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Brood of a New Age
96.
Sonny pondered for some time whether he was cold. Whether he was cold for the first time. Even after hours he was still wet because in the corridor in which he was sitting there was cold light from the uncovered neon tubes but since this floor was underground even in summer it never really got warm.
Wouldn't have been so good for the corpses either if it was warmer here, Sonny thought. But maybe the slight chill was just from his recent experiences. He raised his head and looked at the clock hanging in the hallway. This one was modeled after a skeleton and one literally bony arm was the minute hand and the other the hour hand. The skeleton grinned.
Even on his most boisterous days, Sonny wouldn't have found THAT funny. It was supposed to be ironic and morbid, he realized. But in a mortician's basement, it was just inappropriate. Gross. Disgusting.
Yes - as disgusting as you, said a voice in his head. Sonny rubbed a hand over his face and kept it over his eyes right away to block out the glare of the cold light.
Why hadn't he stayed there?
Sure, the building had collapsed. But what if Graziella was really under the rubble? What if she was - A freaking four-story BUILDING had fallen on her head. On your father's head as well! The voice nagged. Both were dead for sure - what good would it do you to be there now, digging through the rubble with the helpers until you saw their dead bodies in front of you? If the adults would have let you help at all. But this way - you have done something that brings something. Something that brings YOU something. Think about your future. Think about what keeps your unloving mother and ungrateful sister in the syndicate's favor.
"I just don't want to be a freak," Sonny muttered. "I just want one person who values me and who I can feel like I belong to," Sonny said, not recognizing his own voice. Though it was hard to tell if it was because it was echoing in the bare hallway or because he was so tired and fucked up.
A door opened on his right. Not the one on the left, where the corpses were made "pretty" for burial. But the one on the right with the creepy stainless steel table with the drainage channels on the edge where the dead were pierced so that shit and blood could run off ... Or something like that, honestly Sonny had no idea and didn't want to know.
Doctor Frankenstein and Igor, his assistant came out, pulling down their respective facemasks.
Of course, Doctor Frankenstein didn't really have that name and Igor wasn't called Igor either. Sonny didn't know their real names. Only what they were called among the gossips of the family. But what should you call the people who used their legal business as morticians to patch up injured members of the syndicate?
"He wants to see you," Frankenstein said.
"Will he-"
"He's on a blood transfusion and high-dose broad-spectrum antibiotics for pneumonia because of the water he inhaled and the germs in the East River."
"But what you brought from him will certainly make it. He's awake and wants to talk to you. Hurry up, in half an hour the drugs we gave him will really kick in. So far, only the lower half of his body is numb," Igor said, walking past him like Dr. F. too. Unfeeling and cold like their normal clients. They had to be like that. They hadn't even given him a towel or a blanket after he showed up with the body on their doorstep.
Sonny stood up and his shoes squeaked with every step because there was still water in them. But he hadn't wanted to take them off. He wasn't allowed to, couldn't.
He opened the door and saw the autopsy table empty (if that was what they even called it at a mortician. Did a mortician do proper autopsies even for the police? No, he couldn't let his mind wander). He turned his gaze to the person on a gurney that looked hardly more comfortable than the stainless steel table. Hanging from an IV stand were two blood bags and one with a clear liquid in it. Dino Dracon turned his head and looked at him. He had cuts on his face that looked gruesome even after stitches. They had shaved off his beard and half of his head to stitch him there as well.
He ponderously raised one arm (the left one that wasn't in a rather sloppy looking cast) and Sonny stepped up to him and took Dino's hand in his own thinking that was probably expected of him.
"Will you straighten my headboard?" asked Dino in an old man's voice.
"I don't know if-"
"Just do it," he said bitingly, reminding Sonny so much of Graziella that he simply obeyed. After a little fiddling with the strange mechanism, he managed to get Dino into a semi-sitting position. He groaned and gritted his teeth. But then, with a remarkably fluid motion, he ripped the cloth from his body that had covered the rest of him from the chest down. For a few moments, the mobster and the teenager stared at what was left of Dino Dracon's lower body. Sonny should not have been shocked. He had felt the blood from that wound flowing down his damn back even though he had made a tourniquet with his T shirt, when he had carried Dino over his shoulder, after all. But it somehow had its own gruesome quality in the harsh light of the room to see a stump where a leg had been before. Dino's pant leg had been cut away from the hip. They must have cut off another piece of his bone and muscle flesh to fold the skin over what remained. The silver threads were an absurd contrast to the orange disinfectant solution Frankenstein and Igor had smeared the leg with. Dino looked like an early Halloween decoration.
When Sonny looked back at Dino he noticed the mobster looking at him.
"Do you want me to ... put the cloth back over it?" asked Sonny cautiously.
"Sure."
Sonny bent down and covered Dino's lower body again. He was wearing only a black undershirt on his torso. He had to be cold. Or ... he didn't give a shit because his fucking leg was gone. But the shock of the mobster seemed to be moderate. Or it was the medicine and that very shock that made him so calm.
"You pulled me out of the East River?" he asked.
Sonny nodded.
"Were you the person who jumped in after me?"
Again Sonny nodded.
"Sit down," Dino ordered as if this were a coffee klatch.
Sonny pulled one of the chairs next to the stretcher.
"I know you. Haven't I seen you at the family functions?" Dino gestured a circular motion above his head. Sonny smirked at this reference to his orange-blond hair. It really was an identifying mark.
"I am Glasses`s son," Sonny said.
Dino's response was a raised eyebrow.
"How old are you?"
"Fourteen."
"You look older."
Sonny guessed it was meant as a compliment. But he couldn't appreciate it right now.
"You were there to kill Tony?" asked Sonny.
Dino let his head sink back onto the headboard. Looked at him wordlessly.
"I pulled you out of the river. I deserve five minutes of honesty," Sonny urged.
The person who only vaguely resembled Dino Dracon smirked.
"I would have taken over the family including all the members who would have been willing to follow me. Even your father," Dino then said. "You know that most of the family members have already worked for Tony AND me. Depending on the situation. Your father would have been fine. And his family."
"My father was in "The Granary", too. I don't know if he's dead."
"Were you there for him?"
"No. For Graziella."
Dino blinked in wonder for a moment as if he didn't quite understand. Sonny leaned back.
"Tony's daughter. The one who had been given the gargoyle. The gargoyle that should have been sold there. Before Castaway's psychos and your guys got the pot boiling high."
Dino took a deep breath. Sonny knew such a bitchy tone toward Dino would have been his death sentence in other situations. But there had never been a situation like this before. Dino was calculating and brutal like only sharks were supposed to be. But Sonny had heard enough of the gossip that he knew Dino despised weakness and timidity. That's why he was just the opposite even if it was a dance on a seemingly dormant volcano.
"I'm sorry about your father."
"As I said. I don't know if he's dead yet."
"What was that girl doing there? Graziella?"
Sonny shrugged his shoulders. "She's a tough cookie. She wanted her damn gargoyle back," he lied.
Dino frowned.
"And why did you go after her?"
"Because I'm her right-hand man."
"Hahaha." Dino laughed out loud, his voice echoing in this room that was ninety percent stainless steel and white tile.
But Sonny wasn't laughing. And Dino's faded away too.
Again this strange silence in which so many words lay. Sonny thought about his dirt bike. He had to go to the accident site to recover it. It hadn't been blown away by the explosion. He had dropped from the bike a few dozen meters from Dino and the Gargoyle when he realized that everyone was about to be blown away. But lying down neither his bike nor he had offered enough attack surface. And his ride hadn't been buried either. It had to lie there still - quite dented but not totally destroyed. He loved the bike, he had to get it. Deep down he knew that was just an excuse because he had to know what was going on with Graziella. At the same time, he didn't want to know at all, he was afraid of the truth. In contrast, he didn't give a damn about his father's fate. Except that his family needed Glasses as a breadwinner.
"How?" asked Dino so quietly that Sonny barely understood him.
"What how?"
"You jumped in after me. But no fourteen-year-old swims the East River without practicing something like that for years. The current is strong. You would have drifted off on your own, and much faster with a human body to hold up and pull along.
"We drifted."
"Where did you make it to shore?"
"At the Ferry Terminal on 34th Street. That's why I was able to carry you here. It was only four blocks away."
Dino's glared at him menacingly.
"34th is almost across from Long Island City. And after your remarkable swim of more than a mile, you still carried me here?"
"I'm strong," Sonny replied defensively.
"That's not strong. That's supernatural," Dino muttered, eyeing Sonny in a very uncomfortable way. Sonny wanted to look to the ground like a child. But then he would have seen his feet. His freakishly big feet. Supernatural ... a nice other word for freak.
No, he didn't want to be a freak. But if he wasn't, he couldn't have saved Dino. Sonny was tired. And depressed. And he wanted to know what was going on with his bossgirl, even though he knew he'd be waiting there at the collapse site forever just to see a little body lying under a sheet. How could he bear such a thing? How could he? The girl who had fought for him, who didn't care if he was gay or anything else as long as he was good to her, who had called him her right hand, who had made him think he was worth affection and trust. The girl who was crazy enough to pick up a gargoyle as a friend, smart enough to make everyone around her think she was just a stupid kid, brutal and furious enough to want to murder another child, lovelorn enough to get buried under a collapsing building for that gargoyle. A girl full of raging passion and adventures he couldn't have dreamed of despite being so much bigger and stronger. He could have been her Sancho Panza. He could have. And now ... he felt only empty. But mostly Sonny was tired. Maybe ... he'd go to the collapse site, get his bike, push it back to the mansion and drag himself to Hoboken where he'd go to his bare room and sleepsleepsleep. Sleep until all the real and fake tears in his biological and mafia family had been cried and all the funerals held. Yes. That sounded good.
Sonny took a deep breath. And stood up.
"It's late. I'm tired," he said and wanted to turn away.
But Dino grabbed him by the wrist and looked up at him.
"Do you want to work for me?"
Sonny pressed his lips together into a thin line.
"I only have one boss. If she's still alive. ... This town, Dino. This town doesn't want you. Neither the good guys nor the bad guys. You're a force of nature, Dino. But forces of nature only bring loss and cost. And honestly-"Sonny looked at his leg stump. " - do you want to continue the way you have been doing? Is only "power" worth it if you could just ... live in peace? You're smart enough to draw the line at a certain point." Sonny loosened his arm from Dino's grasp. He knew if Dino went back into business he would probably be killed for his honest words. Or Dino didn't remember them at all, because by now he seemed pretty shot down on the drugs. He had dropped his head back but didn't seem to be able to focus on Sonny very well, although he tried to keep up his typical steely gaze. Then he smiled.
"If you won't work for me whether I stay in New York or not, how can I thank you? Dino Dracon is a man of honor. And I appreciate my life even if my leg was the price."
Sonny looked at Dino seriously, thinking for a moment.
"I'll come back to you, Dino. And I'm going to call in a favor."
"What kind?"
"I don't know yet. And I don't know if I'll come tomorrow or in ten years. But if you do me this favor you will have paid your debt as a man of honor."
"Then we have a deal."
"We do. Get well soon," Sonny said, turning and walking out of the room.
.
.
Travis Marshall coughed. He slowly straightened up into a sitting position. The air was hot, dry and incredibly dusty. Briefly, he groped around in the darkness.
He felt debris under his fingers. Then soft ... tissue?
Why yes, his flashlight!
He found it, flicked it on and was overjoyed that it came on without a problem, and then immediately horrified. Fran was lying next to him. Motionless. He tucked the flashlight under his arm, carefully removed Fran's Quarrymen mask, and felt for her pulse. His "colleague" had a laceration on her head but seemed otherwise unharmed. Good. That was good. He and she had survived and would just have to - he lifted his head and looked around. He gasped as he saw rubble on all sides, everywhere. Collapsed brick walls and a slumped concrete ceiling above them. If the whole building had really collapsed on top of them ... then they had been more lucky than good. A thousand times more. But ... how many tons of rubble were they buried under? How long would it take the emergency services to get them out? Or would their recovery efforts cause their safe space here to collapse? And how big was this safe space?
He took the flashlight and illuminated the perimeter. Huge chunks of concrete. Broken wooden crates with indefinable contents. Above them was a concrete ceiling covered with cracks ... and only because it was not broken they were not slain by huge pieces of debris. So far. Everything around Travis creaked and groaned. The squeak of rebar that could barely hold the concrete it was supposed to reinforce sent Travis' heart soaring up into his bone-dry throat. They had to get out of here. Maybe, somewhere ... he could find a hole in the collapsed rubble. No matter how small, it would be a way to draw helpers' attention to them. He slid the flashlight around again, the beam cutting through the dust like a knife, and suddenly something twitched in that beam. A foot! But not a human one. Travis gasped for air - and instantly went into a coughing fit over the dust.
But while his body writhed, the creature did not leap toward him. And when he dared to turn the beam of the lamp back on that foot - and the rest of the creature - he saw why.
A thumb-thick piece of steel had bored its way from a broken piece of concrete on the ceiling to the ground - and in the process had punctured its lower-lying wing. The blood oozing from the wound was not much - but shone in this gray colored world like raspberry jam (What a ridiculous comparison but it had something strangely beautiful).
The other wing covered most of the creature and bent at a strange angle that probably indicated it was broken.
As Travis let the flashlight sweep over the gargoyle, he stiffened as he came to its face. It was the ice blue little gargoyle with the beak. And it was looking at him through eyes that reflected the beam of his flashlight in the most eerie way. Travis swallowed. The creature wouldn't hurt him. It was lying on its back on a small mountain of splintered wood (perhaps one of the former crates) and was, after all, pinned to the ground by the iron rod. And ... even if not ... would the creature even pounce on him? He had just hugged that human girl so intimately without biting her.
"The girl," Travis whispered, his voice sounding completely rusty because of his dry throat - which was worrisome for a reporter.
And it wasn't until the little gargoyle snorted that the dust swirled up in front of his nose that Travis realized he'd said that out loud.
The gargoyle stirred for the first time.
He pushed his broken, obviously immobilized wing down a bit with his clawed hand. Beneath it, the child's angelic face was revealed. Beautiful ... and completely filthy. Her head was bedded on the lower lying arm of the gargoyle as if she was just sleeping. And his lower lying hand held a thick bundle ... was that hair? Curly dusty gray hair? The child, on the other hand, didn't have raspel-short but a wildly asymmetrical pixie cut that gave her something boyish. She was so dusty that her now short, tousled hair was as gray as an old woman's, and the dust hung in her eyelashes, making them appear almost feathery. Like an angel, Marshall thought ... in the clutches of a devil. But this devil showed an absolutely worried expression. He put a hand to the girl's neck and where Travis for a second had the impulse to jump on him to stop him from tearing the child's carotid arteries open with his claws (and an equally strong impulse was to ask his cameraman, even though he wasn't there, if he could get exactly this act of sheer bestial murderous lust into the picture) he realized that the gargoyle had no evil intentions at all. He pressed what would have been a human's index and middle finger into the child's skin below the jawbone, careful not to let his claws pierce the skin - and ... it really looked like he felt her pulse.
"Is she-?" asked Travis, croaking.
And the gargoyle looked to him and gave a never-before-seen beaked smile. "She's alive. She'll live."
Both persons- man and gargoyle expelled the air in a unison sigh of relief. The voice- which he heard for the first time was that of a boy. Not even the voice of a boy whose voice was breaking. Oh God, thought a fiber in Travis ... was that a child? Had he almost witnessed the execution of a child? The laughter earlier had also been that of a child. Why hadn't the thought occurred to him earlier that these beings could also be children? Perhaps because of the madness around him. Now - where they were condemned to grave rest and inactivity - he could think more clearly than before. He touched his temple to wipe away sweat and realized that his glasses were still sitting on his nose.
"Mister Marshall, are you hurt?" the Gargoyle then inquired. Travis was puzzled by two things. The boy knew his name and-. Again his eyes scanned the figure, which had not moved from the spot. Travis bit his lip in pity and raised his eyes once more.
"You're asking me that? Your wing-."
The Gargoyle lowered his gaze. Briefly, the Gargoyle showed a childish expression of shock at this. But only for a moment before he shook his head. "I'm sure my mom can sew my wing later," he said like a human child who had torn his Sunday pants and feared trouble at home, and this sentence, delivered in this manner, stirred up the reporter, who was usually so keen for composure.
"Your... your mom?"
The gargoyle wearily lowered his head to the pile of rubble on which he lay, and despite the alienating-looking beak and horns and just everything, displayed a cheeky grin that could have come from his own son.
"Did you think we were made by a snap of the devil's fingers? We have mothers and fathers just like you."
"How - how old are you, boy?"
Briefly, the gargoyle seemed to consider. Then he sighed.
"My physical development... would be that of a ten-year-old human," he then said, visibly weighing every word. Travis Marshall couldn't believe it. He was talking not only to a Gargoyle, but to one of their children! His terrible suspicion had come true. All this horror had happened to a child. This, of course, explained why the creature before him had seemed somehow childlike before.
"Mister Marshall? I don't mean to interrupt but - could you maybe-?" someone said above him. The reporter pointed his flashlight upward in perplexity at the voice, and with a strangled cry shrank sideways into the rubble.
Above him stood the turquoise gargoyle. And by means of a steel girder into which he had dug his claws, he was obviously keeping the ceiling from falling entirely on top of them.
And he had crouched directly on his feet. Now that he wasn't doing that anymore, the gargoyle was able to stand up a little wider, groaning with exertion. Dust trickled down on them- but nothing collapsed around them.
"Are you children all right?" the monster asked anxiously, raising his eyes.
The gargoyle boy lifted his, not nailed down wing, exposing the girl entirely. He stroked her cheek very gently and a breath from her blew away some of the dust on her lips. Travis now saw that not only the gargoyle had been pierced by the steel rod. So had the child's thigh. Maybe not exactly where a major artery ran because it wasn't bleeding massively- but through the muscle on the side. The gargoyle child seemed to think so too, because after a troubled look he lowered his head again. The reporter didn't even want to think about how harmful it could be when the blood of the two children mixed. Surely there were antibiotics against whatever.
"Considering the circumstances, we're doing fine. And you, Broadway?"
"Well - except for having a huge déjavu right now, I'm doing splendidly." His belly shook at his laughter, his whole body and the steel beam. Concrete scraped against each other, iron squeaked sufferingly, and dust trickled. The gargoyle boy looked about with eyes widened in terror and put his wing protectively over the whole child again.
"Sorry Nash," muttered the big gargoyle sheepishly, being immensely sympathetic.
"Less laughing, more steel bar lifting," the boy muttered dryly, making Marshall grin.
"You ... your name is Nash?" he dared to ask.
"Nashville," the boy said, pointing to the figure above Travis. "That's Broadway ... uhh in the broadest sense my uncle."
The turquoise gargoyle with a name to match his corpulence grinned proudly, showing a set of fangs, then turned his attention back to Travis, his smile taking on something of a snarl. Not a direct threat ... but ... not the opposite either.
"We're a little disappointed to see you in a Quarrymen uniform. Doesn't Castaway teach his soldiers never to take off their hoods? That (and he said this with so much irony that you could think of the quotation marks to go with it) "the demons" don't know who their hunters are. Careless for WVRN's top reporter,"
"And the anchorman from Nightwatch," Nashville added.
"You - you know me?" The reporter looked back and forth between the two non-human beings, who looked at him as if it were impossible not to know him. Which really flattered him. Broadway was standing seemingly relaxed but you could tell by the working muscles in his arms and legs how incredibly heavy the load he was holding must be. That he was still able to make small talk like that only showed his immense strength.
Travis cleared his throat and then said a little more confidently. "Well, I'm just here for a report. And thought I'd operate in a field assignment for a change."
"Ahh. That this thing could be dangerous, you didn't think of that?" asked Broadway, and Marshall shrugged. "A reporter has to walk through fire for the truth sometimes."
"Or get hit by concrete," Nashville opined, sounding as snotty as Travis' own son.
"Not that we don't appreciate your dedication to the truth, Mister Marshall - but if you get killed on one of our missions, it can really cause us harm."
"Harm you?"
"It's going to make the other reporters do one-sided hateful reporting again. And wait and see what the Quarrymen make of it. You guys are giving us a really hard time to protect."
"I, I don't understand. You're here on ... on a mission?" stammered Marshall, looking at Nashville, who was trying to reposition himself on his pile of rubble and splinters but could barely move. He gave it up with a pained face.
"It was ... all my fault. None of this would have happened if it wasn't for me," he said.
"Nash. You're one of us," Broadway said. "No one gets left behind."
"I put you all in danger."
"You wanted to protect, and that's why you got into everything. How can we blame you for the instinct that's in us, too?"
"Protect?" asked Marshall, guessing he sounded tremendously stupid and uneloquent, and if his mic and camera in his glasses were still recording (and that was a big if) then he wasn't cutting a good figure. He knew that the Gargoyle Goliath in the recording of the trial had also talked about protecting. Without intensively going into why and for what purpose, as if that were as natural as breathing.
The little gargoyle took a breath and then was shaken by a small coughing fit over which he contorted his face including the top of his beak in pain.
"We are protectors," he then declared with no small amount of pride. "'Goliath' said that in court, didn't he? We protect."
"Protect and Serve," Broadway muttered, taking a deep breath that even kicked up dust from the floor as he exhaled, then sounding full of remorse.
"We're sorry, Nashville. For making you feel like you weren't a valuable clan member. That impulse is just as strong in you as it is in us - and we completely ignored that. Just ... with the Quarrymen. We're all afraid for you."
"I was just trying to protect. And make friends."
"I know. And I'm sorry for my yelling three nights ago."
Nashville smirked. "I forgive you. And I'm sure she does, too."
Travis didn't know what the two were talking about. He mostly hoped his camera in his glasses and the transmission device for the audio still worked. He just HAD to take this opportunity to find out more.
"You said you protect. Protect and Serve. You know that sounds like the police motto?"
"Of course," the massive gargoyle said almost cheerfully. "But gargoyles invented the basic concept of protecting. Humans just copied it from us. A gargoyle can no more stop protecting -"
" -than breathing the air," Nashville concluded, laughing softly but sounding rather suffering as if he were in pain. Which he most certainly was because of his wing.
"Protecting - that's what we live for."
"But who are you protecting?"
"Hasn't that become obvious in the last few months?" asked Nashville. Then all amusement faded from his face and gave way to a pained insight that someone that age shouldn't be showing at all. "I guess not. As much as the news networks, the Quarrymen and even prosecutors are railing against us. You guys still think Goliath played a role in court."
"We're protecting the humans," Broadway said forcefully, looking down at Marshal emotionlessly.
"The people of this city. The honest citizens. We protect and serve them to keep them safe from other people who wish them ill. To make a difference," he added.
"In the past, we only protected our castle."
"The one of Xanatos? So the rumors are true that you guys dwell up there?"
Nashville smiled mildly and continued without elaborating. "But now all of Manhattan is our castle. We protect everyone who lives here. Humans and gargoyles alike."
"But why? You - everyone treats you badly."
Briefly, both gargoyles were silent, and he would have felt two pairs of inhuman eyes on him even without his flashlight.
"It doesn't matter if they treat us badly," muttered the turquoise gargoyle towering above them. "Whether they throw rocks at us or shoot at us. That's where we are like the police. They don't have to like us or be grateful. It's what we live for, what makes us Gargoyles."
"That really sounds ... like what your leader said in court last month."
"Yes ... because it's true."
"I slept and dreamed life was joy. I awoke and saw life was duty. I acted, and behold, duty was joy."
Marshall looked up briefly in horror at the chunky gargoyle with the gorilla-like face. This one smiled apologetically at him and all at once seemed terribly amiable.
"Wow - who was that from?" asked Nashville, also impressed.
"From some Indian poet. A Dagore ... or Tagore? He was a Nobel Prize winner for literature. Angela gave me one of his books. You should read it sometime."
"And this on top of my other homework? Give me a break." The boy gargoyle grinned, and in that diffuse dust-broken light, this looked truly ghastly.
Travis smiled. He wasn't sure if he would die down here with these two beings (and Fran). Whether they would be crushed under tons of concrete. But he hoped that somehow the radio signal would get through to the OB van. So that his final legacy to the world would be these first-time, true recordings of gargoyles. So that everyone recognized what he also just realized. That they might be different from humans in appearance and abilities - but in their essence they were so similar that it didn't matter if they had wings and tails and claws and fangs. This other species was - not only sentient but each of them was equal to humans in emotions and thinking. In a way that it was downright bizarre. This was an alienating and burdening realization because it took away something of the uniqueness that had been preached to man for centuries. But uniqueness made lonely and arrogant, with fantasies of omnipotence came strains and burdens. Which in a way gave the thought something humble and liberating. Humans and gargoyles could coexist. They could share this world and work together instead of against each other. Despite his age, despite his sophistication, and despite hundreds of other examples in his mind, Travis wanted to believe that in those minutes.
Thanks for reading, Q.T.
