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Brood of a New Age
64.
The woman raised her arm and pointed a shaky finger at him while her bloodcurdling scream made Nashville's heart race with fear and caused him to press on the ground. His body's first impulse was escape. Simple instinct. But he looked around and found himself surrounded by people and even though they backed away in the first moment of shock, wide-eyed and mouths agape, there was no escape route because they were everywhere.
"A Gargoyle!" screamed one of the humans. Nashville heard his own blood rushing in his ears as he saw a big brawny man dragging Graziella with him and the crowd threatened to swallow them both. Also out of instinct, he jumped in their direction the moment Graziella hit the man and he let go of her. The children fell into each other's arms, he wrapped his arms and wings around his girl and he couldn't tell if she or he was sobbing. The crowd on this side dispersed as he approached, some fleeing but all remaining were talking and shouting in confusion. He heard cries for the police, for the GTF, for the Quarrymen, for the National Guard.
"The girl! He's got a girl!" screeched one woman.
"Get her away from him!" screamed one of the other people, all of whom, in Nashville's eyes, were merging into a uniform, homogeneous mass, at the same time malformed by fear and burgeoning hatred into a wide variation of ugly creatures.
And two people broke free from their stupor of shock to see a different kind of monster in the middle of brightly lit Times Square and headed toward them. And though Nashville crouched on the ground with Graziella to protect her, they reached into his closed wings, unbent them, as well as his cramped arms, and tried to remove Graziella from him. He hissed but one of the humans held his mouth shut with both hands so that it felt like he was trying to crush his beak between his coarse hands and he punctured his tongue with his own fangs. The human child cried out in pain because of the force with which they tried to pull her away from him and she still refused to loosen her arms around his neck. Her angel wings - strangely intact until now - were now torn from her back as were the artificial horns from her head.
A voice in Nashville (perhaps the last spark of sanity, not clouded by his own panic and primal urge to protect his female) screamed that he had to let her go. That the humans were just trying to get another human away from him to protect Graziella from him and that they certainly wouldn't hurt her. But the young gargoyle was not able to listen to the voice. He let his eyes light up, tore his head out of the clasp and was about to bite the one who had just seized Graziella when more hands grabbed him from behind. Snippets of his training fluttered around in his head like startled bats as he threw one of the men off him with a mighty flap of his wings and sent him flying into the crowd. Another he sent to the ground with a whip of his tail. But now that the first humans had dared to attack him, more and more came. Someone punched him in the stomach, forcing all the air out of his lungs and sending him tumbling forward.
"Stop it! It's just a kid!" screeched someone who was not Graziella, at the very edge of his perception.
Suddenly he felt a blow and, despite the shouting of the humans, heard his own bone break as someone slammed something hard against his wing. He roared inhumanly, making all the people who were not involved in the scuffle wince, but Nashville was already lying on the ground.
His view of the illuminated neon signs and billboards around him (and worse, his view of Graziella) was obscured by dark bodies of malevolence radiating demons as the circle closed around him.
"No! Leave him!" He heard Graziella's panicked shrill voice.
He tried to crawl away but someone kicked him. Another raised his fist and punched his head so that he needed his arms to protect his skull. Now bolder, all eager to get a piece of the impertinent monster, the dark shadows above him raised their extremities. He screamed under the leather or rubber soles of their shoes, smelling the fear and loathing of the beasts but above all his own fear and blood. Someone stomped on his tail, someone from the crowd stepped on the skin of his wings and he tried to wrap all his extremities around himself, even his broken wing. Pain began to override panic as the most authoritative perception. Pain and despair.
Nashville knew he was going to die here and now. Not in battle. But beaten to death and trampled by a mob. Because he had been stupid. Because he was just a stupid useless kid who should have listened to his clan and his Second. The humans would kill him and display his remains in a museum. Not his stuffed corpse, because deceased Gargoyles petrified a few hours after their death and never woke up again. His clan wouldn't even have his remains to pulverize and scatter in a wind ceremony. And Graziella - he would never see again. His last thought as he blinked between his wings and saw a human raise an iron bar over his head was that he really wasn't in the time and reality plane from which the one he had seen in the future would evolve. Lexington had been right. There were thousands of alternate realities. And in this one, he would die NOW.
Suddenly, with a loud whump of gargoyle paws, someone landed right next to him and before the people could scream, someone had thrown away first the man with the iron bar and then two others in a high arc. Goliath, Broadway, Coldstone, Hudson, even his dad went through his aching head within a second. But there was no war roar, no shrill screams, no growls. As the darkness caused by the many bodies above him once again gave way to the light of the billboards - the humans either fleeing screaming or being yanked away and thrown away by the force of an adult gargoyle - and Nashville lifted his head he saw gray gargoyle feet. And as he lifted his wings and let his gaze wander further up, jeans, a flowing braid, red wing membranes as Dante lifted them menacingly to make himself twice as big as he was.
Dante whirled around, eyes glowing white, and finally hissed to keep the bravest at bay. But none- not even the biggest and strongest men dared to mess with a full-grown specimen of his kind. It was not a quarrymen's brigade, but only night swarming adventurous people here on the most famous, perhaps the busiest street in the world at night. No one, in the face of a wing-spreading, claw-wielding gargoyle, was immediately capable of going into a suicidal self-overestimating attack mode to be the hero. Dante picked Nash up off the ground, tucked him under his arm like a package and the gargoyle boy realized from the way he spun around that he was looking for a place to take off from. But not without Graziella!
"Her!" shouted Nash, pointing at his girlfriend, who had just squeezed out from under the grounded body of one of the humans Dante had flung from him (however she had landed under him). "We have to take her with us!"
"Are you crazy?" cried Dante.
"Please!" pleaded Nash shrilly at the moment Graziella fearlessly clung to Dante's leg. No, she wasn't fearless. She was just more afraid of the humans, perhaps more afraid of getting caught than of the strange angry gargoyle. The humans began to tighten the circle around them again - despite Dante. They stepped over the unconscious people. One of them had picked up the iron bar lying on the ground. Dante just growled, clamped Graziella under his other arm, and with a roar that was human and gargoyle at the same time, ran through the line of people on one side. They were so horrified by the sudden approach that they all tried to jump to the side, tripped over each other, fell down, buried each other. Dante leaped onto the hood of a dark van parked at the side of the road, then onto its roof, spread his wings and was in the air with the two children.
.
.
A dozen blocks from Times Square, Dante had to land because he was worried about the two children under his arms. He landed on a rooftop, let the kids slip from his grasp, and they both crawled toward each other, hugging each other crying like frightened puppies seeking the body heat of the other. Dante rubbed his aching face with his aching hands. But his blisters from the horror show in the arab workshop absolutely took a back seat to the horror show there just now. If he had not glided past there by chance! If he had not seen the crowd that had closed around a small figure with fearfully raised arms and wings!
He fought the urge to yell at the kids (obviously Nashville and his own little human) how dangerous this was. How they had made it to Times Square in the first place! How anyone could be SO stupid and tired of life. But all this would be taken care of by the one-eyed super-dad. Or Signora Katana in a much more civilized way. The two kids were still crying and sobbing but were now capable of semi-human speech again.
"I'm hic so sorry, Graziella," Nashville whimpered, clutching her torso like he never wanted to let her go, kissing her wild mop of hair again and again.
"Hic no, Nash. I'm so sorry. My idea ... hic. Almost got you killed. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." She stroked his wings and her eyes, showing that she was still in shock, were fixed on Nashville's wing, which was hanging off in a way that made Dante's sensitive stomach stir again. Still, it struck him that the girl, though tear-stained and covered in snot like Nashville, was a real little beauty. The boy had good taste, Dante thought as he lit a cigarette. Damn - even his hand was shaking. Only after a few deep drags did he calm down, and all the while the kids were crying, petting each other and reassuring each other dozens of times that they were sorry and how stupid they'd both been.
"Yes. Yes, we're all sorry. Let's get this over with," Dante growled after two minutes, annoyed, and stepped toward the interracial pair of kids. "We can't stay here. The humans will call the GTF and the Quarrymen - whatever denomination they belong to. So pull yourselves together now. I'll fly you both home but I can't do that unless you stop being spider monkeys."
Nash and Graziella briefly looked like they couldn't possibly let go of each other, but then they did, and Nash wiped Graziella's eyes and face with his too-wide sweater sleeve, which she tolerated with a trembling lower lip. Dante fished a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and handed it to Nash, who blew his nose loudly and then handed it to the girl, who also blew her nose loudly. The two reminded Dante of himself and of Eva. The way he and Eva had been as children. And yet their interaction had an additional quality. But maybe Dante was just reading things into it that weren't there.
"Thank you, Dante," Nashville said at last, adding after a very brief scrutiny of his appearance. "Your face?"
"Don't get me started, let's just say the evening blew up in my face just like your evening. I'm not asking you out and you're not asking me out."
Nash nodded and the two children helped each other stay on their feet as they finally stood up.
The child-friendly Camorra prince wanted to say one more snarky thing but the sight of them was too painful for him and set off an emotional whirlwind inside him that he really didn't need. That's why he just nodded and stepped up to the two of them.
"I'll set your bone, bambino. Turn around," he commanded, and the girl blinked away the last of her tears and addressed him in her native tongue and even dialect!
"Parla italiano?"she asked.
And Dante managed to wring a big smile from himself and answered. "Area di Napoli? Quale regione?"
"Limatola!" she replied, and only the shock still in her bones made her smile look desperate.
"Fantastico! Un posto bellissimo!"exclaimed Dante, who really missed hearing his own dialect. He would have loved to talk to the girl, but he couldn't delay their departure any longer. So he just patted the human on the head and told Nash again to turn around. The boy obeyed wordlessly and Dante put his hands to the broken wing. Under the exploratory touch of his fingers, the boy hissed.
"Is it bad?" asked Graziella softly, sounding like she was about to burst into tears again.
Dante shook his head. "No. It's a pretty clean break. I can fix it now and even though it will hurt a lot, the wing will be functional again next night. But you bambina, you have to make sure the boy stays still."
"Okay," Graziella said, moving into Nashville's arms at Dante's behest.
"When I push the wing bone into place, you just concentrate on not falling over. Instead, you squeeze your girl."
"But I'm going to hurt her!" Nash said anxiously.
"All the more reason you need to focus on not doing it. So let's go."
Where Nash was still hesitant, the smaller and younger girl clutched his torso and leaned toward his ear from which small scraps of newspaper still hung.
"Il bocca al lupo," she whispered, and Dante saw the boy's back muscles relax.
"Crepi il lupo," he whispered back. Dante smiled and put his hands to the injured wing.
.
.
Once the swaying of the van under the mighty paws of the Italian gargoyle abated, leaving only the dent in the roof where he had leapt off, the three people inside were able to concentrate on their work again. The chief technician cleared his throat and then went back to being a highly paid employee of Xanatos Enterprises. More precisely- team leader of the obfuscation and cleanup unit.
He leaned forward in his chair, pressed one of the dozens of buttons on the control panel in the car's cargo hold, and spoke into his mini-micro.
"Car three - contact between first and second target confirmed. Surveillance still standing?"
Crackling, his co-worker reported from Car Three.
"Report. Targets safe and still in view via drones. Distance currently steady at five hundred meter radius. Motorcycle units are closer."
"Excellent. One of the units must locate the cab driver and silence him by non-lethal means. License plate: 7C69 A."
"Already on the way."
"Good. Over and out." He turned to his staff who sat in front of their screens typing.
"Minimum concentration of DMT already drained?"
His co-worker skimmed the monitoring screens above their heads. "Just now. No reactions from bystanders apparent."
"Then get the guys in the hazmat suits down here and get the press releases out about the accidental release of the psychedelic substance."
"Roger that," he returned, and the team leader took a satisfied breath. His people were as top-notch as the technology they worked with. The van, inconspicuous from the outside, housed technical equipment that was not only years ahead of its time and that the Pentagon and every righteous and less righteous government on the planet would have loved to have, but that was also worth millions.
"Public camera jamming field still standing?" he asked.
"I'm just terminating the loop," his staffer said.
"Cameras? Digital cameras with film?"
"Continuing to jam."
"That's enough for now. Turn off the pulse launcher."
His co-worker typed some commands into her computer and pushed some buttons on her control panel that was bursting with flashing or colorful glowing buttons.
"Pulse launcher off," she announced matter-of-factly after a few seconds. The four screens that provided an all-around view around the van recorded as several civilian cars with the Quarrymen logo arrived. Police sirens could already be heard.
"Okay," the team leader muttered. "Let's catch up to the others before Mister Xanatos escaped birdies get into another situation."
.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals" - a quote from the immortal philosopher Agent K from Men in Black.
People do unquestioningly horrible things because they believe they are doing the right thing. Every day. In the past and today. Some think it's the "right" thing to do to hang people from trees just because they have a different skin color. Some think it was the right thing to burn "wrong" books and "degenerate" art and kill millions of people to cleanse a country. Some think it is the right thing to do to dominate or discriminate against another gender because nature and/or religion make it seem logical (according to their own interpretation) or it has "always" been that way. They think it's the right thing to do to drain a planet to the last so that they'll be fine NOW without thinking about how their grandchildren will fare. All good people who can't see beyond the tip of their nose because they want to keep their status quo (or what they consider to be it). This is how races get wiped out and cultures perish. Mustn't think about it too much or my therapist will have to work overtime again. I'm sorry about bitching.
Let's see if I can get this story to a "happy ending". It's fictional - that should be possible ... maybe.
Speaking of fictional: DMT is not likely to be accidentally released in Times Square. N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a tryptamine alkaloid with hallucinogenic properties. Exogenously administered DMT leads to intense psychedelic, near-death-like states, during which often out-of-body experiences and profound confrontations with the unconscious are described.
Thanks for reading, Q.T.