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Brood of a New Age

44.

"That's such a nasty bump!" Nashville carefully palmed Graziella's temple as they sat across from each other on their rooftop hangout. The girl made no sound of pain, but he withdrew his hand because he saw her squint her eyes.

But her grin as she turned to him was too good.

"Maria gave me two pain pills for children. I'll get some again tomorrow. But I've never felt better. Alessio will think three times now before he pulls shit with Sonny or me."

Nashville anticipated how she felt. It was great to teach wrongdoers a lesson (even if he wondered HOW familiar Graziella was with this weird boy named Sonny!). Well- HE was the monster with the claws who already at his age had to be careful not to hurt the mostly very ordinary opponents too much. His fights did not correspond to a children's brawl. But he was probably the only one who could understand how Graziella was feeling right now. And that's why he swallowed his comment that he wished she hadn't gotten into a fight with the older boy and hadn't been beaten. Instead he gave her the reaction he would much rather have from his elders even if a mission had not gone perfectly.

"You did a great job, Graziella. You protected those who couldn't protect themselves. You should be proud of yourself." He stroked her hair with praise and a smile, and to his deepest delight, she leaned into his hand like a puppy in need of affection.

"Are you proud of me?" she asked softly.

"Yes, Swallow. More than you can know," he murmured back, unable to contain himself as he added his fondest wish: "You would have made a great gargoyle."

Graziella's eyes widened and her smile was just for him.

"That would be SO great."

Nashville's skin prickled with goosebumps even though it was another warm night and his voice sounded excited to his own ears, almost shrill in a first early indication of his voice breaking.

"Yes - isn't it? You - Us. You could stay with us at the castle. Everyone would think you're awesome. Andandand- we have watchbeasts- they're like really big dogs. They look scary, but they LOVE kids, especially when you scratch them behind the ears. And I could teach you to fly and we could petrify next to each other."

At the word petrify, Graziella's expression instantly became fearful. She shook her head and tugged at the sleeve of her hoodie.

"But I don't want to petrify," she said again uncertainly, and was all child again.

"It-it's not bad," Nash said, not quite understanding what Graziella's problem was. "It feels like falling asleep. You- you even dream like humans do. Only- you can't leave your beak open or birds will build their nests in there during the day."

What he had hoped would make Graziella giggle only made the child look more terrified. Nashville raised his hands.

"I mean-no. There are no birds at the castle! Most of them don't even fly that high. Really! And most birds feel they'd better build nests somewhere else."

"I don't want to turn to stone!" said the child, almost on the verge of tears, as if they were really discussing her possible future here, which was clearly a demonstration of her childishly vivid imagination. And ... even if Nashville didn't want to admit it to himself ... in his brain equally childish phantasms had flashed by. Options, possibilities of which Graziella and pretty much all people didn't even suspect that they were real. Images of the mutants in the labyrinth and of Sevarius, who was still out there somewhere. Or pictures of Puck teaching Alexander a neat trick that could be called "Let's Transform Nashville's Girlfriend." Or of Demona, who, despite her hatred of humans, might -. But all of these musings collapsed at the fearful look on Graziella's face.

"What frightens you about that?" he asked emphatically, brushing a strand of her hair behind her tiny ear.

"If you petrify, then you can't wake up, can you?" she wanted to know, and Nashville smiled leniently and shook his head.

"No. We petrify at sunrise and then sleep until sunset. No gargoyle in this world can wake up during the day." (Except by magic, he thought, but didn't want to open that barrel now, too).

Graziella had grabbed the fabric of his tebukuro and was kneading it between her fingers. It seemed to Nash that she was uncomfortable looking at him while she spoke in a soft animated child's voice.

"If I were a gargoyle- I would HAVE to turn to stone. And what if bad people come then? What if quarrymen come? What if they crush me? Then I would be ... dead, right? Like my mom and my grandma." Nashville swallowed and his throat was all tightened in distress at her tone. Just that he didn't deny that about death was confirmation of her fear. He slid to her and it was the most natural thing for him to take his friend in his arms. Of course, she was not yet over the death of her grandmother (and her mother). Something like that could hurt forever. It also reminded Graziella of her own mortality. It reminded him of his own mortality and that of everyone around him.

"Bad people and Quarrymen would never make it up to our sleeping places, Graziella."

"You know that for a fact?" she asked.

"Yes. Xanatos had the castle upgraded. It has a pretty great security system." Nashville had already told Graziella last time that his clan was sleeping in the medieval castle high atop the Eyrie building, where they were under the protection of Xanatos. It felt so good to be able to tell her the truth about a lot of things this time, and he realized he couldn't stop doing it. He knew it was a risk ... but Graziella was a child - even if she eventually blabbed anything to her dad or those dimwitted aunts - who would believe her? Still - he'd made Graziella swear that she wouldn't blab anything, ever, to anyone - not even Grigio - about himself and his family, and something inside him told him that she wouldn't either. It wasn't THAT much of a secret within the town anymore, either. After all, one of Xanatos Enterprises' unmarked helicopters had taken them off the roof of St. Damien Cathedral back then.

"But... this Mister Xanatos. He was in prison himself," Graziella said as she broke away from him. "What if he does something bad again? With you guys."

Nashville stroked her cheek. "He won't. He's reformed." At Graziella's quizzical expression, he used simpler words.

"He used to do bad things. But now he's sworn to support us. I know he's at least a good guy in that regard."

"So you believe... that even men who have been in prison can become good men?"

"Yes. Definitely. That's what I believe in. I don't believe that prison makes someone a better man. But ... if someone really wants to change afterwards, I believe that they can be good men, too.

Graziella smiled in a weird way.

"Thanks Nashville," she said, and he laughed at that.

"I don't know what you're thanking me for. But here you go."

He stood up, having given it some thought in the last hour, and had now come to the decision that he was just going to try it.

He reached out to her.

"That you don't want to be a gargoyle because of the petrifying, I get. But how about flying?"

"What?" The child let him help her to her feet and looked at him with her wonderful eyes full of confusion.

"Do you want to fly, I ask. Like your swallows in Limatola."

"But how?" she asked.

Now it was Nashville's turn to give her a confident smile and put his fists on his hips. He had flirted with the idea since he first met Graziella. Dozens of times he dismissed it as a pipe dream and dozens of times he fantasized about it again. Yesterday, as he had watched Elisa gliding away in Goliath's arms - as was their frequent routine but apparently their great happiness - he had made up his mind. What Goliath and Elisa could do, he could do with Graziella. His own human in his arms. Better. His girl in his arms.

"It wouldn't be quite like flying. We glide. On the wind. I can carry you. I won't let you fall. You'll love it, I know you will," he tried to coax her but you could tell the child was unsure as rapturous smiles alternated with apprehensive furrows in her brow.

But he knew Graziella well enough by now to know how to get her, and he felt really diabolical as he flashed a wide mocking grin.

"Are you scared?"

"I'm - too heavy for you, I'm sure," the child argued but already defiantly pushed her lower lip forward while looking sideways beyond the edge of the roof - her face illuminated golden by the neon sign.

"Fear after all! Bukbukbuk!" made Nash teasingly, and Graziella whirled around with an indignant face, puffing out her cheeks. "I'm not scared at all! Nashville!"

"You are," he said, scraping his clawed feet on the roofing felt with clucking noises and imitating a chicken, which he probably did shamefully well thanks to beak and wings. Graziella made an annoyed noise, ruffled her long hair in displeasure that he was teasing her, looked again from the edge of the roof, then at him with a grim face, before rushing to him, wrapping her arms around his neck that it was pain and pleasure at the same time and stating:

"If you drop me, I'll kill you."

Nashville laughed, put his arms around his girlfriend, swung her into a safe- not so much choking him- position that the kid let out a yelp, covered the ten steps to the edge of the roof and jumped.

.

.

"That's sooooo awesomeeee!" exclaimed Graziella over the in-flight wind, and though Nashville could barely see because of her twirling hair, he had to laugh out loud as much as she did. She wasn't too heavy. She was lighter than anything he had ever had to carry before had ever seemed to him. She still clutched painfully at his neck but this flight with her was the best experience of his life. He bathed in her whoops when he took an updraft and carried her high above the rooftops, he wallowed in her first fearful, now excited whimpers when he tucked his wings and (deliberately faster than he had to) reduced altitude. He enjoyed her warm body and felt her racing heart in her arms around his neck, her trembling and even her churning stomach when he lay into an air current between the buildings. He could have glided with her forever but knew soon he would have to land. Not because of himself. But because he felt how cold Graziella's arms were getting. Despite the summer night air, the winds hundreds of meters above the ground were cold if you glided fast. Although he was now already back at building level.

"I'm about to land, Graziella," he called, and his favorite girl rubbed her wild mop of hair against the side of his beak, enveloping him in her scent for a second and making him shiver.

"Just a little more," she begged.

He laughed hoarsely. "You do have your eyes closed most of the time," he said in a teasing way.

"Not at all. Not anymore," she said, and would have said more if Nashville hadn't sharply braked at that second, instantly catapulting him and Graziella six feet in the air and then to the side. Graziella's scream stuck in her throat, Nashville pressed her tightly against him with one arm, slamming his foot talons and the claws of his other hand deep into the stone facade of an older building, trapping the child between him and the structure. He let her slip out of his arm but only a few inches that she felt there was a small ledge to stand on.

"What-?" she shrilled, and Nash pressed her lips together with one of his wingdigits.

"Quarrymen! Hush!" he hissed under his breath. Then he adjusted his dark wings so that they completely covered him, and thus Graziella, and didn't move again. Endless seconds seemed to pass. Endless seconds in which neither Nashville nor Graziella said anything and only the excited breathing of the child in Nashville's self-made wing cocoon could be perceived. Then the human girl also heard the whirring of an engine and rotors and got - if that was possible - even stiffer in his arm. When Nashville turned his head he could see between his painfully adjusted wings as well as Graziella. To his relief, the girl didn't let out a fearful scream as two Quarrymen flying machines hovered in the air very close to them. Four people - presumably all men - were shouting over the blowing wind which, like the darkness on this side of the building, was helping to hide the children.

"I saw it!" shouted one who was at the steering wheel. The other behind him, who had a hammer hanging in his belt loop, gestured to the other two on the other sky-sled.

"Me, too. Not this Goliath guy who was in court. But one of the little monsters. It was carrying something. It couldn't have gotten far."

As the guys looked around, Nashville noticed how the girl he had pressed against him (and who was also pressing against him) was shaking like a leaf. He might have been shaking himself, too. But he had confidence in his camouflage clothing, in his training, in his instincts. Stealth. Blending in with the darkness. He was the shadow himself - a ninja. And it had never meant more. Because Graziella was with him. He would protect her with his life. Now and forever. He was more concerned about her than calming himself, he inhaled deeply and let a soft rumbling sound come from his throat as he exhaled slowly. He knew the child who had his head pressed to his chest was hearing the sonorous sound in its entirety. And although these sounds were meant to soothe Gargoyle hatchlings, it seemed to work on Graziella as well.

"Where did that filthy monster turn off? I can't see anything," he heard one of the men say behind him.

"Which way did it fly?" asked another.

"West. Toward the Hudson. We'll get that little demon there. They rarely glide across the river," another remarked.

"Well, let's go. Pronto. We'll get the bonus from Castaway."

The whirring of the hovercrafts grew briefly louder, then faded into the distance. For a few more seconds, Nashville paused in what was for him a painful posture, listening. Never get out of cover too soon. Rule number five of his father. Or was it six? Oh dear, if he was quizzed tomorrow, he would get in trouble if he mixed up the numbers.

Finally, Nashville lowered his wings, gave his girlfriend a little more room to breathe as he leaned away from the building and relaxed. Trying to smile confidently, he said bubbly.

"Phaa! Those idiots. As if they get us so easily. Quarrymen zero points- Nash and Graziella a full-"

His eyes widened when he saw Graziella's quivering lower lip. Turning her head painfully to the side, she stared at his hand buried deep in the stone facade. How inhuman, how monstrous this sight had to be. But just as he was about to apologize - for this situation and for his own nature - Graziella turned her gaze and looked at him with hatred. Even if her hatred was not directed against him.

"Those fucking wankers," she hissed with words and a voice that didn't seem to be that of a child and an expression in her eyes that scared Nashville. Because disgust deformed her features. An expression that many people had already given him. Human and non-human criminals. An expression that lacked all reason and forbade all argumentation. This time the disgust was not directed against him and that should have pleased Nash. But to see Graziella like this was ... ugly.

"Nothing happened Graziella," he tried to reassure her to get back the girl he loved.

Her eyes seemed to spark.

"They called you a filthy monster. A demon. They called you an IT."

"Yes, they did," he said, feeling terribly tired all at once.

Only his girlfriend seemed more awake than ever.

"They would have killed you if they found you. They had hammers. And they wouldn't have cared. No. They would have been glad. Happy to kill you."

Nash didn't know what to say to that, but after a moment Graziella kept talking. Her voice so full of venom it made Nashville nauseous.

"They should die. Why did my Mamma and Nonna have to die but people like that are allowed to live and chase you? I want them to die more than anything."

The gargoyle boy shuddered. Graziella sounded like Demona. Just like Demona though she was a little girl. He knew she was speaking out of fear. But it wasn't just that. And he recognized a spark of his own thoughts in her honest words. And that was probably what disgusted him the most.

He pressed the child, who was now trembling with rage, against him.

"Please. Please don't talk like that," he murmured, and the urgency of his voice made the girl seem to relax and listen.

"Why?" she asked coldly.

"Because I like you," he said truthfully. "And I don't know how I can continue to like you if you let these feelings control you, if you let this hatred eat you up."

Now she was silent and Nashville took the opportunity to speak further. Actually, he was embarrassed by these verities. But it was just so much more important to him to get his Graziella back. To get her back from wherever she was.

"Again and again, I think similar to you. And I am so angry and sad and I am afraid for the now and for the future. But behind every mask there is a human being, Graziella. A person with a family. People who love him or her, whom he or she loves. They kiss their partners, take their kids to school, or cheer for their football team. Their hate comes from insecurity and fear. Because they are afraid of what they don't understand. And it doesn't do any good if we in turn respond to them with hate," Nash said, pretty much echoing Goliath's words. "We have to break that cycle. Don't answer hate and pain with hate and pain. Otherwise it will never stop."

"But you help so many people and they-"

"We help many. And someday. Someday these people we have helped will stand up. They will speak where now they are silent also because of fear. I have to tell myself the same thing over and over again. That I don't become like those who judge others out of hurt feelings and dread." He broke away from Graziella again and she looked up at him. He saw by her moist sad eyes that she was with him again and smiled.

"Can you help me with that, Swallow? Can you help me not hate?"

"How?"

"By being there. By being better and stronger than the hate you experience. Every time others hurt me, I want to think of you. You help me be good by being good, by being my friend."

She smiled even if her smile looked tortured. "I'll be your friend forever. I can be strong!" she said confidently. Nashville would have liked to kiss her. Just like he had seen the grown-ups do. On the mouth - like a boy kissing a girl in the movies he had always thought were so silly until now. But he didn't know how to do that with his beak. None of the princes in the movies had had a beak. He swallowed this deep desire.

"I'm going to fly you to our roof now, Graziella. You're all cold, and I want you to be well in two nights when we meet again."

"Okay."

.

Because Graziella was still a bit shaky on her feet after her frightening encounter high above the rooftops of the city, he had taken the time to accompany her home after he had dropped her off on their roof. Well, he hadn't really accompanied her. He had glided from roof to roof, watching over her as she walked back home through the dark streets. And what a home it was. No wonder her dad had gotten her her own credit card. These people must have had money to burn. A four-story townhouse with large courtyard and surrounding garages and stockroomsin Manhattan that clearly did NOT house individual apartments but had only one doorbell was obvious.

Glad that his girlfriend had made it back home safely, Nashville had given in to temptation, snuck across the flat roof and spacious rooftop terrace, and crawled down the gutter where a light had come on in two of the third floor windows. Graziella's room was really big and very ... princess-like. Any other girl would have loved the big four-poster bed but he guessed from her stories that it probably meant nothing to her. And it was only after Graziella kicked her sneakers off her tiny feet and put her hands on the collar of her hoodie to pull it over her head that Nashville was able to tear himself away. She was a kid. And he was a kid. But she was also a girl and a human being. He felt weird watching her change. Strange and somehow ... indecent towards her. He had never had such a feeling before, but it was there.

Silently again and unnoticed by the man or men in the dark car, which just drove into the courtyard of the mansion, he made it back to the roof terrace. He was briefly tempted to take a closer look at Graziella's relatives or even her dad, who had just come home, but it was enough for him that she had once again made it to her room unharmed and unnoticed. When he got airborne, he saw that the light in her room was off. Now he had to succeed again in a clean plot against his relatives.

Thanks for reading Q.T.