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Brood of a New Age

112

Lexington, not yet ten minutes back, hadn't been able to pull himself together to go inside. Hudson talked to Goliath and Brooklyn - something that could take forever because he had to remember how to hold the phone, then how to type in the number, then how not to hang up just because it beeped before someone picked up. Of course Lex would have liked to help him, but Hudson was so proud and had almost spanked him the last time he'd tried to explain how to program the VCR. The old warrior had toppled empires in the Middle Ages - he'd manage with the phone. He would also know how to lie to the clan leader and the Second and wouldn't crack like Lexington. Well, lying was perhaps an exaggeration. Only ... Omitting truths because they couldn't change anything anyway or any action on their part wouldn't improve the situation. Lexington was glad for ten minutes of peace and quiet. To think. To wander around on the battlements and be unhappy. Then, when he'd inhaled enough night air, he could go back inside and pretend to the clan's hatchling that he didn't know a piece of his heart and soul was leaving the land in the next few days, perhaps never to return.

He had made it three-quarters of the way around the outer battlements on all fours when he heard soft thrumming. And someone humming. Not a whole song yet. No words yet. But the melody and the humming alone were enticing. Literally. Lexington only stopped when he touched the leather of Dante's wings, who was perched on one of the battlements, legs dangling, strumming a guitar. The gray gargoyle he had thought was dead opened its eyes, turned its head and smiled at him. Oh, that smile is beautiful, Lexington thought. He'd seen Dante smile before. Mostly grinning wickedly and snarling. Or bitter. Or briefly grateful after braiding his hair. But never like this. So ... relaxed. And that somehow made Lexington's own burden lighter.

"Hello," Lex said.

"Hello," Dante replied after taking his lit cigarette from the corner of his beak.

"I thought you were dead, Song Thrush," Lexington said as he climbed onto the battlement beside him.

"I'm immortal, Googly Eyes."

"Nashville will be glad."

"Where is he?"

"In the rookery. Apparently ... coming back from the dead makes you very tired - and requires a few days of rest until your joints are no longer made of gravel."

Dante looked at him blankly for a moment. Then he nodded.

"There was a guy here who works for the Italian government. He wants us in Italy. As a kind of ... publicity push for Gargoyles. Grace and Luca as cops."

"And you?" Lexington's gaze dropped to the guitar in his hands.

Dante laughed with his mouth closed. But he was beaming all over as he stroked the guitar.

"I'm in the process of finding my music again. I'll probably go into the music business. I already have a band and a manager."

"Have you found strings that don't break so quickly?"

"Oh, not found. They were part of the deal." Dante fished a ball out of the back pocket of his pants. The size of a tennis ball. Coiled golden threads.

Lex saw that the same golden threads were strung into the guitar.

"And these thin things are supposed to withstand our claws?" he asked with the voice of the doubter and critic.

"I've tried to tear them. You can take my word for it. I'm sure if you tie one of the strings between two trucks, they'll both lose their hitches before it rips," Dante muttered.

"It can't be man-made," Lex gave his verdict.

"Stuff from the gods. Ever heard of the golden fleece?"

"The ... golden fleece? From the legend about Jason and the Argonauts?"

"Yep. I think the beast was more than just a talking, flying ram."

"And this guy from Italy had that?" Lexington took the ball Dante held out to him and looked at it. It looked ordinary - except for the color. With powerful artifacts, a hint of energy could often be detected. But nothing here.

"The guy said he works with the Italian state and other institutions. He meant the Catholic Church, among others. It was rubber-stamped from the very top that gargoyles were welcome in Italy. Apparently the fleece was in the treasury of St. Peter's Basilica as a dust collector and they've now donated some of it to me. To bait me."

"Wow ... quite a leap from Hellspawn and mostro et demoni. Can I have some of the threads?"

"Sure. If they are really indestructible I don't need the whole ball."

So ... is it decided that you're going back?"

Dante shrugged and looked up over his shoulder. Lexington followed his gaze and saw Grace standing on one of the towers.

"I guess we'll be going. Grace has asked for a night to think about it, but as far as I'm concerned, the drobs is already sucked. No offense to you personally Lex, but I hate America like the plague!"

Dante said the last one so effervescently that Lex couldn't help but laugh. So did Dante.

"I mean - I've almost been killed four or five times in four weeks here. Luca got choked, Grace almost barricaded herself in the chapel. I'm a shitty protector, finding good Italian food is a challenge, here even the Italians don't speak Italian and at least in Italy Grace doesn't have to pull her head in just because she's ultra-Catholic."

Lexington's laughter died away. He looked at Dante, then turned his head back to the distant female.

"I guess we really fucked up with you guys from back to front."

"Oh yeah, you did! But-," Dante poked him in the shoulder from the side like a buddy. " - if you hadn't fucked up so phenomenally, Grace and I would never have found the way we're going to go now. So ... thank you all for being such intolerant jerks. And I think it's good that you're keeping your immense sadness at only being able to adore a wonderful character like me from afar in check with cuddly toys. That's sweet."

Lex blinked, then understood. He handed the yarn back to Dante, pulled the gray stuffed bunny he'd forgotten about until a moment ago out of the strap of his fanny pack where he'd tucked it away during the flight and looked down at it. Dante realized, of course, that it was Graziella's rabbit, but he let the little web-wing tell the story. He would keep to himself that he and Graziella had been closer than family for a few days. He wouldn't trumpet his connection to Dracon now that that chapter of his life was over.

.

Meanwhile, Grace was brooding on one of the towers. She had folded her wings into a cape and wrapped her arms around herself, not to protect herself from the wind that was constantly tugging at her, but to keep her thoughts together.

Yes, the prospect of returning to Italy - under the protection of the state and even as a citizen made her stomach do somersaults with happiness and excitement. The prospect of even being allowed to visit the clan in Sardinia as a reward for their good behavior after two or three years in their different vocations (she in the police force, Dante as a musician)... and that before the 2007 breeding season, was also ... Stirring but pleasing.

Nevertheless - although she suspected that Dante would accept the offer tomorrow even without her - and he was allowed to, they were independent beings with independent motivations - why wasn't she completely happy? Why hadn't she accepted immediately? Dante had seemed enthusiastic - if you look past his cool, diva-like manner. He'd had some conditions - like NEVER EVER having to fly box class again. And strange questions like whether he could have a free choice of where he lived or whether he could choose his own manager and his own band members - all of which Lyndon agreed to. Even Luca seemed to like the idea of going back to Italy and no longer having to hide his gargoyle friends. But she - she couldn't take Lyndon up on his offer straight away. She needed time to think. She wasn't wavering because she didn't want to go back to Italy - by God, she wanted to go back! But ... Luca ... would then only be tied to her by his job. Something that could be quickly remedied with a transfer.

Luca, who was then no longer bound by duty and decency to help them. He would no longer have to keep secrets. If Gargoyles were free citizens of Italy, Grace would no longer belong to him alone. She would be free. And he ... would be free of her. Even if they worked together, that wouldn't be enough in the long run. One of them would break off this platonic relationship, loaded with feelings and desires. Perhaps out of self-protection. Perhaps out of love for the other. But she would lose Luca. To some human woman. Someone he could marry. She couldn't give him what he wanted. They had already been through this and even as a citizen she would still be ... unworthy. She would not consign his soul to damnation. Wouldn't it be better ... to stay in America? Or ... should she grit her teeth for a few years, do the best job she could (as a detective alongside Luca) and then be reformed enough to make contact with the Sardinians and look for one of the four willing males there in the hope of forgetting in their midst her Luca ? The thought of laying an egg in 2008 sent butterflies into her stomach. But the thought of someone other than Luca being her mate made her stomach ache again.

She was glad when she heard someone behind her who could distract her from her selfish inner turmoil.

Katana came walking up the steps. The two females smiled at each other.

"Hello, Signora? How is Nashville?"

Katana's smile widened. "He feels increasingly uncomfortable being cuddled like a newly hatched chick by the adults in his clan. He's getting restless and grumpy. A good sign for his recovery."

"Yes. A very good sign. I'm so glad he's doing well."

"And we're glad that Dante-kun is doing well." Katana stood with her and they both saw Lexington sitting with Dante 80 yards away.

"My brother is pretty stupid at times. But he has more life than an alley cat." She laughed affectionately. "As if God makes up for his stupidity with that."

"We heard you had a visitor from Italy?"

"Yes."

"Will you accept his offer?"

"We said we'd need a few hours to think about it."

Katana took a deep breath and nodded understandingly.

"Since Goliath and Brooklyn aren't here right now, I've been appointed deputy. I know it would be in the best interest of my clan leader and Second if you could decide to stay. We all - each of us - especially Goliath regrets the incidents that led to the estrangement between you three and us. Despite everything, you have all proved to be friends and allies. It was wrong of us to doubt you. Our past traumas have clouded our vision and made us more unyielding than usual. Plus the accidents."

"Numerous 'accidents,'" Grace corrected with a grin, and Katana smirked too.

"Hai. ... This clan is ... better than what you've seen of it. I wish you would give us another chance."

The two females fell silent again. Grace had already made her decision despite all her doubts and it wasn't as difficult as she thought to say it now. There were simply more important things than Luca or her. Wasn't that deeply Christian? Pushing your own happiness away so that others might be better off at some point. That the gargoyle race would be better off at some point? If she was to be the Italian cover girl in police uniform - then that's what she would be. At least until breeding season.

"We will go back, Signora Katana. The mistakes made on all sides have made us the persons we are now. Have led to the decisions we can now make with our heads held high. This freedom is a gain. I ... don't know what the future holds for me, Luca and Dante. But the decisions will be ours. But despite everything... She took Katana's hands in hers and the ice-blue female returned her smile, even if it had something rueful about it for both of them. "Despite everything, thank you. Sometimes ... you have to experience things on your own to know what you don't want." She kissed Katana on both cheeks. And the Japanese woman, who usually seemed so cool, also returned the hug that Grace gave her. As she did so, Grace felt the hard envelope in the back pocket of her pants for the first time.

.

"So you didn't manage to get Graziella to live here at the castle. Even worse, she'll probably go to an Italian school," Dante patiently broke down the story, which he himself probably knew better than Lexington. "Why is this so important to you anyway?"

Lexington shook his head and stroked the rabbit's ears with his claws. His expression was so troubled. And you could tell he was struggling for words. And the fact that a smart guy like Lex was doing that was really a sign that a big chunk was about to be swallowed.

"When I was a fledgling ... I was in training to become a rookery keeper. The elders thought it would be a good role for me because I didn't make the best warrior with my wings and stature. Goliath saw it differently and I am grateful to him for that. But in the time I was there, the old keepers - and some of them were really old because the rookery is usually a safe place - told me stories. And there was one I remembered when everyone thought Nashville was dead. But he wasn't - not quite. I was able to bring him back ... With a piece of Graziella." He unzipped his fanny pack and pulled out the thick mop of dark brown curly hair. Dante wrinkled his nose.

"For fuck's sake - you've been carrying that girl's scalp around for three nights ... you guys are really kinky."

Lex laughed mirthlessly but didn't respond negatively to the insult.

"Yes - sometimes. The life in him stirred when I pulled that out of his petrified hand. He wasn't alive in his stone shell. The stone shell only broke when he was in danger of losing this piece."

"And what does that mean?"

Lexington stroked his long mop of hair with a sigh, combing out dust and dirt with his claws.

"Nash and Graziella. They've formed a bond. Without realizing it. They ... will never ... be whole without each other. They will always be like ... two halves of a broken medal."

"Is that like being mates?"

Lexington smiled. "According to the stories, it's much more intense. Love for a mate is a warming flame. The bond can be an exploding volcano. It may look like normal love from the outside. But it can devour you with skin and hair until you don't know where you start and the other person ends. I have no idea whether Graziella will even feel that as a human being. Or ... if they'll both feel it stronger when they get older. This connection is so intense that it can resurrect the dead or make you think you'll die when the other is gone."

"Is that a gargoyle thing? Do the others know that?"

"It's an old story the others don't know about. I can't tell them. They wouldn't understand. Especially because the bond was forged between a human and a gargoyle. I've never heard of anything like that. Neither has Hudson. And if the others understood the importance, they would somehow try to intervene or push the bond. I mean- to intervene or push offensively, not just with words like me and Hudson."

"Yeah. If she's so important to Nashville, you could have just forced her. Drag her out of the hospital. Or are you too soft for that?"

"Apart from the fact that that would be completely abusive and child abduction?"

"Meh- I guess so. Yes, that too."

"It wouldn't have worked if Graziella hadn't come along voluntarily and lived with us."

"What wouldn't have worked?"

"The bond. This tie. It would have strangled both of them if one of them hadn't voluntarily sought the other's company. When affection turns into loathing. I only know the stories the elders told. But something like that can kill. It ... crushes your heart and your soul. When the connected beings aren't together, it's already ... a strain. But if one of the bonded individuals starts to hate the other - that can kill someone. One - or both."

"It can?"

"Maybe. It seems to have happened so rarely in the past that the stories are vague. It's supposedly ... as if an invisible hand constantly holds your insides in a brutal grip. In the worst hours, you think you're going to die. As if you can't breathe. As if you are falling into a deep black hole from which you will never, ever come out again. Or as if a knife is being rammed into your heart. In the best hours, the longing or the pain of separation leaves you as ... a shadow of yourself. You are alive. But it's more of a survival than a life. Unable to be truly happy permanently or to breathe without that weight on your heart."

"It sounds like a curse."

Lexington lifted his head to the sky. His expression was strangely conflicted. Between longing and worry.

"When partners have each other - when they can become one - there's supposed to be no greater happiness. But that's not how the world works. If Graziella wasn't a Dracon and hadn't had the experiences she'd had in the last few weeks-. If she were a Gargoyle or an adult, she wouldn't have turned down Xanatos' offer and our pleas. Just the thought of leaving Nashville, this city or the country would have made her crumble in pain."

"I don't think in her current state she would have been able to distinguish this pain from the others anyway."

They were both silent and Lexington didn't notice Dante looking at him from the side.

"Love is a tricky thing. Fortunately, I never fell in love with one of the prostitutes my father provided for me."

Lexington looked at him seriously. With what he knew now, it all made so much more sense.

"It's much more and very different from what humans think of as love. Even different from what most gargoyles understand by love."

"If the reports of such bonds are unclear or contradictory - maybe it's not so wild. I know how it goes with tales. They get bigger and more dramatic with each telling."

"Yes. Maybe you're right. I hope so. And Hudson suspects ... that the side effects of the separation won't be so bad because they're both kids and have only known each other for a few weeks. And at least we have that."

He lifted the rabbit so that its back was facing him, pulled open the zipper with pointed claws. Then he took Graziella's tuft of hair and stuffed it inside.

"Both of those things together - hopefully will dull the cravings until Nashville can think about other things again."

"Ewww. Are you making a scent sachet for the boy right now? That's kind of ... disgusting. And adorable at the same time."

Lex grinned. "It's just a meager substitute. But it's better than nothing. She gave it to us. Told us to give it to Nashville so he would know she would come back when she got stronger. At that school she's thinking of going to." Lexington let out an amused grunt and smiled at Dante.

He was really struggling to keep up his poker face. If Graziella would go to pianta rampicante-. If she somehow managed to pay for it, and if she managed to get enrolled there, even though you weren't allowed to go until you were 11 at the earliest- she would not be the same person anymore. If he told anyone what this "Italian school" was like, the whole clan would drag her out of the plane by her feet just so she wouldn't disappear - broken bond or not. He should have talked her out of it. He should have - but he couldn't tell you an EIGHT-year-old what the program was like at that school. What it did to the students there, too - if it didn't break them completely.

But ... the way he assessed the bambina, in her mania to get stronger (for NASHVILLE!) the stories would have spurred her on. No steel was harder than that forged in hellfire. And ... perhaps Graziella Dracon really was one of the few people who didn't come out of the first years of this school as a drooling wreck bleeding from every orifice.

He cleared his throat and tried not to think of the nefarious things his father had told him about (and his stories had been 50 years old - surely the curriculum had expanded by now.)

"I didn't catch much of the girl," Dante lied, seemingly chipper. "But I quickly realized one thing. If she sets her mind to something, she'll see it through. I'd say you should keep her in mind. She'll keep you on your toes."

"It hurts to be thousands of miles away from the person you feel close to. And then they have this bond too."

"You're not just talking about them. I can tell."

Lexington lowered his eyes and exhaled slowly. That yearning in his body tension, gestures and facial expressions again. He was so down. And even though Dante had always seen himself more as the person who pulled others down than up, he felt the need to pull him out of his hole. Not in a pleasant way, of course - he hadn't changed that much yet. Lexington opened his mouth to say something but before he knew it, Dante had lifted his head with a claw and gently pressed his lips to his. After the first three seconds of frozen astonishment and amazement - the cigarette-tasting tip of the Italian's tongue in his mouth - Lexington's eyes widened and he toppled backwards, falling off the battlement and lying upside down.

He lay like that for a moment before slowly tipping on his side with a grunt while Dante laughed heartily. A sound that made Lexington's heat rise in his gut.

"You-you kissed me," he groaned as he rose up awkwardly and crouched there like a frog again.

"I did! And you should see your face."

"But you... you're-"

"I mentioned the whores my father got me. I never said they were all female." Dante gave him the widest mobster smile he could muster while all the wheels in Lexington's head, which were usually used for completely different tasks, turned. His face was all red as he cast his eyes down, unable to look at him.

"I- I actually ha-have someone."

"It was just a kiss, you virgin. I don't want you as a lover either! You're cute but that would never work. Two Doms would crash into each other all the time-and not in a good way."

The web-wing looked at him defiantly.

"So... was that kiss just to torture me? ... And- wait! I'm cute?"

"Well- Googly Eye- I won't have another chance to tease you from Italy." Dante chuckled. "And I'll be in your giant head for years now whenever you think about physical things."

"I - I'm glad you're leaving too! As if I want a partner who thinks he's the new hot shit in music heaven and who stinks of cigarettes," he spat indignantly and Dante wondered how some of the clan hadn't realized he was poofy as a pink unicorn. But okay- most of them still had their heads in the dark ages.

"And what's a Dom supposed to be anyway?" the olive-green gargoyle grumbled, dissatisfied with his lack of knowledge.

Dante looked at him with a raised ridge of brows.

"Ask your internet, shorty. Or better yet- the one you yearn for."

Lexington pushed his lower jaw forward. Defiantly. "Will do. And then I'll get Nash out of the rookery and do his exercises with him. And I will NOT think about you every time I think about, uh, physical stuff!"

"Yeah yeah, just lie to yourself, prince charming."

Dante laughed merrily as the web-wing with the Graziella Dracon scent-bunny scampered out of the courtyard and he was still laughing when Luca reached him and looked at him questioningly, one corner of his mouth turning up into an uncertain smile.

"I see - you make sure everyone remembers you fondly."

Dante turned to him on the seat of his pants on the battlement and lit another cigarette. "I even intend to be remembered fondly by everyone here. That's why I'm going to pester Xanatos shortly before sunrise to cast his bigwig magic again. He owes me because I know he tried to drive us away."

Luca looked at him with confusion and wanted to ask what he had meant. But suddenly a shrill scream rang out over the battlements, causing Luca to flinch and look around in alarm, where Dante just slipped off the merlon with a grin.

"Ah, I hear my sister found the letter Lyndon gave me when I accompanied him to the elevator."

"The letter?"

Dante shrugged his shoulders indifferently. "The Pope's decree that Gargoyles may receive the sacraments as a sentient species. Apparently John Paul and enough of his cardinals were so moved by the sincerity of her prayers in the footage that they made her a gift themselves to lure her to Italy. Those turncoats. But I'm not complaining."

Luca looked at him in horror and almost collapsed under his brotherly pat on the back as Dante sauntered past him with his guitar.

"Did you know, by the way," he said as he walked away, "that I'm not only good at pilfering. I'm also good at smuggling things into other people's pockets."

Luca looked after him baffled, then patted his trouser pockets with his hands. Irritated, he felt something small and hard in one of them - he reached in and pulled out the ring. The one he had commissioned. The one he had thrown in the garbage can in his room and forgotten about.

Grace landed - not very gracefully due to her excitement - with a crumpled letter in her hands. The red papal seal broken.

"Luca! You won't believe it! The Pope has-"

She looked at him. And her incredulous smile disappeared when she saw the ring in his hand.

Luca didn't think for a second longer. He did what he hadn't been able to do last year, shortly after the fight with Guiliano Della Marra and Rocco, due to injuries and lousy timing. He sank to one knee, looked up at his queen of hearts and raised the token of his undying love to her.

Yes, I am a romantic. That's striking, isn't it? And I had to at least throw a cookie at Lexington. Aside from sporadic visits to Amp, he won't have a relationship until 2023. I had to at least plant some varied jerk-off material in his head. Thoughts are free- you get your appetite elsewhere- but you eat at home (very romantic- as I said).

Two or three more chapters - then this story will be finished. ^^