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Brood of a New Age

58.

Tony pounded the table with both fists so that some of the bills fell to the floor.

"FUCK! Who is this Dante?!" He grabbed at the now numerous bills that had started flooding in to him over the last three days. From stores he frequented himself, or at least paid him protection money. "'Butts! Knives and guns. Repair bills for damaged doors, windows and display cases! And custom suits! Three bills alone for take-out from various deli restaurants! Who is scrounging through my turf at my expense? "

"And what an expense that is, Tony. This guy's more expensive than all our chicks put together."

Glasses picked up one of the bills and looked at the piece of paper.

The best delicatessen on Arthur Street had generally steep prices. For two hundred dollars, someone had helped himself across the product palette. The bill was in shaky, perhaps distressed handwriting, addressed to Tony Dracon. Intended use: Catering for Dante.

Here was someone sucking on the Dracon Syndicate's tits. Worse, Anthony Dracon's own tits. Someone who knew where it hurt a person like Dracon the most. On his own wallet. And on his own ego. Someone was trying to trigger his boss here. But trigger to what? Was it a diversionary tactic by one of the other families? What for? Or just a poor lunatic looking for the quickest way to get killed?

His boss and friend showed a rarely seen truly angry face and glowered at him.

"I want this guy hunted down," he growled. "Go to all the shopkeepers and squeeze a personal description out of them. I want to know who this asshole is. Where he's from. Where he lives, when he takes a shit. He's got to come from somewhere. He's got to live somewhere. Peppano can't finish three suits for a thousand dollars each in one day - at some point this parasite has to come pick them up."

"Or he's not really about the goods, he's just about ... I don't know. Getting your attention."

"He's got it!" nagged Tony., "He'll have it until I see him slowly bleed out."

"If I go to the stores ... what about the bills?"

Tony gritted his teeth audibly.

"Pay it all. I've always been a good customer and it would discredit myself to have someone walking around saying they work for me and then I don't know about it and bounce the bill."

Glasses made a face. "Then that asshole got what he wanted."

"He's already got a gun to his skull now and he just doesn't know it yet. That's what he's got! Find him. And when you rough him up, leave his internal organs intact. He'll pay me back double every cent. With his eyeballs, his kidneys, his little dick if need be."

"Sure boss. We'll bring him to you then."

"Intact, Glasses. I'll make an example of him."

"You got it."

.

.

Walter Miller had never eaten better in his life. He had to admit - there were advantages to having a gargoyle roommate. Satisfied, he leaned back in his chair and patted his stomach while the non-human across from him continued to eat. These gargoyles could eat a lot without getting fat - obviously. And Mister Dante looked much better than the first night he had broken into his house. When he had broken out of his stone skin that first night and had almost shot Miller's eye out with his splinters, Dante had gone into Miller's bathroom and taken a LONG shower. Had used up all his hot water, emptied his missing wife's old but very expensive conditioning shampoo, and then left all the towels in the tub as if he expected Walter to hang everything up.

Walter, out of sheer nervousness, had started to set the table with things the gargoyle had asked for while Dante had been blow-drying his hair. And then, with a freshly tied braid, dry, clean, and wordless, he had sat down at the table and had breakfast (at ten o'clock at night). The newsman had watched, heart pounding, as Dante had sipped the cappuccino Walter had fetched not an hour before from an expensive Italian coffee shop, decanted into a thermos, and poured back into a cup at his home. The gargoyle had screwed up his face but then nodded - apparently the cappuccino was tolerable. So were the eggs. So was the bread (not white bread - not even toast - but organic grain rolls from a real bakery). Apparently he didn't like to eat alone because he had ordered Walter to sit down and help himself as well. He hadn't really been hungry because of all the stress, but he had to admit - the higher-quality products were a completely different pleasure experience than what Walter usually understood as "food". Even if his wallet had had to bleed quite a bit for it.

But the food the gargoyle brought every night was not a bad compensation. It was a little hard on Walter's stomach to get out of bed at five in the morning to eat with the gargoyle, but the meals were SO good even after they were reheated. Miller had no objection to the high-priced cigarettes and best cigars, either, although he had been puzzled that Dante had insisted that they empty the sandalwood cigar box of the highest-quality cigars - one of which cost seventy dollars and had a limited run each year - right away. What the gargoyle did between his breakfast and his dinner, Walter didn't know and frankly he didn't want to know. Dante himself didn't fill him in either to protect him (from whatever) or because he wasn't worth knowing the details of the plan the gargoyle seemed to have been following so single-mindedly for three nights.

Strangely mannered, Dante dabbed at his beak with a serving dish, got up without a word, and went to the kitchen counter to heat in the microwave the rest of the cappuccino Walter had dutifully provided. The gargoyle was generally not a chatterbox, and even Walter found that he was easy to keep quiet with. The threat posed by the fanged, clawed creature was still implicit - but in the meantime Walter could breathe almost unhindered around him. If he hadn't been killed by now ... maybe it wouldn't happen at all. As long as he made himself useful. But soon he would have to work again. Now that there were two mouths to feed and one of them had very upscale demands.

Dante had pulled open the cutlery drawer to get a new small spoon and looked at the silverware for a few moments. Then he reached in and picked up the poultry shears and regarded them thoughtfully.

"Mhmmm," the gargoyle made musing noises as Walter carried both of their plates to the sink.

"What, I thought you had a new knife."

"I have. Not as functional as my old ones but until I get my bracers back as a stopgap okay. But I'll borrow them anyway," Dante said, weighing the stainless steel scissors in his hand as if assessing whether they were usable for his purposes. Then they disappeared into the coarse fabric of his jeans.

"Borrow them?" asked Walter, forcing an almost casual smile. "Do I want them back after you're done with them?"

Again, Dante seemed to ponder, swaying his head back and forth. His human errand boy, maid, and cleaner raised his hands with a disgusted face. "You know what. Keep it. I'll give it to you as a gift. And when you're done, throw it away."

"You got it, Miller."

"By the way, my son is coming home from Saturday to Sunday. Mostly to do laundry for free."

"No problem, buddy. If everything works out the way I planned, I can live somewhere else starting next week. Then you'll have me off your back. Phase one of my plan is basically complete."

"So? And now phase two follows? With the ... poultry shears?"

"And the camera. Right," said the Gargoyle with a conspiratorial mobster smile.

.

.

In the evening, Glasses was back at Tony's hotel and found him at the bar drowning his frustration with cocktails.

"Boss. We've got a problem," said his dark-skinned goon. Others would not have come Anthony Dracon in this environment, in this crappy mood with problems. Only glasses could. That's why he was his right-hand man.

Tony lowered his Shirley Temple and stared at him.

"I see you don't have that Dante guy with you. I hope he died a horrible death and not by your hand-that would be the only thing that would half satisfy me."

"Sorry Tony. But this Dante ... it's really problematic. Everyone I've interviewed says the same thing."

"What?"

Glasses looked around the fancy, crowded bar as if he felt he was being watched. Then he leaned in toward Tony's ear.

"WHAT!" resounded throughout the large room a moment later, and despite music from the piano player in one corner, every single person turned to look at the man who had just yelled out as if he had been stabbed with a knife. Most of them, however, quickly turned their heads away. Those who saw that the two men were now putting their heads together to speak more quietly, and those who knew who had been shouting, even more so.

"Don't fuck with me, Glasses. It's a bad time to develop a sense of humor," Tony sneered at him and Glasses slid onto the barstool next to Tony.

"I'm not kidding you," he muttered, raising his hand whereupon the bartender immediately came running jovially, and ordered a Martini himself.

"And the shopkeepers certainly didn't collude," he pointed out when Tony was now silent. But Glasses saw his hand, which held the glass, shaking. With stupefaction but probably most of all anger.

"Those damn flying rats. To think they're taking such measures now just to piss me off."

"Boss, I don't think that was one of them."

"Why do you think that? And don't give me G's code of honor. Him and that Broadway royally fucked me over and busted me last year, and month before last I still got in my bones. Just because he might - just might - have saved my hide in Rykers doesn't mean he can play sick monster games like that with the Dracons.

"Don't make a mistake, Tony," his best and most loyal employee reminded him, lifting the olive toothpick from his just-served martini before sipping it.

"I've had everyone give me a personal description. If that's what you call it for a gargoyle- they're not officially persons yet. And this guy hasn't been on any previous film footage and he would have a very strong Italian accent."

"Italian?"

Tony raised his head and seemed to seriously ponder if the gargoyles he had met so far had even a trace of an accent. Certainly not an Italian one. Even if the Dracons no longer spoke Italian and honestly understood it only patchily due to neglect, he could say with certainty that nothing about the usual flying rats had been Italian.

"Could it be a trick? A charade? Like last year?"

"They can't think we're that stupid to fall for it twice," Glasses pointed out, and Tony nodded.

"I don't care if it's a gargoyle - he's going to pay for looting my territory and running everything in my name."

"Castaway has offered a reward for a captured gargoyle," Glasses remarked after a few seconds in which neither mobster said anything and only the soft piano tinkling and snatches of conversation from other guests floated through the room.

For the first time in three days Tony showed his arrogant regal smile.

"Fuck what Dino says," Tony said, "We're going to do the pest control right now. We're going to get him. And he's going to pay."

.

.

"You'll pay for this!" screeched the guy he had just thrown out of the bar in a high arc, rather insolently, even though Dante had broken his arm. The others, after a brief revolt and the quick realization that he was not one of the mollycoddled rat-eaters, had already fled. Only his real target - from an old newspaper photo that Walter had brought up had gone down right at the start. Hit by a beer bottle thrown at him by one of the more courageous patrons, who had paid dearly for it. It made no difference to Dante. They were all criminals - just like him. And they would rather not run to the police. Especially not to say that a gargoyle, who claimed to have been sent by Dracon, had torn apart their local pub. The Volkov mobster's hangout.

After Volkov had his little accident in May, his cousin coordinated business under Volkov's instructions. Related but really no one special and easily removed, should he take more out than he was entitled to. Dante was familiar with that. If he were a normal man, a normal hit man, he would be on very thin ice with the second part of his plan. He could provoke a war among the gangsters with it. But he did not believe that. Because he was a gargoyle. A brand new playing card in the otherwise old established deck of the mobster society. In Naples, other power-hungry syndicates had shit their pants knowing that hell-spawn were on Della Marra's side - it would be the same here. Criminals were the same everywhere, and Dante knew what made them tick. This was his world, too, after all. And he would reclaim his place in it. He strode through the now deserted pub. Shards of glass crunched under his clawed feet. He stepped over one of the guys he had knocked out. None of them were dead. He didn't want to make that kind of statement at all. Everyone had to stay alive. Because only the living could carry the message. His real target had regained consciousness and was just trying to sit up, completely befuddled. Showtime.

.

.

Bogdan Howls-Volkov wiped the blood from his eyes with his sleeve. Damn, what idiot had done that? Didn't they know as whose proxy he was operating? He hadn't even seen what had caused the chaos to erupt. Some of his boys had run up to someone. With guns drawn and glass bottles broken. But he hadn't been able to see anything in front of all the bodies. And then he'd gotten something to the skull.

He blinked around in the dim bar. Not a single bastard was around. They had all run off - that probably a sign that the cops were about to come. Those fucking assholes. They wouldn't have dared with Volkov himself. Although - he wasn't all alone. There lay the bartender- a broken baseball bat still in his hand though he was unconscious. And there - one of his boys. And then he heard footsteps behind him. Somewhere something clanked and one of the overhead lights went out. Then the next and the next. The bar, which was not well lit anyway, became almost gloomy in a matter of seconds. Until only the ceiling light above one of the pool tables in his back was shining. Someone, in a playful gesture underscored by a dark sinister chuckle, nudged that lamp so that Bogdan's own shadow swayed back and forth on the floor, causing nausea in him. Still, he reached under his shirt where his own gun was holstered. Whoever had caused trouble here - and obviously wanted to continue causing trouble - would pay for it. He was Bogdan Howls-Volkov. He jumped to his feet, pointing his Smith and Wesson Model 66 Combat Magnum at the shadow standing in the dim area by the cue wall rack, whittling at the tip of one of the billiard cues. Whittling away with his own hand. Sharp claws scratched off wood splinters with scraping sounds as if a pencil were being sharpened.

Instantly, Bogdan's heart slipped into his pants. The thing with the inhuman face turned its head. Its eyes lit up.

"What?" he began, knowing full well, as by now almost every criminal in New York knew - if not from personal experience then from hearsay - WHAT white-hot (sometimes red-hot) eyes had. So he asked a stifled "Why?" right after that.

The monster stepped into the light, of the violently swinging lamp, raised the stick on which it had just scratched, took a swing and threw. The force hurled Bogdan against the counter, the sharpened end of the homemade spear digging into his shoulder. He yelled out in agony and dropped his weapon.

His head was hit on the counter top so that he saw stars but remained conscious. The monster was with him all at once, pressing a hand over his mouth, not slashing him as it would have suited his gruesome appearance. And it did not knock him out as the rumors about gargoyles spread. It nailed his hand to the counter with a lightning-quick motion with a switchblade that made Bogdan scream into the hand that was over his mouth. Bogdan was frozen by pain and shock.

"Buona sera," murmured a smoky voice.

Bogdan breathed heavily as the thing bent over him, its eyes continuing to glow pupil-less. It took its hand from his mouth.

"Do you know what I am?" it asked. Bogdan believed that this must all be a joke. But it was not laughable.

"Do you know who I am?" the thing asked again with a clear accent and now pressed its claws into his chest, so that Bogdan thought it was about to tear out his heart.

He nodded tensely.

"Say it," the creature demanded.

"Ga-ga-gargoyle."

"Good boy. And there are many more where I come from."

Bogdan saw something flash in the gargoyle's hand that looked ... like poultry shears?

The creature bent close to him and he felt warm breath from its beak on his ear and smelled coffee and cigarettes as the creature spoke.

"You will live, because until I have further orders, I will not kill. But you will tell everyone in your syndicate that Dante dealt with you. And that Tony Dracon sent him."

His eyes darted to the monster, who was pressing his chest down so roughly with his other hand that he almost thought his thorax was about to crack. But then immediately to his pinned hand as he felt the cold blades of the scissors on his ring finger where the ring with the wolf emblem sat that Volkov's highest ranking members wore. He felt urine running down his trouser leg and, pinned down by the knife, the demon hand and those sulfur-white glowing eyes, he could no longer say a word. Only scream.

Bogdan Howls-Volkov lived up to his name that night.

My good/bad boy. He is a natural. Finally he can show what he is capable of.

Thanks for reading Q.T.