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Brood of a New Age
100.
Castaway hobbled through his house packing. He had managed to escape from "The Granary". In fact, he had made it out the open back door the second the blast of the collapse had hit him and he had been thrown face first a dozen yards into the East River. The river had carried him away. He had not fainted and had left himself to the current for a few minutes to get far away from the disaster. Castaway had had one of his faithful, who had not been involved in today's incidents, pick him up and drive him to his estate and send him away afterwards.
He didn't need any witnesses. He hadn't bothered with showering or changing clothes - there were more important things. He stuffed the last big bundle of money that had been hidden in the house into the second suitcase. It was his fundraising money ... so much that it wasn't even pocket money for someone like Xanatos. Any warlord in Africa could have won his war with it. And the two suitcases were additional expressions of love from the Illuminati. Large and almost square aluminum suitcases, indestructible, fireproof, impenetrable to X-rays, and equipped with a very peculiar spell. A spell that, once the four-digit code was entered to open it, would fool anyone into thinking there was only dirty laundry inside. And only when another four-digit code was entered would the money appear again. Ha! How easy it would have been for the hunters of the past if the Illuminati had stood by them. He limped into his study and pulled out the disk with all the information about his negotiations and donation sources after making sure the data transfer was complete. Then he used a "melter" (a small device that could safely and unrecoverably melt the inside of a computer and all its files to a pulp) to make sure that only this disk in his possession could prove his machinations and connections. Only with this disk he could continue where he had left off.
He needed a new start. Including a new identity. He would not give up.
He looked in the mirror at the face that was distantly reminiscent of his old one (Jon Canmore's) but was not the same. And that he would soon trade in for a new one. What would he call himself this time? He never wanted to completely deny his origins and heritage. He didn't want to reappear as a blank slate. People, his followers, should know that he acted with the same spririt as Jon Castaway before. Maybe ... Jackson Duncan?
Yes - that had a nice ring to it. And brown hair would be something else. And he had already sired the next generation with a broodmare that was loyal to their cause and had mother and child shipped to Scotland. It was only a girl but he would now take half a year off and could inseminate the mare a second time. Maybe two three others as well. To keep their cause pure the Hunters had scattered themselves far too little over the generations. Of course - with more offspring would also come more inferior candidates who would not be one hundred percent dedicated to their cause or would be physically and mentally deficient. But scattering one's seed would also produce more active hunters. This was statistics. In twenty to thirty years, there would be new Hunters, new Pied Pipers, new strategists at his side. If he hadn't eradicated the danger himself by then.
He smiled at his fake face in the mirror.
"There will always be Hunters," he muttered with a grin.
The Illuminati would understand. Jon Castaway had left scorched earth with tonight. He didn't see it that way himself, after all, it wasn't his fault that the helicopter had spun out of control, milled through the building, caused it to collapse, and buried a dozen of his soldiers-including four men and three women who left children behind. City leaders and the media had not yet been infiltrated enough by his supporters to positively influence the coverage and guilty verdicts. Of course, the Illuminati could pull the right strings to keep him out of jail. But would Jon Castaway be worth it? No, the Illuminati would realize that a new character needed to emerge on the scene and would outfit him accordingly. As they had done so Jon Canmore could become John Castaway without everyone recognizing who he was. It was just a little surgery, a little HexHex and simsalabim - a cinch.
John turned around, hit a wall with an "Uff! Smelled concrete dust and blood. But when he stumbled back a step, he saw that it was not a wall. He opened his mouth and instantly had a rope around his neck. A noose tightened, cutting off his air and preventing him from screaming and effectively fighting back. He tried to punch at the monster, to kick, to bang his head against the misshapen bloody grimace. But although the illusion of his body looked undamaged, it was definitely damaged. Full of cuts and bruises, probably a few broken ribs, more than one sprain. No one could tell but he had injuries that slowed him down. So it was easy for the monster to whirl him around. Until he felt him pressed tightly against his battered back. He heard something crack, which could only be the CD he had dropped, and realized with horror that he was now facing the mirror again. Saw his own glassy eyes, his fish-like tonelessly gasping for air face. He saw that because the monster wanted him to see THAT last. It stood behind him grinning broadly despite his own injuries, towering over him, increasing the pressure exerted on his throat not by a rope but by a high-quality burgundy tie while white spots were already dancing before Jon's eyes and his field of vision was shrinking rapidly. The Hell-Spawn's warm breath tickled his skin as the creature lowered its head and purred in a thrillingly sensual deep voice:
"That's how you cut the head off the snake. But don't worry, I'm not going to kill you. I have a much nicer idea for you. You'll have to deal with the anticipation for one more night, though."
Five minutes after Castaway's lifeless body- neatly and rather classically wrapped in a rug- had been carried away by air mail, his office was illuminated by a blinding flash of light, not only similar to the one that days ago had distracted Brooklyn and part of his clan in thwarting the bank robbery but of exactly the same quality and cause.
The two suitcases, with which Castaway, former Canmore, future Duncan had wanted to begin a new phase of life and work, were lifted in confusion and opened, whereupon astonished sounds could be heard. Briefly it was considered to light a fire in the fireplace of the study to burn the contents - the best that could be done with this kind of money and this absurd amount in the hands of this organization, but then the travelers disappeared again in a ball of fire.
At the same time, police cars pulled up in front of the house. A search warrant approved remarkably quickly by the federal court on the basis of probable cause regarding illegal procurement and use of unlicensed weapons within city and state borders caused officials to act quickly. The house was surrounded. After a mandatory polite knock and barked demand to let them in to which no one responded, a motley mix of GTF and police members with a battering ram broke down the door and flooded the lower floor. They worked their way through the other floors but encountered no traps, no resistance, no one at all. "Clear" sounded through the house. "Clear" for every floor.
Matt - who, after hours of involvement in the rescue operations, could be sure that Gargoyles and rescuers formed a perfect unit - had wanted to personally take Castaway into custody and question him. Now, as he wandered into the first-floor office, he was more than frustrated.
They didn't know yet if Castaway wasn't under the rubble of "The Granary" after all, but something had told Matt that Castaway was too slippery, too undeservedly lucky to be simply slain like the little rat he was. The surviving gargoyles and Quarrymen AND Dracon's people had said he was there. If Castaway had made it out, IF he had been here, he had made off. Over all mountains by now. Drawers had been open all over the house - a sign that he or one of his confidants had grabbed or scooped up something. Maybe money, maybe sensitive information, maybe weapons. Certainly not just a change of clothes.
The head of the GTF frowned in irritation at the pale discolored parquet flooring in the study, indicative of the carpet that had obviously been recently removed. Likewise, he stared down at the CD that had been crushed into a hundred tiny pieces. But otherwise, everything in the room seemed okay.
One of the tech-savvy cops, who had meanwhile removed his helmet, raised his head from behind the desk where the computer stood.
"Anything we can pull out of there?" asked Matt.
His colleague shook his head.
"The computer must have short-circuited. Every hard drive in there melted to mush. It's a miracle the house didn't burn down."
"Yeah, what a miracle," Bluestone muttered.
Yep, he was pretty sure Castaway had slipped away.
He looked down at the splinters of the CD again. Impossible to get anything out of there. Had Castaway left it behind to annoy the police? And of course, the computer just happened to be electronic junk. Why would Castaway leave all the evidence of his guilt here on display for them? But the missing carpet ... Unless he didn't leave voluntarily, Bluestone thought, looking again briefly at the CD with a very different eye, then at the bare pale square spot on the floor. Mafia killers wrap their victims in rugs! Inhuman mafia killers with a bone to pick with Castaway! roared the little paranoid Fox Mulder in his head.
.
.
The paramedic who had treated Hudson and also taken Tony Dracon away several hours ago was named Chavah.
That meant living joy and was somehow fitting, since she felt it was her joy to keep others as alive and well as possible. That's why she was here again- already two hours after her shift was over, squatting on the bench in the back of the ambulance, waiting for more people to be pulled out of the rubble who might need help. Who might still need help. Her colleague, who was actually driving the ambulance, had gone for a pee. He had already been gone longer than it took him to urinate and shake off the last drop, probably smoking another cigarette. Or two. Or three. But for an hour no one had been brought to one of the ambulances. In those five minutes no one would - then she saw movement on the scene of the accident.
Running over the hill of debris were two ... gargoyles? Not one of those who had been assisting the rescuers for hours. She backed into the car, wide-eyed, as she saw the two dusty and bloody gargoyles running toward her car. The larger one held a smaller almost gray lifeless gargoyle in his arms, the other right next to him an equally lifeless human child. The child and the small gargoyle were each connected by one of their hands and did not let go of each other despite being obviously unconscious, which looked extremely unnatural and forced the gargoyles to sprint shoulder to shoulder. Behind them limped an equally filthy human woman.
In fact, HER ambulance was the destination of the group.
The two gargoyles jumped through the open back door of the van and managed to put both children on the sole stretcher. The smaller one with the strange wings put his head on the chest of the unconscious Gargoyle, which showed second degree burns.
"We still have a heartbeat - but weak," he said, yanking the oxygen mask from the oxygen device in the corner and sliding it over the little gargoyle's beak and turning it on full. The device was not supposed to be turned on full, but since only the top third of the beak was covered by the mask and the lower part of the ... corner of the mouth? was open a crack, that was probably okay. The red gargoyle with the beak tried to detach the children's hands from each other (or rather the hand of the small gargoyle that lay like a vise around the hand of the human child).
Chavah saw that the child with the tousled pixie cut had an iron rod sticking out of his thigh and that this wound had been dressed and fixed with thick cloth as a pressure bandage. And quite well. But the little gargoyle looked worse.
The red one that resembled him groaned. "He won't let go of her. I- I have to break his fingers so we can-"
"Here, try this." The bald little guy pulled up the tail of the unconscious gargoyle. It was wrapped around something that looked like ... Hair? A thick tuft of long hair? The fact that even now the tail was wrapped around it so tightly and didn't go limp was strange to witness. The small olive gray gargoyle pulled the hair out of the tail's clasp, tied a knot in the middle of the tuft, and tried to push the thick clump into the unconscious fellow's hand. And although he appeared dead and it COULDN'T be a controlled reaction his hand opened to grasp this tuft. Which gave them the opportunity to pull the child's hand out of his claws and replace it with the tuft of hair before the hand closed again like the "mouth" on a Venus flytrap.
The woman who had hobbled after the gargoyles tried to hoist herself into the van despite her obviously injured foot and groaned. Immediately she had the red gargoyle's hands under her arms and was lifted inside like a child. There was no time for thank-yous or other banter. The woman almost shouted at Chavah but already at the first words she realized that this person, who must have been buried a moment ago herself, must come from the medical field.
"Traumatic hemorrhagic shock! Gunshot wound in the back below the lung. We need to get to the nearest hospital! We need an operating room and a surgeon who is willing to approach him and operate to take out the bullet and close the vein that was probably injured."
Thrown off track and out of her routines by the sudden bustle in her car and by the fact that other humans and gargoyles were coming over the debris mountain, Chavah blinked at the disheveled but rather resolute-looking woman.
This clapped loudly into her hands.
"Wake up! Either you drive the whip or a colleague who will be here in thirty seconds. Then you assist me back here. Where's the NaCl in here? Where the infusion set? Move!"
The paramedic gasped, remembered her mission, her duty, her joy, looked at the little gargoyle on the stretcher who was only slightly taller than the human child ... and at the same time realized that the little gargoyle was a child too AND that he was bleeding all over the stretcher. She whirled around and ripped open the drawer with the transparent bags of 0.9% saline. Then the one with the infusion equipment, then the one with the needles, swabs and disinfectant. She put one of the larger needles out already. Bigger needles, faster volume flow - not good for several reasons but necessary in life-threatening hypovolemic shock.
The woman who had come with the gargoyles pushed her away and began preparing the infusion. Which Chavah didn't blame her for because it gave her a chance to climb in the front and yell out the open driver's window. "BOB!" Several people flinched; she saw reporters, firemen and policemen staring at her. But no fucking Bob! Where was her damn driver?
In the back of the car, she could hear the gargoyles talking. Other gargoyles and humans were now standing outside the open back doors, too, babbling in confusion. An ice-blue female, who simply had to be the mother, stroked the gray little gargoyle's feet and legs because there was simply no room at the head end of the stretcher.
"The NaCl won't be enough, he needs a blood transfusion. Who has the right blood type?" asked Fran as she cleaned Nashville's arm and stuck the infusion needle into a vein in the crook of his arm. Actually, it was too big for a child his size but Brooklyn assured her that a gargoyle could take it and their skin was thicker and their bodies more resilient than humans. As if she hadn't noticed that by now. She hung the NaCL bag on the ceiling of the car, where there were special holders for it, and turned the V-track controller to maximum.
Briefly, all the gargoyles and humans were quiet, having previously showered her with unhelpful questioning verbal concern and expressions of shock. Fran looked up and the biggest gargoyle - Goliath, whose gruesome grimace she had seen on thousands of posters but now just looked woefully tattered and worried - opened his mouth:
"We ... don't know our blood types. Either we petrify and heal ..., or-"
"I know Nashville's blood type," Brooklyn said.
"What, how? You-."
Angela faltered ... And grinned desperately. "From the future. In the future, we know our blood types."
Brooklyn screwed up his face. He had sworn not to reveal anything about the future. He himself knew only bits and pieces, and those he had met in the future - people and gargoyles who had known him or members of his clan - had always been at pains not to reveal individual fates. His access to information systems had also been restricted. Those who knew too much about their own future also actively tried to change it. With unpredictable consequences. But wasn't that what he wanted? Didn't he want to change the future? Could he think NOW about the balance of the world when it came to his child?
He looked at Lexington, who was just now - mentally as so often in emergency situations three steps ahead - familiarizing himself with a thing and fiddling with it, with which probably liquid could be pumped from A to B. It looked hardly electric, but as if it had to be operated manually. A red squezzy rubberball that fit into a hand was connected to still-sterile shrink-wrapped infusion sets. Lexington smiled. "We can do it with that. Who's compatible with Nash? You or Katana?"
"Neither of us. And none of the rest of you. Only one is a universal donor here." Brooklyn looked at Lexington. The latter's eyes widened, then he pressed his lips together and slapped the crook of his arm.
"Okay! Prick me!"
The paramedic yelled again for some Bob. Fran leaned toward her.
"Is there any material here for placing a Peripheral vein catheter for Blood transfusion? And I need Big gauged PICC that the blood can flow quickly. Where is that?"
"Uhhh drawer 7."
Fran turned and pulled open that drawer.
The paramedic frowned. Saw that Fran just had an infusion set ready for NaCl and not blood. And from drawer seven she pulled out a singe lumen PICC and a double lumen PICC with outer diameter of seven French gauge. She gasped.
"The material does not match! And a body-to-body blood transfusion into the subclavian vain! That can be dangerous for both donor and recipient. What about hypovolaemic shock in the donor?"
Fran bared her teeth. "Don't explain me my job, sister. The risks have to be taken when he -"
"What about transfusion-associated circulatory overload in the recipient? Besides, even with universal donors, tests have to be done on the blood - the late effects can-."
Katana was suddenly with her, eyes glowing red. She held onto the back of the driver's seat Chavah was sitting in and her claws pierced the firm leather effortlessly.
"We are gargoyles! As long as my hatchling makes it to sunrise he will survive! We'll worry about your human after-effects later. Now step on the gas or I'll get behind the wheel! And finally radio the nearest hospital and report that a gargoyle child is coming in. And don't you dare not have at least one emergency surgeon in the operating room."
The EMT stared at Katana for a moment, then nodded and turned to the steering wheel and started the engine. "Everyone who's not helping, get away from the car and shut the doors. Those who stay, secure the patient and the child. It's going to be a brisk ride."
While Lex yelped when Fran stuck the thick needle into his chest through which he would soon donate gallons of blood to Nashville via the infusion set, Katana jumped out of the car more than reluctantly. It was just too cramped in there. But she wouldn't be a wing length behind her mate and hatchling.
With sirens blaring, the ambulance drove off, depressingly slow because the police had to clear the way for the vehicle from onlookers first. But that gave the gargoyles time to climb out one of the fire trucks to take wing.
"Soon the sun will rise," Fox said from the very back. Goliath nodded and turned to the clan. "Anyone who wants to glide back to the castle-"
"You don't think so yourself Lad," Hudson grunted. "The clan rises together, the clan perishes together."
"Yes! One for all, all for one! We are coming with you!" Angela shouted. Katana looked at her gratefully. No time to put into words all her otherwise well-hidden feelings and thoughts towards them. Later. If there was a later.
.
.
Matthew Menachem Bluestone sighed loudly as he left the building. In twenty minutes, the sun would rise. He couldn't talk about this with Elisa. Not now. Not until every gargoyle had been found. This was her family, dammit. And a missing carpet was flimsy evidence that Dante had also escaped the collapse, followed Castaway, and killed him, or at least kidnapped him. Without evidence, what should he do? Matt knew that until Castaway was handcuffed and sitting in front of them on such a hefty charge that he would never breathe unsifted air again, there would always be that sword of Damocles hanging over Elisa and all gargoyles.
Occupational hazard. It was questionable if Castaway would ever get his foot on the ground again after he had let a helicopter with a Gatling gun AND a laser cannon shoot at a building with not only gargoyles and mobsters but also his own soldiers. Civilians. With children at home who were now half-orphans. That was nefarious. That was insane. That would require extremely good and expensive lawyers. Maybe ... Castaway had absconded. Maybe he really was dead. Well, hope died last - didn't it? But even if Castaway was gone ... that kind of human didn't die out - they'd have to be on the lookout for the next gift-spitting lunatic who either wore a Hunter mask or assigned the masses to do his dirty work.
He was about to leave the building when his radio on his turnout gear crackled to life.
"Matt!" It sounded breathlessly from the small box.
Agitated and immediately energized (and seized with fear), Matthew brought the radio to his mouth... "Elisa! Anything new?"
"You could say that!" she shouted, barely audible from all the howling. But it wasn't the wail of sirens though that could be heard in the background too. It was airborne wind.
Matt didn't know what was going on and guessed there was no point in questioning Elisa now. Sometimes partners understood each other without longer explanations.
That's why he just beckoned to his guys from the GTF and shouted into the radio:
"Where do we need to be?"
Thanks for reading, Q.T.
