the bars.

"I don't think so, Nashville," Dante muttered.

Nashville grinned. "Don't worry. I only get shocked when the collar gets too close to the bars. There on the door hangs a padlock. You can crush it. The cage itself is not under power. You've got nothing to worry about."

"I know. Watched the show earlier. I'm a sneak too. Just like you, ninja boy."

"You've got to get me out of here."

Dante scratched his beak but his answer came too quickly for him to have really thought about it. He was just stating an opinion he had already formed.

"I'm certainly not getting you out of there."

"Why?"

"Too complicated to explain it to you. In short, and until yesterday, that wouldn't even be a lie ... I've got a thing going on here right now."

"A thing?

"So business-and personal. I'm building up something here right now, and getting you out would mess it all up for me."

"I don't understand. You - you're one of us, aren't you?"

Dante chuckled, and it sounded cold and gruesome, like something out of a gangster movie.

"You think I'm one of you? Then you're the only one who thinks that. Your piss noble family in their castle in the clouds thinks I'm an asshole at best, and a potential killer at worst. And you know what - they're right. A skunk can't shed its stripes. At least, I can't." Dante paused, licked over his mouth, past the side of his beak, and looked insistently at Nashville. "I think I'm better off with gangsters. They appreciate my skills. Everything I'm good for - apparently. I want a family again. They're not really Italian or Camorra anymore but they're the closest. I work for them and I can at least get a little of my old life back with Dad."

"Your father ... the hunter?"

"My father ... the leader of the most powerful Camorra family in the Naples region. So ... definitely a hunter of sorts ... although he left the hunting to me and Grace."

Nashville swallowed. THAT, of course, explained a lot. Dante continued to speak undisturbed in that smoky melodic voice that could be so much more than it was. The gray one seemed calm but intent on explaining himself.

"Whereas Grace was never really into it. Truth be told, 70 percent of the kills the family assumed she made came from me. I'm nowhere near as good as she is but humans are SO slow and SO easy targets. I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell the clan what we did in Italy. Not for me ... but Grace has a real chance of being accepted into your do-gooder club." For the first time, Dante's expression turned bitter as he lowered his eyes. He stubbed out his cigarette on the floor of the cage and lit another.

"My suffering was physical and psychological - through Guiliano, Rocco, and yes, probably the jobs. But although Grace was largely spared torture, her suffering was always different. Since the first lethal hit. A ... spiritual suffering. Universal - encompassing. She has what was beaten out of me long ago - a heart and a conscience. Even if she doesn't find a partner in your clan - she can live with that. I'd rather-" he rolled his eyes with a disgusted expression, "-that her pelvis never disengages. The mere idea - bwähhh. Though I wouldn't mind becoming an uncle."

Nashville wrestled a wry smile from his face.

"She did seem to get along well with Lexington."

"Oh, sweet youth. Grace is NOT Lexington's type. I can tell you that. I sensed that right away when I mistook the Gremlin for a kid and hugged him close. Man I almost threw him off me when I realized THAT."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Dante smirked.

"You don't have to," he said cryptically, then turned serious again. " The point is, Grace is trying to get along with everyone. She's trying, she's showing remorse, and she's aiming for a lifetime of reform. She wants to be, and can be, one of the good guys. I'm not."

"That's not true, Dante," Nashville croaked, and Dante grinned. He crouched down in front of Nashville, reaching through the bars not to break his collar, however, but to give his hair a rough tousle.

"I like you a lot, Nash."

"Then get me out of here, please! The Dracons will kill me. Or ... or maim me and sell me."

"It won't come to that," Dante remarked silently. And all at once his ears perked up. He seemed to hear something Nash didn't yet, which might be due to his head throbbing from electric shocks and crying.

Nashville slid close enough to the bars that he again felt that sickening tingle on the back of his neck just before his collar struck; he backed away instantly. Like a pavlovian dog. Just like the humans had said. He was a quick learner. To his relief, the tingling disappeared, leaving only the dull sense of constant threat.

"So you're going to get me out of here?" He asked hopefully.

"No. Told you I can't … " His smile became vicious as if alone with that he wanted to torture the trapped child. Although his words hurt just as much. "Besides... you do currently have a... protected status. As a pet of the little princess."

Nashville's expression turned angry.

"She'd like it all too well if I were to sit in a cage forever. She probably thinks she'd have a friend AND a pet all at once. How CAN she see me like that? I thought we were equal friends!"

"You feel betrayed," Dante observed.

"Do you see that I'm in chains! Do you see that?" the boy asked indignantly, tugging at his collar.

Dante shook his head.

"You're not the brightest light on the Christmas tree, are you?"

Nashville looked at him uncomprehendingly.

Dante growled. "It's because of HER that you're still alive, you blockhead. She did the best thing a little kid could do. And I have to say ... I recognize some tremendous acting talent there. She got you big time. The rest of the Dracons - oh, I'm not so sure yet. But if she ever ascends the throne - that'll be fun. I've got something to look forward to there."

"You're out of your mind," Nashville whispered, aghast. He wanted to scream at Dante what he thought of him and his mobster attitude. But when he stood up-which he hadn't done in hours-he stumbled forward and fell against the bars. The electric shock was short but violent. Then he lay on the floor, gasping and shaking.

Dante had watched the spectacle with frustrated indifference.

"Calm down, Nashville." He raised his arm, removed his cigarette from his beak, and slid his hand through the bars. "Here, take a deep drag. It'll calm your nerves and make the pain fade into the background a little."

Briefly, Nashville considered biting the treacherous gargoyle who spoke in riddles. But the metallic taste in his mouth, his aching teeth that appeared to be all cracked ceramic right now, his thoughts burned out of his head. He wanted something to soothe him. Something to make Graziella's betrayal hurt less. He lifted his head to the cigarette Dante held out to him, puckered his lips as best his beak would allow, and took a deep drag of the smoke into his lungs.

"That's okay," Dante murmured almost gently. "And keep it in your lungs as long as you can. Don't cough it out right away, try to hold it." A large cloud of smoke billowed from his beak as Nashville couldn't take it anymore and coughed loudly. Dante had pulled his hand back and was whispering while the boy was racked with coughing spasms as if he'd just been waiting for enough noise from Nash to make the following known.

His voice was little more than a murmur but Nashville - trained for years to follow whispered commands and even hand signals - read his lips more than heard him say:

"Be angry Nashville. You have to let them see that we are not on the same side. Repeat as soon as you see them: Why are you doing this? How can you betray us?"

After a few seconds, when Nashville's body calmed down-and yes, his head too - he saw someone standing in the doorway behind Dante. A shadow that was too compact and uniform to be anything but human.

He croaked, came back to his knees with difficulty, and then glared at Dante. He didn't know what was going on here but he played along for once - and more than that, simply because he felt like it.

"How can you be like this?" he said in a disgusted voice that echoed in the room. "How can you betray your fellow species like that? You turncoat!" With that, he pulled up snot and spat a full load at Dante's beak. One second, the humans still at his back, a surprised grin flittered across his face, then his eyes blazed. He jumped up, reached through the bars, grabbed Nashville by the shirt that was tearing under his claws, and shook him so that his teeth clanged against each other.

"You little monster!" Dante rumbled, and suddenly he had a thin knife in his hand and at Nashville's beak to scrape the skin there as if with a peeler.

"Nanana. Dante," came out of the darkness of the room. "Is that any way to treat guests of the Dracons? And a fellow kin, too."

Dante rocked his head back and forth.

"Don't lump me in with them anymore, boss."

He let go of Nashville's shirt before turning to the approaching humans, and the young gargoyle slammed to the floor of the cage.

Dante let his knife snap shut again and stashed it in one of his splints.

"That little freak wouldn't have been worth cleaning my knives after."

"Finally, someone who sees things my way," Tony Dracon returned cheerfully, handing Dante a handkerchief. The Mafia gargoyle accepted it with a polite thank you and rubbed the moisture from his beak. Then Dante looked down at Nashville with a stare that was so much haughtier, so much frostier, so much more callous than Tony Dracon's or Glasses' or that of the three other men who had entered the garage. A look that was pure scorn.

"What are you going to do with this little asshole here?"

"Well. The doll thinks it might become her pet. And what an image boost it would be for the Dracons if I, or even the kid, were to walk him around on a leash. The other families would go crazy with jealousy. Or imagine if we could train him to be a decent mobster like you are."

Dante pulled up his snot and scowled at Tony. "Already looking for my successor?"

Dracon waved him off and put his arm over his shoulder, smiling. "Oh, those are just idle fantasies. All of them are so disgustingly moral and honorable. You are one in a million. You belong to us."

A smile spread across Dante's beak even if it looked more bitter than happy. "As I have already explained, young gargoyles are little more than obedient scouts for the pack leaders of the clans. You have just seen it," he said with a condescending glance at Nashville, who simply decided to punctuate the mobsters words by growling at him from the ground, eyes lighting up.

"Still, I say it's going to bite you in the ass if you keep that one in your house. I don't care what your little girl wants or says - get rid of him."

"Yeah, I don't imagine taming him will be impossible. Break him and re-educate him. But the others would hunt us if we kept their cub. Some of my men would like to smash him and lay his head out somewhere for the other monsters to find. Sorry about that word."

Dante laughed. "Oh, I don't feel addressed. They eat pigeons and rats, man. They ARE monsters."

"Never tried a pigeon yourself?" asked Glasses with a disgusting smile.

"Glasses! Dude. I'm Italian!" groaned Dante indignantly as if that was the ultimate answer. Which it must have been because people were laughing and patting him on the back.

Nashville turned his head away in disgust. The way Dante had just spoken - even though he seemed to contradict himself constantly, both in words and manner - was awful. And the way he was acting now. Standing in the midst of the mobsters - there was no doubt that he was one of them. Demona was tainted in so many ways in her thinking. She had committed horrible crimes and was not even about to show remorse in this century. But she had never - as far as Nashville knew - allied herself with humans she believed had truly "evil" intentions or who wantonly hurt other gargoyles. She considered herself too good to go on eye-level with criminals. She sometimes let them work for her - but not on a first-name basis. The same could not be said of Dante. He wallowed in the dregs of that society and enjoyed it. No morals, no conscience.

He winced as Dante kicked the cage and his claws made a clattering sound.

"Maria must have fed him," he said, looking at the mug knocked off the platform and the sandwiches thrown away in anger. He wrinkled his nose at the feathers and small bones scattered around the cage. THAT did not come from Maria and made his sensitive stomach do a short jump.

The ears of both gargoyles twitched as they heard a larger car drive onto the cobblestones of the yard.

"Never mind," Tony muttered, crouching beside Dante just out of reach of Nashville's hands should he have reached through the bars for the mobster, eyeing the gargoyle boy.

"I don't know why my little Dolly wanted one of those things. Might take after me more than I thought. A powerful pet for a powerful character - maybe that. But I don't want one of those suckers in one of my houses permanently. G would tear my whole Syndicate to shreds looking for his cub. And at the same time you were right that it would be nonsense to just shoot this little snitch. Why kill someone when you can still make money with the body? That's why I sold him."

Under Nashville's wide-eyed gaze, Tony rose and wandered to the garage door. Dante was hot on his heels with all the other mobsters at his back.

"Boss, I'll help get the little beast to his new ... location," Dante offered, smiling grimly.

Tony turned again and smiled too - like the businessman he was. "Dante, I really appreciate your effort. But I can't entrust you with this task."

"I wouldn't betray you to the Manhattan clan, I told you that. Let me help with the transport - wherever it goes. Even one of their children is dangerous and I'm the best to keep him in check."

"I don't doubt that you are the best to keep him in check. I just doubt that you wouldn't slaughter his buyers on principle alone. That's why you're out of the game for tonight. I'm sure you'll forgive me if I greet you with a bottle of Sassicaia tomorrow night after you wake up from your pebble nap."

Dante's scowl just became an enraged snarl, but he opened his beak the second Glasses pressed the stun gun into the skin between his wings. Whatever words he had wanted to retort became a shrill screech as his body was electrified and lit up so brightly that Nashville had to squeeze his eyes shut in mute horror. When he looked up again, after several seconds, Dante lay unconscious on the floor. It smelled in the garage just as it had weeks ago in the gym when Dante had ripped out the wires in Uncle Coldstone's back. Scorched flesh. He didn't even feel satisfaction that the criminal gargoyle had been betrayed by the people he felt he belonged to more than the Manhattan clan. After all ... Nashville had somehow betrayed his clan as well. What would be his punishment now? His divine justice for his stupidity? His fate, which he had probably seen in his vision? Trembling, Nashville raised his head as Tony Dracon pushed open the two wings of the garage door and greeted his "guests" with outstretched arms.

Two humans, darkly dressed from head to toe, entered. Their faces hidden under hoods. The hammer with the C draped around it on their chests unmistakable.

Nashville snapped his mouth open to scream as someone activated his shock collar and pushed until all his lights went out.

Tony's men pulled the kid's limp, still-smoking body out of the cage and set about restraining his ankles and wrists as well. His tail was bound to one of his legs and even his wings were tied together with nylon ropes. One of the Quarrymen tried to take the remote from Tony but he pocketed it again.

"I'm going to attend the exchange myself. "

"That wasn't the deal," one of the Quarrymen replied.

"I don't see a suitcase full of money on you. Castaway sent you to see that I didn't lead him by the nose. I'm a man of my word, you see."

Mob Boss as well as Quarrymen watched as Nashville was dragged past them to the van with the Quarrymen symbol. The van wasn't big enough for the cage because they didn't expect to find a Gargoyle here. Too many fake calls and gargoyle reports that turned out to be dead ends had been received in the last few weeks. But it was just fine with Tony that they left the cage here.

"I like to see the joy in my business partners' eyes when they receive the merchandise. I'm going to give the remote to Castaway only. And if he wants to finish this monster off himself at the handover point, fine by me. But without me and my people, the deal doesn't go through," Tony said with glee in his voice. His two employees were currently dragging Dante to the cage. They removed his splinters. And they put a bigger version of the shock collar on him, which Nashville was still wearing. Tony was no genius. But he tried to learn from past mistakes and take precautions.

"We didn't know about a second one," muttered the taller of the two Quarrymen. 'Can we have that one instead?" he asked.

Tony laughed. "Sure, a monster like the gray one would be much better suited to however you want to exploit the capture and execution of a gargoyle in the media than a runt like that. But Castaway gets what he pays for. Two million for the little guy. "

Tony looked down at his best employee, his lips affectionately continuing to smirk but his gaze critical. "The big one one is mine. This is not one of the Manhattan Gargoyles and will not be missed by them. But if my plans with this one don't work out, Castaway is welcome to have him- at a price more commensurate with his bloodlust, of course. Now, call Castaway and let him know where we're going to get this thing over with."

And roasted again - both of them. Dante has more lives than a cat.

The chapter title is perhaps a little around the corner and refers to Dante's acting attempts. Im quoting from the website : The movie Being John Malkovich explores identity, reality, and the search for meaning in life. ... the film questions what it means to truly be oneself, the limitations and complexities of perception and the human condition.

In my estimation, that is quite appropriate.

Thanks for reading Q.T.