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Brood of a New Age
114.
The air was extremely thick in the chic, high-priced apartment on the West Side. The exemplary yuppie couple, who were basically always bickering (with Margot clearly being the snappier of the two), were in the midst of a crisis that they both suspected was going to send their whole relationship down the drain.
"Those - damn - gargoyles. Those- wretched uh that hurts so much! They are SO going to pay for this."
"Margot, why don't you wait for Greta? She'll help you."
Brendan watched unhappily as his partner fiddled with her sweatpants. Something that was actually impossible with two broken arms, but she somehow managed to get them over her hips just by stubbornly refusing to admit her weakness."
Since she had discharged herself from hospital yesterday, there had been a constant calm before the storm in their shared apartment. Because Margot was always on the verge of exploding. He would have gladly helped her if she was just a little nicer to him. Just a spark of gratitude. But Margot Yale would rather die than let her partner wipe her ass because she couldn't reach said ass. Her family had found her a caregiver in record time, who now lived in the guest room - another stressor. So much so that Margot was constantly sending her on errands just to prove that she could manage on her own.
"I hate this. I am NOT a care case. You can shove your Greta up your ass. This is all their fault. Those damn gargoyles did this to me." She stumbled around the living room, snorting with rage, both arms plastered up to above her shoulders and with a contraption around her waist holding the cast arms up (perhaps just an unnecessary but righteous cruelty that Margot didn't slap her cast arms at the nurses and doctors in the hospital).
"And you're the worst!" she nagged.
"Me?"
"Yes, you. You stab me in the back! You - you gargoyle sympathizer."
Brendan jumped up and clenched his fists. Of course he had no intention of hurting her. He just wasn't like that. Margot would beat him up before. But she was SO stubborn and SO arrogant.
"They saved your fucking life. They saved us on the occasions before!"
"You gullible buffoon! Vigilante justice, obstruction of justice, damage to property that runs into the millions. Peeping Toms. Creating a public nuisance. MY nuisance. And now this! They've broken both my arms! I can't even go to the toilet on my own for WEEKS now. This is their revenge for the court case!"
"Margot, that's not true. How can you keep telling yourself these lies when you've seen the footage of Marshall?"
"It's all fake, it's not real!"
"There's not a single cut in the footage on the internet. You've watched it five times yourself! How are they supposed to fake the near death of their child?"
"I - no idea! Who knows what Xanatos is capable of. Yes!- him too. Me- I have to go to the office later and look up the charges against him in the law books. It MUST be illegal to interrupt worldwide television programs to spread their propaganda."
"Nobody knows if it was him. Margot, just let it go," Brendan grumbled and sat down on the couch, exhausted by the argument. Margot sat down on the armchair. Still seething, though.
"I can't believe you sent them culture cards. And a thank-you letter. You're such a sycophant."
"You didn't even sign it," Brandon muttered. And smirked when Margot glared at him with her funny angled plaster arms that made it impossible for her to sign anything.
"Culture cards for monsters," Margot hissed.
"Monsters that save lives. Your life. Our lives. They don't always do everything right, but they try to be decent, even noble. They should - if they want to - be able to participate as much as possible in New York's nightlife. They've earned it."
"Brandon, you're such a naive idiot... You piss me off!"
"The feeling is mutual."
"What!" She glared at him like he'd just vomited three quarts of pea soup like the kid at The Exorcist.
"And you're a vindictive arrogant priss. And Lexington in the recording was right. I deserve better." Brandon got up and went into the hallway to put on his shoes.
"Brandon? Where are you going?"
"Away. Just away. Maybe to my parents," he said. He was a wimp. But once he'd made a decision, he stuck to it. That had once impressed Margot. Before she'd squeezed his balls in a vice. But not any more. Never again. When he came back into the living room ten minutes later with his hastily packed Louis Vuitton travel bag, his former significant other was still sitting in the armchair. Sulking and waiting for an apology. Never again.
"Until Greta comes back, I'll turn on the TV for you."
She gave him a cold glare. "I want the separation. And I'm moving away from New York. Away from those critters. Somewhere where there are no Gargoyles. Maybe to London."
Each sentence concise and short. Each sentence designed to make Brendan buckle. Because she thought he couldn't live without her. But he certainly could. And better than with her. Brendan smiled. A real smile for the first time in months. He leaned in and kissed her on her grimly puckered mouth.
"You never disappoint me, Mar."
He turned on the television, turned up the sound and turned around.
The front door was already open and he was walking through when he heard a scream from the living room.
"OH NO! ... Brendaaaaan!"
Between her horrified, breathless gasps, lively guitar music reached his ears.
"No, Margot. Brendan is no longer available," he called back into the apartment. And by God, it felt good to be able to ignore the wicked witch of the west side.
"He - they - they've done it again! On TV- Come here!"
"Bye Margot. Have a nice gargoyle-free time in London," he whispered and let the door fall into the lock behind him.
.
.
Demona had only switched on the TV in her torture chamber (of course she had a TV in her torture chamber - the afternoon entertainment was an excellent additional program in parallel to ripping out fingernails and pulling teeth!) because she had become bored of the screaming and moaning of her latest toy after three nights. But she would soon be done with him anyway. Although she hadn't found what she was looking for yet. Castaway - only kept conscious and alive by a spell of hers - suddenly regained a more alert expression in his eyes as he fixed on something on the television hanging in the corner.
Demona raised her head and smiled.
"That impertinent bastard," she muttered and let herself sink into the music for a few seconds. Dante wasn't singing for a female. He was singing for the world. That and the fact that the camera kept panning to people at his side (a tall guy on the keyboard, a short guy with a mohawk behind the drums and a woman on the bass) should have pissed her off. But she'd been so cheerful the last few nights, thanks to Dante's parting gift, that it hardly bothered her right now.
Yes, it was Rock - and that wasn't her preference. But she could've laid down and wallowed in this song (which would surely play again for hours like the first Xanatos-manipulated recording) like probably a hundred thousand people were doing right now. The voices of the Maltese Clan males had been magical. His was magical. Dante was wasting his voice on humanity like an idiot. But at least- he was doing it in a big way. She turned to Castaway in front of her on the table and as her hands dug around in his innards, she said as if she were talking to an old friend over coffee. "Maybe my blood after all - the little prince. Not that it would matter. But somehow ... a nice thought. Ahh!"
She yanked her hands back from Castaway's abdomen as a small electric shock surprised her. Castaway's eyelids fluttered. His face was as intact as the first day. The rest of him ... less so. But she'd only started looking in the first place because the initial wounds she'd inflicted on him had disappeared after a few seconds. Not really gone. Just no longer visible. Soaked into his true body. When she had touched him, she had felt the cuts. They had hurt him too. But she had known since then that he was under some kind of spell. Some kind of ... concealment spell. She rubbed her hands together in irritation, then looked at her victim in front of her scrutinizingly.
She knew what magic felt like. What it felt like to touch a powerful artifact for the first time.
A devilish grin stole onto her cherry-red lips.
"Have we finally found something interesting in you," she purred. Something that made Castaway shudder, although there was hardly anything left to shudder about. She reached into his open abdomen again. Rummaging through intestines - until she got hold of a small, angular stone, held in place almost entirely by not-so-old, perhaps magical scar tissue.
"What have we got here? What are you hiding from me and the world," she muttered, feeling like a child reaching into a veiled box and having to guess what she was feeling. No blast of energy this time. Castaway's eyelids fluttered. He actually managed to turn his head back and forth in mute denial. He didn't want her to snatch whatever it was from him. Well- that's why she wanted it all the more.
She pulled and the tissue that had encased the stone tore with a slurping sound that made Castaway groan and tremble. He probably would have gotten an erection from the sensation alone, but Demona had relieved him of his cock and balls on the first day because she wanted to know if even lost "parts" appeared intact through the spell. They did not. Too many injuries and you could see what was missing.
As soon as the stone was no longer in Castaway's body, the man began to spasm, twitch and rear up. And visibly painfully - and similar to her own transformation at dawn and dusk - bones, tissue and skin shifted. Not so that he healed. He was still a mangled heap of flesh. But ... he no longer looked like Castaway. He looked ...
Demona closed her mouth. It was rare for her to be surprised after a thousand years. Then she regained her composure and snickered as she ran her bloody hands through her hair.
"If I had known ... I would have slowed down."
Now it was so much clearer to her why Castaway - whenever she saw him - reminded her so much of someone else. Because he had always been someone else. And it was only this magical little artifact that had blinded her and probably everyone else who had ever known Jon Canmore.
She leaned her head back and took a deep breath of the fear, blood and shit-soaked air. These smells always reminded her of the Middle Ages. Of a simpler time when gargoyles had been able to walk among the humans. Not welcome, but at least not as animals or ... she looked back at the television where Dante's song had just stopped. And started again.
"Not as circus attractions," she murmured thoughtfully.
She tapped a blood-soaked claw against her lower lip as she thought.
Castaway aka Jon Canmore groaned. She placed a bloody hand over his mouth.
"Hold that thought," she said ... while her own thoughts raced.
Then she stuffed the gray gym socks back into the mouth of her victim - the man she thought was a new Hunter but who was really one of her old Hunters - and went into a side room of her cellar. Where a few components of her other projects lay. Either unfinished or on ice.
She washed her hands and the small yellowish shimmering, strangely polished stone. Then she clamped it in a fixture for small objects, placed one of the thin plates underneath, which looked like those strange oral care strips you can put under your tongue for fresh breath. Then she dripped some of her own blood, drawn during the day, onto the stone. It sizzled like bacon fat in a pan as she watched spellbound as the drop of blood ran down the stone and dripped onto the strip. Where it seeped into it and melted into it without leaving any residue. She took the turquoise strip and looked at it. She smelled it, but she couldn't detect anything except the peppermint aroma that the strip already had. She repeated the exact same procedure with a second strip. Then she took them both back to her torture chamber where Canmore/Castaway had almost dozed off.
She tore the ball of socks out of his mouth, which startled him and made him glower at her almost petulantly. She grinned and lifted one of the strips.
"I need a guinea pig - so-?"
She pressed his mouth open and placed the first strip on the mucous membrane of his cheek. If she could have foreseen this, she would have let him keep his tongue to place the strip underneath. But even so ... nothing happened.
Castaway/Canmore starred at her, gasping in muted pain and hopefully fear. At least he showed no negative reaction. She took a deep breath, lifted the second strip and pressed it under her own tongue behind her fangs.
The icy peppermint flavor was strange - but normal, she thought - but then an all too familiar pain raced through her. It was nowhere near as strong as her puck-induced metamorphoses tied to sunrise and sunset. But it was very similar. When her snarl turned to a human moan, she knew it had worked. She rose and looked at her delicate human hands. Castaway/Canmore's eyes nearly popped out of his head as she sauntered to him on two tiny human feet. She looked at the clock on the wall.
"We now have ... 11:12 p.m."
Demona took one of the unused scalpels and made a small cut on her forearm. After a few seconds, it was obvious that it did not disappear. Well, you couldn't have everything. Perhaps it made more sense to pass as human if injuries didn't disappear.
She turned back to him and her smile made him blanch even more than he already was. The sorceress stroked his stubbly cheek with a fingernail. It would have been more effective with a claw, she thought, but she wasn't really unhappy.
"Oh Canmore ... I know what you're thinking now. If you can still think that far. Yes- it seems unusual that someone like me would want to walk as a human at night. As one of you filthy, inferior creatures. But ... I'm thinking less of myself than of all the other gargoyles. With your little gift - whoever gave it to you ... my overseas subsidiary can go into mass production. It's a little disgusting that I give my kind this shamefully cowardly opportunity to conceal themselves. But now... with the Manhattan clan, and thus all my brothers and sisters, in the spotlight... it will come in handy. It is unworthy. But... I have learned over the centuries to choose utility over dignity."
She leaned over her victim, who had started panting harshly again during her speech. Perhaps out of anger, perhaps out of panic. And who would Demona be if she didn't kick when someone was already down. "And even better - in a few years' time, when these strips and the improved successor models are used by all gargoyles ... every one of my kind will have a piece of me inside them. Even Goliath and my former and future clan. A touch of my essence with every use of these tools. Of me, whom they so despise because I see clearly where they are blind. What devilish satisfaction that will bring me. It's almost something sexual. Who would have thought that a Hunter would give me and the Gargoyle race such a precious gift. Now you humans will never know who you're dealing with. Thank you ... Jon."
She kissed him on the cheek and he whimpered almost tonelessly - as was to be expected from someone with nearly severed vocal cords.
Demona left him alone in his misery to make some business calls.
.
.
"Make yourself comfortable until the hearing. Same room as last time," said the guard and pushed him into the cell, causing him to almost fall forward despite his crutches. The barred door behind Tony Dracon slammed shut with a loud clang.
Brod straightened up on his cot. The two men glared at each other briefly, then Brod's gaze wandered over him. His injured forehead and leg in plaster.
"Gargoyles?" he asked, his Polish dialect audible in that word alone.
Tony shrugged his shoulders. "Gargoyles."
He hobbled over to the small table in the cell and sat down on it, groaning.
At least they had put his spare set of clothes and the letter here. He pulled it out, unfolded it and read it for probably the twentieth time. The fact that he smiled like an idiot and that Brod eyed him suspiciously and irritably didn't bother him at all. Then he took a deep breath - still with that smile - and used the strips of adhesive tape that were holding up Miss August from some dirty magazine to attach the letter to the wall.
"Hey, Idiota!" huffed Brod.
"Don't get upset - you can take your jerk-off material to your cot. When you get mail from your kids, you can hang it up too."
"You ... and kids?" Brod looked at him open-mouthed. Then he stepped behind Tony and leaned over his shoulder to read the letter with the scrawled lines. When he had finished, he straightened up as Tony rose and hobbled over to his bed, where he lay down in pain but with a blissful smile and folded his arms behind his head, looking at the lonely letter on the wall.
"Shit man. From the sound of it, she's got a huge crush on you. So the rumors are true after all. You let yourself be taken in by a brat."
Tony grinned at Brod. "Not just any brat. THE brat. My Dolly's going to be big. When she's finished school. And then all of Manhattan and G's Samaritans can dress warmly."
"Cóż, alleluia," grumbled Brod, who was convinced that Tony's head injury had had serious after-effects.
Okay- I admit- the author comment in the last chapter may lead you to assume that the last chapter was the last of this story- but I now have two more. Nobody stops me- what can I say.
Thanks for reading, Q.T.