.

Brood of a New Age

52.

Dante flew now already half an hour in zigzag course over Manhattan as fast as he could although he had no idea where he should go. Or even where he was right now.

The way she had looked at him when she had tried to convince him. Eating animals. The Grace he knew and loved prayed before every meal, thanking the cook, the farmers who grew the vegetables and the animals who gave their lives for the meat. And now she was crushing the bones of small creatures between her teeth! Probably she was still saying some kind of prayer of thanks - inwardly. But she jumped over her shadow every night and it was obvious that she was NOT comfortable with it. She ignored it- but he just couldn't do it anymore. She called it not only the tradition of the other gargoyles. But their nature. Had she done that? Gave in to her nature? Would that happen to him, too, if he forced himself to return? Would his actual nature prevail over his upbringing, his worldview, his previous identity. Was HE actually the abnormal one?

He loved his sister. He would always love her. But in essence, she had chosen the others over him. And could he blame her for that? Could he blame Luca and Grace?

And now he was alone. Driven away by this disgusting clan but mostly by his own revulsion and pride. He put his hands to his head and screamed the second a rumble of thunder shook Manhattan. And he had picked the perfect night to run away.

He saw a magnificent but completely dark mansion with a spacious and high walled garden. In it - numerous stone figures. Instantly he went into a dive, came down on the meticulously cut lawn and stomped towards the next best figure. It was a human-faced gargoyle full of horns, with wings wrapped around its body - something he had never seen anywhere in the city before, no matter what size, because the Quarrymen had probably smashed all the statues. This one was life-size and majestic and looked with dead eyes rapturously into the sky where gray mountains of clouds piled up. He didn't look like anyone from that damn clan and Dante didn't have that hatred in him that would cause him to seriously hurt a living member of the clan but he was so frustrated and pissed off and TIRED. And it felt good now to have a valve for those feelings that no one would reprimand him for.

He took a running jump two meters into the air and kicked the gargoyle's head off, sending it flying in a high arc. This sight should have disturbed a real born gargoyle, especially someone who had consciously experienced a massacre of fellow stone creatures. And also Dante, whose clan had been shattered-even if he couldn't remember it- flashed through his mind how terrible he should feel about it. But he didn't. The one in front of him was not a conspecific. It was just a carved boulder - just a piece of expensive decoration of some arrogant bigwig. He began to pummel the headless gargoyle, and the non-species gradually lost its hands raised to the sky, its protruding tail, and large lumps of its wings and shoulders, accompanied by crunching stone-flaking sounds. As his knuckles began to pop and bleed, he, lacking his knives, which he had forgotten to demand back (and he also doubted that the noble Americans would have handed them to him), spread his fingers and with ease let his claws maltreat the stone.

"Why! Why? WHY!" he cried as the old rage bubbled up inside him and - as his strength waned - ebbed away just as quickly. Before him stood only a misshapen rock, only the clawed legs showing that it had once been more. In a final show of strength, Dante pushed it off its pedestal and stood beside the pile of rubble, breathing heavily.

"Why can't I adapt?" he whispered, staring breathlessly at the fragments that seemed to him like a methaphor for himself. And he realized that he was not a bit more content or satisfied than before his outburst. He himself had driven a wedge between himself and the other gargoyles. Worse, he had lost Grace and Luca. Even Mister Clean he missed now. He would have been halfway content in Italy - even without a larger clan. Only with these two fools, who didn't punish him with rejection. And now he had nothing at all.

Dante froze as he heard a low buzzing rising in tone, much like the one he heard a few days ago from the Quarrymen. It was a weapon being loaded. Before he could turn to the sound, a cold female voice barked at him:

"Hands up. You low unworthy creature."

Breathing heavily, he slowly raised his hands. THIS was the successful conclusion of his American adventure. He was shot like a mutt because that stupid other clan had driven him away and he had just wanted to vent. He was shot without even having hurt or killed a human being first, not out of revenge for one of his deeds, not even in an honorable fight (as ridiculous as this concept seemed to him despite Katana's good words) but simply ... because he was. Because he was Gargoyle. And because he was Fiore – or Dante – or Adamo. Whatever!

"What is this about?" the woman's cold annoyed voice asked. Not a young voice, Dante speculated. Maybe in her thirties. Or late thirties? Easy to overpower and break her neck despite her weapon. But her voice. Far too cool and superior in the back of a monster the whole town- the whole world- assumed could severely injure, kill, and eat her. As for the first two things- an absolute and decisive yes. As for the last:

"Lady- I know what you're thinking now. But I'm not here to devour anyone. That Castaway nutcase is just making this shit up."

"That wasn't an answer to my question. I wanted to know what brings an imbecile suicidal gargoyle onto my property to vandalize my garden artwork. As if the Quarrymen don't smash enough stone statues. Besides, I don't know you."

Dante chuckled his best mobster laugh.

"Oh, I'll bet you haven't seen me in any of the TV footage. I've only been in town a few weeks."

"Inequivocabilmente con questo accento," the woman now said in remarkably fluid delightfully sultry sounding Italian and Dante shuddered with pleasure at that. Or maybe it was the gun now pressed against his back, between his shoulder blades. His heart was beating up to his throat because of it but somehow this pressure on his back was totally arousing. And the woman's voice - though still icy and venomous and now even speaking English again was also arousing.

"I have a ranting and raving gargoyle in my backyard, I'm allowed to want to know what that's all about?"

Dante growled in frustration. The prospect that he was about to be shot didn't even make him particularly angry. It only intensified his fatigue. His fatigue that had been building over the past few weeks. He was SO tired of the life his sister and this pathetic clan wanted him to lead. Maybe ... it would be okay to just get picked off. Now on his last mile and dealing with a mindless human, he might as well blow off some steam.

"If you care SO much, babe - I'm ranting and raving because I'm starting to go nuts with these damn Manhattan Clan do-gooders! I needed to vent about something- it was your garden, it was your art, if you want to call that kind of thing art, and if you blow me away, you're honestly doing me a fucking favor because then I don't have to go back to them."

For a few seconds there was no audible response. Then a more than suspicious one:

"So? Manhattan Clan do-gooders. Interesting."

"Yes- super interesting. May I recommend a headshot? You humans have no problem shooting someone in the back so fire away."

"Who said I was human?"

Dante's eyes grew wide. And they stayed that way as he slowly - very slowly, so as not to provoke a shot out of his sheer curiosity - turned around. His eyes wandered from the weapon, not five inches from his chest, to the feet of his opponent. Blue clawed feet. Which were attached to blue bare legs. Long legs that disappeared into a cream-colored loincloth. A powerful tail swinging threateningly from side to side, albeit without an arrowhead. Slender midriff- lovely breasts in a top. The fierce yet disdainful glare of a queen. With that look alone, she could have brought other men to their knees without the use of claws or teeth (or the Laser Glock). Not so Dante.

He felt a smile spread across his face. And grew wider. And even wider.

The eyes of the female who was threatening him with the gun lit up red.

"What are you grinning at?"

Dante let his tail swing slowly and deliberately behind him, close to the ground. A movement that continued up his spine into his body like a ripple as he relaxed. The resentment, the frustration, the hatred that had made his face similarly cold and contorted into a grimace as that of the female before him turned soft and gentle, leaving not a child but a seducer. The sensual smoothness in his voice was therefore now only natural.

"I'm just enjoying the view. Hai tutto ciò che desidero, amore mio."

The redhead in front of him blinked (the only sign that his words had hit the bull's eye), then twisted her blood-red lips into a wicked grin.

"You have no idea who I am."

Dante smirked, flipped on his bedroom expression, and slowly guided his hand to her gun until he closed his fingers around the barrel. Had she fired now, his hand would have been torn to shreds before his ribcage would have burst.

"I know who I have in front of me. Demona. Thousand-year-old sorceress. Slayer of thousands. Menace to humanity. The most beautiful woman I've ever had the privilege of laying my eyes on. Please, when you shoot-" he very gently pushed the barrel of the gun a little to the left. "- then straight into my heart. Finish what you started."

Demona looked at him with narrowed eyes - as if considering whether he might be a lunatic or worse, spy of the Manhattan clan. Then the corner of her mouth twitched in a hint of an honest smile.

"There, I see Goliath's entourage is telling the right variety of stories about me."

"It was far too little. He didn't mention a word about how gorgeous you look. How fierce and cruel. A poem come true, full of ferocity and majesty."

"Don't push it, kid. Let me guess. You came from Italy to find other gargoyles. And you imagined this clan here very differently."

"You bet. If this is how all gargoyles are supposed to be ... what are they? A better substitute for the blue pigs? Lap animals without a leash for the humans? If I have to hear that line about protecting from this Hudson one more time, all my hair is going to fall out."

"Yet the hair is the best thing on you," Demona muttered, and Dante wasn't quite sure if she meant his hair color because it was similar to her own, or if it was meant to be a strange joke. She strolled around him, still with her gun ready to fire. Eyeing him in a seemingly emotionless way. But Dante - himself blessed, in his opinion, with the gift of understatement - recognized that there was no longer disgust in her eyes. She seemed interested, but indecisive. As if she were examining the display at the meat counter and didn't yet know if she was hungry. Others would have squirmed with discomfort under these inquiring, assessing and judging looks. But Dante liked that a devil woman like this was checking him out so obviously. He disliked disappointing the ladies so much. He raised his head with a smirk and tensed the muscles in his arms as she came back into his field of vision, trying to look " tasty".

"Now who likes what she sees?" he asked in a smoky seducer voice and Demona smirked in her turn. Before stroking the underside of his beak with the barrel of her gun.

"You clearly don't fit in with Goliath and his cohort."

"Everyone of those guys is such a joke," he muttered, enjoying the coolness of the deadly metal against his neck. "But you and me, Demona. This could be a thing."

"A thing?

"Together - a thing."

"Quite arrogant."

"Rather confident in my abilities."

"What are those abilities supposed to be?"

"Give me a name. A person you want me to terminate. And I'll lay his head at your feet. Or any other body part of him in front of any other body part of you."

Demona laughed and it sounded like the devil was walking over Dante's grave. God, that was hot.

"I like to kill my humans myself," she said, artificially rebuffed.

"But a gift now and then would be a nice gesture. Just to express how glad I am that not all gargoyles are like ... them."

"Indeed," Demona whispered, now studying his face. Dante knew he should have felt threatened by this female's obvious dominance. But he simply found it - attractive. He would tolerate being at her beck and call. He would follow her if she wanted him to. Father he had always followed because he had been their father. Grace he had always followed because she was his sister. That was what he had believed until now. Now the thought slowly sprouted that maybe it was more because father and later Grace had been able to take the lead so easily. Maybe he just needed that. A kind of boss. Not a leader like Goliath, who wanted him to do things he couldn't understand and which somehow went against his grain in their supposed matter-of-factness. A boss. Equal and yet someone he could follow. Indifferent were thereby race and gender. Although, of course, race AND gender spoke for Demona.

"You're from Italy," she said as a statement. "Did the others come too?"

"What others?" he asked, for some reason careful not to let Demona know about Grace but interested nonetheless.

The blue demon queen's eyes grew pitying and sad for a second, then flared red.

"If you're the only one, that means they wiped out the Matese clan. That stupid bunch of peasants."

"The- the Matese clan? Matsese like ... the regional park? The one near Naples?"

"You don't know?"

Now Dante abruptly felt thrown back to the child inside him. How he had felt when he had seen the egg in the rookery. A child that was completely in the dark. Alone.

"I wa-wa-was raised by humans. Father found me shortly after I was born ... I mean shortly after I hatched," he said, a little shaken. And all at once - just for a second - felt Demona brush her knuckles over his brow ridge.

"Oh ... you poor creature. Who thinks a human his father," she tapped against the cross around his neck. "Lost lamb. Growing up among humans." Demona made a disgusted face for a moment, thinking of her own daughter, who had suffered the same fate but had at least had more than thirty rookery siblings.

"Did those bumpkins inflict those scars on you? That would be akin to human scum- mutilating a Hatchling."

"No. It was my cousin."

"Your ... cousin?"

"He was a human. With the emphasis on was."

Dante smiled wickedly and actually very chillingly to swallow his own grief at the new knowledge.

Demona really did look momentarily repulsed by his revelation. Not because he had admitted to killing Giuliano, but because he had called a human being his cousin. So pretty much the opposite of the Manhattan gargoyles. Then she smiled.

"I hope his death was slow and agonizing."

"Not as slow and agonizing as I would have liked."

Now, all at once, the gun had disappeared from her hand. Instead, similarly lethal claws brushed gently across his biceps, making the hairs on the back of Dante's neck stand up. He liked the direction this seemed to be taking. But he couldn't feel too confident yet. He was a killer - yes. But Demona ... had a thousand years of experience in the job. He was probably an amateur, unlike her.

"If you grew up around humans, I'm sure they gave you a name."

"Several, actually," he admitted.

"Yeah- they like to do that, don't they?"

"First I was Adamo," he whispered as Demona walked around him again. This time not disparagingly. But prowling and somehow ... cuddly as a cat. Although she remained on two legs. But he noticed very well how her tail casually caressed his legs.

"Adamo- Adam. The first man ..."

"Yes. Then I was Fiore." He pointed to the tattoo on his upper arm, over which Demona stroked her thumb as if to explore whether it was really permanently "etched" into the skin.

"Much too soft, much too ... lovely. For someone like you," was her assessment, and by now her every word sounded like a siren song meant to ensnare him. Maybe he was just imagining it. Never before had a woman "wooed" him and he was not familiar with the mating games of gargoyles.

"Until a few months ago, I was Fiore Della Marra. But the saints in the castle and everyone in America know me by the name Dante." Demona smirked appreciatively. "That - is fitting."

"So?"

"Don't you know the story of the Divine Comedy?"

"Not particularly."

"Dante, who had lost himself and on his way to the Mountain of Virtue is persuaded by the poet Virgil to take a detour through Hell. Together they travel the nine circles of hell and finally climb out of the mouth of hell by the devil's skin."

"Then - I guess this coincidence is really fitting."

"Such a strange specimen of our kind. I'd love to hear your story," Demona whispered thoughtfully, tugging at his goatee so that he grumbled. Not in threat or anger, however, but in pleasure.

"And I would like to tell it. But - even if I am not supposed to kill anyone at the moment, I would still like to compensate for the destroyed statue. Perhaps ... a song?"

Demona took a step back, looking taken aback by the offer but smiling right back in a foxy way.

"A song? Rather not, young ... Dante. But regarding compensation - I wonder ... if this golden tongue can do other things besides purring pathetic hypocritical vows of love."

She turned around. Now it was her tail that wriggled lasciviously and put a swing in her hip that made Dante's mouth water. As if Demona's intention and invitation to him hadn't become clear enough, she underscored them by undoing the knots holding her top up as she walked away, letting it slide off her shoulders as if casually.

For two or three seconds, Dante stood in the garden and looked into the dark entrance of the house where Demona had disappeared. Then he clasped his hands together and looked up at the gray, cloudy night sky from which the first thick drops were falling. Dante was not a man of many words. And not as religious as his sister would have liked. But a word had to be said to the Boss that held more gratitude than thirty Ave Marias and twenty rosary prayers ever could.

"Grazie, caro Dio."

Inequivocabilmente con questo accento = Unmistakable with that accent.

Hai tutto ciò che desidero = You are everything I desire.

Grazie, caro Dio = Thank you, dear god.

Now Dante meets Demona ... it was bound to happen, of course. The bloody dream team.

And did you notice the new profile picture? (With Lex and Nate -my OC from Souls of the Night?) That's one of two pictures by artist Rita Mira and I am SO in love with them. I'll be uploading the pictures she made me soon somewhere else (Artstation, Deviantart, wattpad, reddit, Pinterest or wherever us cool kids look at pictures these days ^,,^) that I infect everyone with my love.

Thanks for reading, Q.T.