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Brood of a New Age
94
Author's note: Many of the scenes (but not all) take place simultaneously.
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It was almost dark when he opened his eyes. But not quietly. The gargoyles who had been around him (including the traitor Dante!) were all gone, presumably back in the fight now that the lights were out and they had the advantage of their night vision. And they had left him like a dead ballast. But okay, he would lie here and hope that no ricochet hit him. Until a figure appeared above him. In the red light of laser cannons and the rhythmic glow of the flashing lights of police cars that had to stand outside, he saw a policeman in full gear including helmet and visor appear above him. Well, he had messed up this thing again. But better a few weeks in Singsing than croaking. He sat up and leaned against one of the boxes.
"Officer! Glad you're here."
"Yeah, I think so too," said a deep voice all too familiar to him. "Hello Tony."
The mob boss could only stare at the figure in front of him. He couldn't see his face but his heart slipped into his pants.
"Oh, damn."
"Yeah, damn." Dino knocked his nephew out.
He dragged Tony along the edge of the action. As they had many times in his life, the bullets and particle beams seemed to arc around him. It was like ... magic. Or a renewed sign that he should reign. Even though Tony might have inherited this gift, not even he would escape a particle beam fired at his head from close range.
All he needed was a little quiet space.
He fired his laser weapon at the melted door lock until there was only a smoking hole in the place and pushed open the back door. Immediately the smell of blood and burnt flesh died away and was replaced by somewhat oily but salty air. Dino flipped open the dusty visor of his helmet and ripped open the Velcro on the side of his balaclava that he could expose his face without taking everything off. Heavens, even his beard was dripping sweat. The warm breeze felt downright cool. The back of the building bordered the East River, except for a three-meter-wide walkway. Despite the commotion inside and the numerous wailing sirens outside at the front of the building, it was nearly peaceful here. The block was just too big and the location inside the building too dangerous to pave this cramped side with cops. The river lay shimmering black, the lights of New York a poem that needed no words. His Turf. When you turned your back on this area, Long Island New York was beautiful.
He dropped Tony so that his body almost toppled over the unsecured concrete edge. A shot to the back of the head that it appeared Tony had been hit by a ricochet while fleeing (yes fleeing - the last impression everyone would get of this little prince). A short fall of two meters, then the East River would swallow him and carry him out to sea. And even if it didn't, if his body washed up somewhere - fine, too. Made no difference.
Dino raised his laser weapon. But before he could even aim, the surging smell of charred flesh, old leather and concrete stung his nose. Even before he heard the growl or the words. A Scottish-tinged, creaky voice that testified to hundreds of battles.
"Oi, ain't no manners to shoot a defenseless man in the back."
Dino turned his head and saw an old white-haired gargoyle standing in the exit of the building. His strange hind legs even now made him look like he was about to pounce. The old guy had to have followed him.
Dino glared at him coolly. He hadn't been able to catch much in jail. But he had just followed some scenes of the fight inside. By now, there were probably 12 of his twenty men left. Or less. Which didn't mean they were all dead. Maybe not a single one was dead. These creatures were so physically superior to humans. And yet ... they failed to kill. Unlike him, who saw the Dino Dracon overkill as his trademark and wanted everyone else to see it that way. The gargoyles had something he lacked. Morality and moderation towards enemies. And Dino understood this as an absolute weakness.
"You will not kill me, old fellow," he said.
"Aye. I will know how to avoid it. Away from the boy."
"Boy?" Dino looked down at Tony. Blood was running from his nose. He recognized traces of the beautiful, tender boy who had regularly hidden from the other children or even his sister to avoid being teased or bullied. He saw in his mind's eye a small hand slide into his own at the grave of Tony's parents.
"Uncle Dino?"
"Yes, Anthony?"
"Why did Mom and Dad have to go to heaven?"
"Because they were too weak. The angels took pity on them and that's why they took them early."
"Then I'll be stronger than them."
"Good luck."
And how much the boy had grown. He was still pathetic. That's exactly why the other families wanted him at the top. Because he was a laughingstock. As he had several times before, Dino Dracon felt that intense sense of frustration. Why did he always have to be the strongest? Always him to sweep up the filth. Wouldn't it be nice ... to just retire? Far away from new York. Somewhere warm. To smell, taste, feel the old homeland. He hurriedly pushed back the feeling. Tony - yes. Had carried on the family tradition of getting rid of nuisances wonderfully without knowing it. Just as Dino had gotten rid of Tony's parents, he had gotten rid of Graziella's mother. But the girl had survived. That's why Dino had brought her over. Because he believed in signs. If she became a nuisance, all it took was one bullet. As always.
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Travis Marshall was shaking like a leaf. This was a nightmare! Much worse than he could have ever imagined. And through madness and blood, cowering behind some crates and miraculously not yet dead, he saw something surreal out of the corner of his eye.
A child. A little girl.
Through her dark clothes, he hadn't noticed her at all. The girl. Maybe not even eight. And she was standing on the edge with wide eyes, looking around as if she didn't realize that flying bullets and red laser beams could kill her. The gray gargoyle in the filthy but irritatingly visibly tailored suit had noticed her too. Ran toward her. But three of the guys in combat gear, but who COULDN'T be cops, stopped him.
When Travis looked back at the kid, a Quarrymen was standing in front of her. No ... he wasn't standing. He was slumping to one side. In the renewed glow of a flashing Quarry hammer, the blood spurting from his neck in a fountain looked like a surreal lurid movie effect. As the hooded, faceless figure fell to the side, there stood only the girl. Face pale and damp with sweat, eyes wide with panic and the blood-soaked knife in her hand. Like a too short death goddess. And like a goddess, horrified by the ridiculous ease with which she could take a life, but basically unburdened by this tragedy, she raised her head and opened her mouth.
A loud child's scream echoed through the chaotic room. It sounded like - Näshwil? Travis continued to look out from behind his crates, shivering - curiosity and the urge to catch everything through his glasses so irrationally great that he forgot even the bullets.
Suddenly there was the little gargoyle. His ice-blue skin almost shimmered in the semi-darkness of the hall. And now HE was rushing towards the girl - through the middle of the hall, past fighting quarrymen, firing non-squads and gargoyles. And the girl stretched out her arms and ran toward HIM. Both came to a stop just a few feet from Travis.
And this child and the little gargoyle did something that was completely insane and yet so natural, so unconcerned with all the insanity around them, that the surreality made him dizzy. They fell into each other's arms. They embraced each other. Where the girl clung to the gargoyle's torn shirt like she was drowning, he wrapped his wings around her body, placed his abnormal head in the crook of her neck. Even his tail twined around one of her legs.
They stood there motionless like pillars of salt although the harsh surf of brutal reality was surging all around them, speaking words he couldn't hear from all the animal roars, from fighting sounds, from popping gunshot noises although he was only a few meters away from them. And the meanwhile very loud rotor noise of the helicopter made it also very difficult.
Wait a minute. Helicopter?
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Dante had everything under control thanks to her and Luca's intervention. (Her favorite person next to her was a better marksman than he was willing to admit). Hardly any more enemies came out of cover, and the remaining murderous humans were just being tracked down and finished off by the rest of the clan. Nonlethal, as were all the shots Grace had fired.
After those first crucial minutes, Grace lifted her gaze from the main scene of the battle for the first time. By now, a multitude of police cars but also ambulances were down on the street. But they knew what was good for them. As long as there was so much shooting going on in there, they would just cordon off the scene and stay away. They would collect the leftovers of the people. The first broadcast trucks from the television stations arrived and the police officers tried to keep people as far away from the building as possible. Down there ... Xanatos and Fox just took off their helmets and were led to one of the ambulances with a police escort. These two people would be fine, they were rich. They would be able to buy their way out of it.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the white-silver glow of a quarryhammer and turned her attention to the second floor. Even without looking through her rifle scope, she saw through the glow of the ever-flickering, electricity-spraying hammer that Goliath and the Quarrymen leader were fighting. The human was holding his own pretty darn well. Grace lowered her head again, took aim at Castaway. And she could have hit him in a second. But ... she hesitated.
She thought of Dante's broken ribs and his whistling breath after Goliath's resuscitation efforts. Which wouldn't have been necessary if he hadn't almost drowned Dante by mistake. And she thought of Luca. Her dearest, gentle, heroic Luca, whom she loved so much that she was always tempted to stain his soul with her dishonest desires. The bruises he had had on his neck. Still had. From Goliath's paws. Because there had been "a misunderstanding." Grace wrinkled her nose, grumbling. Her finger on the trigger. It could be so easy. She had him right in her sights. Not Castaway. But Goliath. His chest was SO wide. Like a barn door. Even a kid wouldn't miss. And someone like her ... would hit his heart instantly. Her soul was doomed. What did one death more or less matter? It would only be fair.
That's when she felt Luca's hand on her shoulder. She lifted her head and looked at him.
He smiled. Sad ... but ... there was faith in his eyes. Not in God. But in her.
Did he know what she had just wanted to do? Had he saved Goliath's life in full awareness? Or ... had he done it for her. Prevented her from further staining her soul with the death of a fellow species? How could he look at her like that - with so much love, with so much blind trust? And how could she betray that trust? She smiled, bent again so that she could see through her scope, and set her sights on Castaway. But the rattle of the helicopter, which she had been able to block out until now, became too deafening when the flying machine suddenly hovered not only above the building but NEXT to it, between the houses, the wind from the rotors too strong. And then someone in there turned on a searchlight and shone directly into the building.
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"NASH!"
"Graziella!"
He touched her pale, completely sweaty face on which stray strands of hair were stuck. She was hot, panting from fear or because she must have been running (all the way from the estate? Impossible!) but she was smiling. With her still beautiful face with the brown doe eyes, the mole on her right cheek below the eye, her sweet gap in her teeth.
"I found you!" she cried, pillowing her head in the hollow between his throat and shoulder. He felt tears running down his cheeks and was not ashamed of any of them. He didn't even pay attention to the dying human at Graziella's feet, who must have just been hit by a ricochet and whose pool of blood he could just feel seeping under his claws.
"How did you get in here!" he exclaimed.
She grinned and showed him one of her palms- cut by a shard of glass, presumably. The sight made him sick to his stomach but her voice sounded proud.
"A broken window! I climbed through."
"Graziella, I am SO sorry," he yelled over the rumble of the helicopter that had just appeared outside. How had he ever assumed she would betray him? She had led the clan here AND had even come herself. "You were right. You were going to help me and I - I AM the dumbest boy in the world."
"YES! You are!" She yelled just as loudly. "But who cares! You're MY dumb boy!" Both kids laughed. Just then Graziella was yanked backward the second the glare of the searchlight illuminated the hall.
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"YES! That's the cavalry!" heard Travis Fran cheer.
"Quarrymen?"
"YES! Our trump card!" shrieked Fran shrilly, half joy half panic hysteria. She had taken refuge behind a crate just feet from Travis, had grabbed a hammer from somewhere. And her eyes, which had just turned toward the hall, shone with mad brilliance through the searchlight that blinded all humans and gargoyles alike in the hall. The people who had night vision goggles on were cringing because they were suddenly blind. Only those who happened to be in the shadow of the masonry were the lucky ones. There, the fight continued unabated, while Gargoyles, like humans, tried like cockroaches to get out of the light that made them unfit to fight. Then thousands of shards of glass rained down through the hall as the entire window front was shattered with a loud ratataratratrattatat of a machine gun-like large caliber weapon. Three of the uniformed men, two of Tony's men, and even two Quarryman went down.
Travis had lost sight of the children because of Fran just as he had seen one of Tony's men rushing toward them and now instinctively crouched into a ball. He had long since torn his hood from his head. He felt two or three bullets whiz by so close to his head that he briefly thought they had grazed him. With all the adrenaline in his blood, he probably wouldn't have even noticed a grazing shot. When he looked to the side again, he saw Fran shaking and bringing a hand to her foot. She had been hit. She did not scream. But she didn't move either - she was in shock. Travis dragged her to the side and out of the line of fire of the next volley.
"HOW CAN THEY!" he screeched. "How can they just shoot in here? There are people in here! I'M in here!"
He shook Fran, who was crouched on the ground next to him. "Radio them! Tell them we're in here!"
She looked at him out of glazed eyes.
"We're going to die in here." She probably said it at a normal volume but because of the sounds of fighting and gunfire, Travis didn't hear her. But he could read her lips at the short sentence. Or he interpreted into it exactly what he himself was thinking. They were going to die here. He couldn't imagine HOW the situation could get any worse. And now, of all times, the child and the little gargoyle came back to his mind. And concern for both of them gripped him - species notwithstanding. He dared to look over his box. Just as not a machine gun salvo sounded but a powerful laser beam from the helicopter passed over the ground, leaving scorched concrete and a steel pillar cut through! Travis saw the glowing metal ends. So much more powerful than the handguns!
Was he the only one who heard the agonized groaning of the old building as the statics were put to the test by another long drawn out laser blast through half the hall and through two more pillars?
They would all die in here.
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"NO!" screamed Elisa, jumping off Sonny's dirtbike so fast and running through onlookers and ducking under the barrier tape that Sonny immediately lost sight of her. Many of the people cowered or fled through the vicinity of the Quarrymen helicopter, which just fired a machine gun salvo across the length of the building!
"Damn it," Sonny growled, revving up his bike and leaving as fast as he could the crowded, far too well-guarded front of the building behind him.
Behind him, a laser beam was fired from the helicopter, coloring the night magenta.
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"What are you doing here?" yelled a deep voice.
Mister Glasses! recognized Nashville and before he could throw himself at the guy (Sonny's father) who had tried to put a bullet through his head last night, Graziella screamed angrily, suddenly had a bloodied knife in her hand (From where? Or had she had it in her hand the whole time?) and with a single erratic movement scythed through her hair just behind her hair band. Glasses stumbled backward in surprise. Nash grabbed the other end of the scalp the human looked at in surprise as if his brain just couldn't process what was happening. Then Nashville lunged forward and bit the human's arm hard to the bone.
Glasses screamed, but no one heard him because a rattling machine-gun volley swept through the hall, scattering all the parties, and they all darted away like startled mice. But he and Graziella - children after all, despite their determination, despite their courage, despite their instinct to protect each other - could only cling to each other where they stood and froze like deer in headlights while laser beams flashed around them.
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"Get away from that boy!" the old gargoyle growled again, and his grip on the sword he carried tightened visibly.
"You even rescue criminals. Do you know who that is?" asked the past and future of the Dracon Syndicate.
"Aye. I do. I leave it to your human courts to judge him."
"How noble and heroic - for a corpse!" shouted Dino over the sputtering whirr of a nearby helicopter.
He raised his gun and fired where the creature crouched. The old man jumped to the side, the beam caught him on his already tattered wing, but so fleetingly that no hole was torn in the leather, only a scorch mark. The bearded guy howled, but managed to yank him up by his vest while his tail whipped the weapon from his fingers, probably breaking two or three bones.
"It's over, you rotten dog!" growled the Gargoyle as the squawking of a motorcycle approached.
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"Sta Minghia!" Grace exclaimed with narrowed eyes. "I can't see inside the building because of the stray light from the searchlight!" She raised the gun and tried to aim at the person crouched in the open doorway of the helicopter, who had just switched from operating the gatlinggun-like cannon to a powerful laser beam.
The light was SO bright, she could only make out shadows! But suddenly the laser beam stopped! And she glimpsed frantic movement inside the helicopter. The pilot was flailing wildly and something else was in there besides the two people. What was that?
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Meanwhile, Goliath had Castaway cornered. "Do you hear that, monster? That's operation downfall! Your whole clan is being mowed down down there right now!"
"If they die, there will be a hunter for the hunters starting today," Goliath roared, yanking up his mighty wings and with a rumble throwing away the hammer he had just snatched from Castaway's hands. He would finish this, tonight.
"YES! YES!" screeched John with a maniacal sneer. "Let the world see you for what you really are! Kill me and make me a martyr! THIS is how you make history!"
Goliath lifted Castaway up by the throat. Just a second to snap his neck. Just a second ... The bright light that had also shone into the second floor and illuminated their battlefield suddenly disappeared as the helicopter pilot jerked the stick.
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"Get down! Down!" a dark voice suddenly yelled, and Travis thought it was one of the Quarrymen - one of the generals. Hard as iron in the face of insanity, battle-hardened enough to bark orders at others, to yell at fellow soldiers lying on the ground to pull their heads in. But he froze as he saw a large turquoise gargoyle rushing toward them, wings raised, eyes blazing as a new salvo (did they even call it a salvo with a laser beam?) streaked overhead, scorching steel beams and cutting through masonry. Despite the gruesome sight of the approaching creature, Travis jerked his head around as the rotor noise changed. It sounded as if a massive animal was howling.
In a jerky motion, as if something had distracted the pilot, the aircraft disappeared upward out of his field of vision.
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"Get Angela and Coldstone out of here!" shouted Brooklyn, pointing to the hole in the wall burned by two hot, intersecting laser beams. Coldfire burst through the porous wall, her mate over her shoulder. Katana helped Angela, who had received a blistering wound across the collarbone from one of the laser beams from the handguns.
"Nashville!" shouted Katana, and her own mate nodded because that was self-evident and his thoughts, like hers, were most with him.
"I'll get him!"
They had barely rushed out of the building, the bodies of their mates and clan siblings over their shoulders when they were blinded by bright light. Not from the helicopter's searchlight, which had just emitted sputtering noises, but from the headlights mounted on ordinary police cars. Like deer in the headlights, they stopped abruptly.
They flinched under the squeak of a loudspeaker and then heard a familiar voice that struggled not to sound as if it suspected their great love and their entire "in-law" family was about to be killed in there.
"Leave the vicinity of the building! Get to the ambulances if you're hurt."
"Let's go, let's do that," Katana said, nodding to the horrified stepping back cops (and Elisa with the mic behind them) as she dragged the moaning Angela to the nearest ambulance. Coldstone and Coldfire didn't need an ambulance but rather a good electrical engineer. But Gargoyles tended to cluster when one of them was injured. But everyone turned as the helicopter was yanked up with a yelp from the mechanics and sped toward the top floor, rotor blades first.
At the same time, the two occupants of the helicopter were in a state of absolute panic.
"TAKE IT AWAY! WHAT IS THAT!"
His colleague shouted something but he couldn't hear what. The thing screeched and scraped its talons across his helmet, scratching his visor, its fluttering wings robbing him of vision, he felt he was about to wrench the helicopter but he couldn't keep his hands on the joystick, he couldn't see anything and he was painfully pressed into his seatbelt as the multi-ton flying machine laid sideways.
"ALL AWAY!" screeched Elisa to the onlookers and all her colleagues!" But the next command couldn't override the noise it made as the helicopter milled through the ramshackle roof and the floor below with the precision of an oversized chainsaw.
The building shook as a kind of detonation was heard from the upper floors. Then the noise only became more deafening and indefinable because no one, really no one, had heard such sounds before. The kids! Travis wanted to scream. They were still standing there, only a few meters away, their heads now raised towards the crumbling ceiling. He felt firm hands grab him and saw a turquoise clawed hand grab Fran. Then everything around Travis collapsed - literally. Suddenly he was enveloped in darkness as a leathery tarp settled over him.
Outside, the ground suddenly began to tremble. Someone shouted from far away but neither of them could care just now. Cracks opened in the concrete on which the old gargoyle was standing and the tremor became so strong that the creature loosened his grip and Dino fell to the ground. But it was not an earthquake. The cacophony of cracking wood, squealing and bursting metal, breaking concrete swelled to deafening noise. The mobster and the gargoyle looked up at the same time. Just in time to pull in their heads as the dented remains of a helicopter crashed through the roof, along with the debris of the disassembled floor of "The Granary", and crashed and clattered in a wide arc into the East River. And again they both looked up as, with groans and squeals of a long wounded and now dying beast, the attic collapsed, burying the floor below under such loads that it too gave way and a chain reaction ensued.
Just then Nashville stumbled forward because something bit him in the back. But he could hardly pay attention to it. Not if the ceiling collapsed. Not if the girl he loved would die. But at least ... he was with her. If that was the best he could get out of his vision then he would make the best of it. He raised his hands to her face (one of which still held her cut hair), pulled her face to him and kissed her on the mouth, wrapping his wings around her and letting the noise, pain and darkness swallow him.
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"No! My hatchling! My mate!" screamed Katana, wanting to get back into the collapsing building. Coldfire grabbed her by the wings and she - maternal instinct - lashed out at her sister's golden arm. She drew her katana again to slice through Coldfire's arm.
"Damn, what am I doing with this one!" screeched Lex to himself, then looked up as the concrete crunched over them and rebar cracked and snapped.
"Oh GRAVEL!"
Grace jumped up, spreading her wings.
But Luca threw himself on top of her and stopped her from jumping off the roof.
"NO EVA! It's collapsing!"
He used all his weight and only because Grace tripped and fell lengthwise with him, he was able to stop her while the building collapsed in five seconds like a house of cards.
"DANTE! Everyone's still in there!"
"It's TOO LATE!"
Grace cracked, letting out an inhuman howling scream from deep in her throat.
Luca also sank to the ground with her hugging her tighter, wishing he had wings to put around her as the gray cloud of dust billowed up to them, covering everything in filthy fog.
Hudson grabbed Tony Dracon's limp body the second the collapsing building at ground level sent a huge blast of dust and debris in all directions. Where the gargoyle was suddenly gone, Dino was less lucky. He felt a searing pain in his knee at the same time as the force of the "explosion" and was sent flying backwards. He felt pieces of debris break his bones and when he fell into the water of the East River, the surface of the water was like concrete and knocked all the air out of his lungs. The mass of water lifted him above the surface once again. He saw a figure rise through the dense toxic dust cloud and jump into the water, then he sank.
The entire building seemed to explode, enveloping the entire block in an opaque cloud of dust as the top floors collapsed and crushed those below. Then a sepulchral silence settled over the foggy scene, barely cut by the blue and red flashing lights of police and ambulances.
Elisa heard screams, sirens, yelled instructions from the emergency services. But she had sunk to the ground with the megaphone still in her hand. Someone tripped over her lower leg and she didn't care. Someone shook her by the shoulder and she didn't care. She saw a person in riot gear, spied the emblem of the GTF, but she couldn't tell if it was Matt because the concrete dust wasn't just outside her body. It was inside her head.
"Goliath," she whispered, feeling tears running down her cheeks.
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If any of the people had been in view of this part of the scene. Or if anyone had been able to see anything at all just then - they would have spotted the dark shadow of a bird of prey rising from the slowly sinking wreckage of the helicopter.
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. Well.
I promised you chaos and I delivered chaos.
This was the most exhausting chapter I have ever written. I love puzzles but this ... phuu, I need a drink and a back massage to come down.
Not a good moment for author comments- but I promised before:
Kentec P50 was used by Luca - these didn't exist in 1997. I know that there are already laser weapons in that universe. But not everyone can shoot with laser weapons, I want it to make pengpeng and you have to practice with such a weapon - Xanatos doesn't want Luca to accidentally incinerate one of his own team.
I know in the gargoyles wiki they say the Quarrymen helicopter has a "gatling gun." But it can't be a real gatling gun because weapons of that type would be totally obsolete even in 1997. But there are Gatling-style autocanons with the same principle. I chose the General Electric GAU-8/A Avenger which has been in production since 1977 until today. It was okay in the Goliath chronicles, it was okay in Clan Building volume 1 to have such a helicopter with such armament flying through Manhattan - so I thought: oh, then no one will mind if I add a nice laser cannon on top. That's all right, isn't it?
Ah, and I miscounted - with Dante, of course, TEN gargoyles fly to Nashville's rescue ... or his funeral.
Thanks for reading, Q.T.