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Souls of the Night – Vol 3

54.

The following piece of music serves as background accompaniment to the first part of the chapter.

Youtube: Oliver Koletzki feat Jan Blomquist - The Devil in me (MDU Musik) - 3.30 min

or Spotify: The Devil in Me (Oliver Koletzki, Jan Blomqvist) - Großstadtmärchen 2

I knew this was somehow a reason to hyperventilate. Scary life-changing and life-changing scary. But my breathing was calm. I was not anxious in the slightest, my thoughts were not confused. All the doubts and insecurities of my mortal self were suddenly petty and pointless.

I had cracked open, burst at the seams - just a millisecond of the supernova in my head blowing apart before the tears of myself closed and I was whole again. It was there again. My fire. I was warm, hot even. But it wasn't the flames that consumed the building. It was me. I felt the fire in my veins, in my blood. I felt it stinging behind my eyelids when I closed my eyes and the flames that now flickered on my skin were mine. Like all the flames here. Everything was buzzing energy, a swarm of bees of power directed by me. All sounds were white noise. I opened my eyes and saw my burning mate in my arms. I pulled the mask off his face. I didn't question the fact that my hands had claws, that my skin was blue. That's how it should be. I had believed, asked, and had received.

I smiled, bent to his lips and sucked flames and the burns he had internally and externally, the smoke in his lungs, the scorched dead skin into me. Where I had previously tasted the charred flesh of his lips, I felt his pulse as I detached myself from him and pressed his still lifeless body against me. He was breathing. And he was healed. My flames danced around me in a ball of fire, excited, celebrating, revelling in new and old freedom. And where the surroundings outside the ball glowed hot, table legs melted and their tops burst into flames, turning the room into black coal, everyone IN the ball of flames was protected. Tachi and Chad watched with slack jaws at the spectacle raging around us without being affected in the slightest. Tachi looked at me, the glow of the fire "out there" shimmering on her already red skin, and I saw the cuts under her ribcage closing as they healed, the blood disappearing from her skin and even her blouse mending back together as if patched by invisible hands. Chad's protective suit was suddenly intact again and he looked down at himself in bewilderment. Even the guy who had just had an arrow in his chest now seemed unharmed.

Everything was disturbingly surreal and yet something inside me - the parts that weren't human - knew that everything was okay. More than okay. Old order. Control. All was very close to me and yet very far away. The world was full of chaos, lying in ruins - but everything was so calm and quiet inside me. I was pure energy, pure fire, pure air and as I stood up and walked across the room my glowing body sucked in poisonous smoke and murderous flames without me feeling odd or questioning it with annoying thoughts. Even the heat from the walls, the embers in the furniture, the red molten glass, gleaming fire doors and metal surfaces. I (we) devoured what was pain and dead and destruction. I was a black hole and supernova in one. I knew without a doubt that I could burn, purify and resurrect the world. I was death and life in one. I could take everything but taking away was not death, it was life.

Where I dwelled was life - if I wanted it. And I wanted.

I didn't see Ares but Tachi took a step closer, eyeing me while walking from the side, unusually perplexed and frustrated but impressively composed for a mortal, as my body burned without harming Lex in my arms again. My new old body was just doing its thing. A commanding lash of my tail and the flames leapt into the arena of my core. A flap of my wings and whole rooms around us were clear of smoke and fire. Everything wanted to come to me. I was not their prison. I was their home, their sanctuary, mother, father, world. I felt detached from my fleshly body, no matter what form, untouchable and yet connected to everything and everyone. It was ... peaceful, and yet full of boundless power.

Tachi said something I couldn't hear and if I would just think like a human, like a normal gargoyle, like an ordinary mortal or just like Nathaniel Sharif, words like shock, trauma, detachment from reality would come to mind. Pigeonholes into which I could categorize my state of mind in order to feel safer. But I didn't need to. Because I had never felt safer than I did now. I was so detached from everything around me that I could only have described it as somnambulistic. Which I wasn't. So I just smiled, turned around and made my way out. Tachi and Chad (In his arms the unconscious attacker) followed me. The flames I absorbed on my way through the blackened, destroyed corridors and rooms were no danger to tham. Not for anyone. Because I didn't want to. The bodies of our opponents, however, remained charred beyond recognition behind us, even their teeth exploded by my heat.

My wind pushed aside everything that blocked my path, be it a collapsed ceiling or a door torn from its hinges. Me and my two allies behind me stepped over charred corpses. I understood that these had been my colleagues. I knew it was terrible that they had lost their lives in a horrible senseless attack. But the demons inside me just shrugged and made me indifferent to the minor losses that had just occurred. People died every day, every hour. It was little more than watching insects perish. 70, 80, 90 years - what was that? Short-lived, sad, fragile beings who were horrified every time their own mortality salience became apparent to them with such events. Beings who were so lost and needed guidance from gods, who for more than a thousand years had almost only appeared in mythical form. Because an arrogant, cocky child like Oberon happened to win back then. My fire was about to tell me more when I saw the outside world in the entrance area of the house.

The blackened glass entrance doors of House C were pushed open so violently that they shattered into ten thousand glittering particles. Neither my feet nor Tachi's were hurt, and I saw Chad hurry past me, just as unharmed, presumably looking for an ambulance for the attacker and then for his wife. The first sound I heard again was the crunching of the small crystals under our claws. I could still feel my wings absorbing fire, but the flames were largely extinguished - by me.

I huffed as we passed through the gossamer but now completely superfluous stream of water from one of the closest fire engines. In the blue, orange and yellow light mixed with the artificial spray, everything looked magical and I wished Lex was already awake so I could show him. But I could wait. I had almost lost him. I didn't know what deal I had made with my beings (I guess it was two again now) but I didn't give a shit. As long as Lex was with me. For the first time, I heard the commotion near me again, especially behind the tape. Humans. What a sight it must be as I walked through the spray of extinguishing water from one of the fire crews, my skin hissing and smoking white and at the same time taking over their work as I snuffed out the tree that had just been on fire by stealing that blaze too.

I was more me again - obviously - because I let out a sigh of relief when I felt that my clothes were (once again) partially burnt but I was wearing fireproof underpants made for me by Tachi. The people I passed probably didn't even see my crack because my tail had slipped back through the hole between my waistband and the fabric as it grew out of me again. Lex wasn't going commando either. His suit had stopped burning. Even more strangely, his sleeve, which had been hanging in tatters around his charred arm, was now intact again. Not a thread burnt, even if my beloved was sooty from toe claw to skull. It didn't matter to me - I didn't question magic as long as it saved my loved one.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lavonne's afro and my hearing picked up all the surrounding sounds, but I just looked at Lexington in my arms and carried him towards one of the ambulances. I saw the orange-red veins on my skin recede. Ash-covered blue remained and I grumbled in satisfaction. Finally it whispered inside me. The magical heat I had just reclaimed retreated into me, fierce as ever but more nourished than it had been for centuries, and I chuckled briefly and softly as I felt the wind entity swirl around its week-long lost counterpart for the joy of reunion. With no outside fire to sustain me, I felt the fatigue and exhaustion.

In my opinion, my body temperature had returned to normal when I climbed into the open ambulance to the bewildered looking paramedic. But she quickly made way when she saw that we were obviously from one of the buildings.

"Can you check him over? Please?" I said, clearing my throat because I had to get used to my own voice and the fangs I had to work around again. Could. Was allowed to.

It took me a little mental effort to lower my frog prince from my arms onto the stretcher, but I sat down on the narrow bench on the side of the car and held his hand while the paramedic checked him over. Basically, I knew he had nothing. But since I wanted to be on the safe side, it was probably proof that I was me again and the strangely alienated euphoria of my re-transformation and my re-claimed fire faded. I was able to take part in the events around me again.

Tachi plopped down next to me on the bench seat, which was too narrow for gargoyle butts with attached tails, and took a deep breath.

"Can't tell if this is a shit night or a crazy lucky one," she muttered.

"We're alive. Lex is alive. So for us, it's more like a blessing in disguise," I returned. Tachi seemed to think about it for a moment, then slowly lowered her head onto my shoulder.

"You put on a hell of a show in there. That was creepy and damn impressive. No matter what that was ... I'm grateful because it saved you and Lex and probably me and those two humans."

I eased my head down onto hers.

"I don't know what I am," I admitted quietly, grateful that the paramedic was working around Lex without looking at us, putting an oxygen mask back on him, taking his pulse, and maybe just for good measure, putting a needle in his arm and hooking up a connected IV of fluids to the ceiling of the van. She looked like she knew what she was doing ... which was to be hoped for from paramedics.

"You're Nathaniel. You're Uncle Nate. You are Clan. You have a Gargoyle body with fire and wind powers. We'll figure out everything else eventually," Tachi replied, then lifted her head again and sighed. "And here come the reinforcements," she said in a weary but fond tone.

I heard the claws of my kin on gravel, saw Heather's mop of hair appear in the open back door of the van. She looked at me with huge, completely teary eyes. Then at Tachi, then Lex, and then scrambled hurriedly towards us, over a grunting Tachi, until she could fall into my arms. And how I loved taking her in my arms. Even though it was far too cramped here and I smacked Tachi and the paramedic with my wings, I flapped them around the hatchling. Simply because I could.

She sniffed me like a watchbeast, probably to find out if my current body was really me. Then she scrunched up her nose and sneezed directly into my face because she had probably inhaled some ash. I made a shrill, playfully disgusted noise but chuckled immediately afterwards, not quite yet having arrived at the worried, distraught Nathaniel Sharif as I found her mortal excitement about all this rather cute. Right after that, I frowned because- weren't my thoughts weird? Were they mine? Yes and no - I guessed.

"We thought you were dying! We thought Lexi was dying," she whimpered.

"I thought that too," I admitted, rocking her back and forth.

"Nate doesn't die that easily. Fortune favors fools," Tachi said and she and Heather grinned at each other because they seemed to agree. I was fine with such affectionate teasing. She pushed away from me a little and groped my face. For the first time, I felt my horns on my forehead and jaw again. She even pulled my lips apart to check my fangs, always with that critical look as if she thought I only had to wiggle my nose and I would either be dead or human again. Would I have to? Could I? I didn't want to test that at the moment.

"And you're really a gargoyle again?" she asked.

"Yes," I said - practising the word. "Yes, I'm me again," I repeated.

"How long?"

And I really couldn't answer that. Just then Nash came into my field of vision, hurriedly surveyed the scene, then turned his head and called out to someone. "Here they are!"

The elderly paramedic with the gray hair but warm eyes, busy with some paperwork and so far as discreet as possible, looked up. And grinned broadly.

"Nash!"

The youngster raised his hand with a grin as if greeting an old friend. Which he probably did.

"Hi, Chavah. Why are you always where Gargoyles get hurt? That's getting suspicious."

"Because you can't take care of yourselves," she replied, tapping herself on the forehead to indicate to Nash that she had noticed the bleeding laceration on his brow. I could tell they wanted to talk some more, but Nash stepped aside because at that moment the back of the wagon was clogged with Gargoyles.

I was still feeling the after-effects of my - condition? breakout? reunion with whatever - and so it didn't bother me to be the focus of all their excited questions and horrified assumptions. I denied where I could and confirmed where I could, and again and again members of my non-human family grabbed my shoulder, my wing, stroked my brow as if they couldn't believe I was a gargoyle again. I couldn't believe it myself and tomorrow night I might have the strength and the nervous energy to worry about everything, but tonight I just wanted to make sure that Lex was okay.

His condition probably wasn't serious at all because Chavah had pulled Nashville aside to patch him up. Chad, Ali, Lavonne and Anthony appeared after what seemed like an eternity, forced the Gargoyles away a bit, which was quite a feat for humans, and checked on me and Lex. Chad must have given them a good rundown on my gargoyle-ness because although all three of them looked at me with eyes just as wide as the gargoyles (and Lavonne, of course, had to poke me with her sharp fingernail, over and over again) none of them were truly horrified.

"I knew there was something I was missing about your face," Lavonne said, making a circular motion around her own face.

"The horns- drip. Now you're perfect."

I chuckled benevolently without showing too much fang. Perfect? Far from it. But ... I didn't feel the slightest regret or distress at losing my humanness again. I felt ... whole. Not just inside. And I was happy that my work clan was cool with me being a gargoyle ... although I had no idea what that would mean for my work life at the moment.

"So - what exactly happened in there?" Anthony asked, looking the least freaked out. I wouldn't have thought he was such a cool character, but some people only show what composure and strength they are capable of in extraordinary situations.

"Honestly ... it was crazy. I thought Lex had died in my arms. And the fire threatened to consume us. And then," my eyes flew over all the gargoyles in a matter of seconds because I basically realized that my humans wouldn't understand what I was about to say. "I demanded my fire back. And with the fire came the gargoyle body. And then I was able to consume the flames and smoke myself and Lexington is alive again and Chad and Tachi are unharmed. I have no explanation how or why."

"So you were actually a gargoyle the whole time?" asked Ali.

"I was born human. I was badly injured months ago and magic made me a gargoyle so I could petrify and heal. And I really thought I wanted to become human again. But nothing was easier and everything felt wrong. And now I'm back in the body that should feel less like me but... it feels okay. I think-" and now I looked at Brooklyn and knew it sounded like an apology. "I think I'm back to zero."

Brooklyn huffed and smiled.

"You're not, Blue One. You just come back to the castle with us. You're stuck with us no matter if you're human or gargoyle."

I nestled into his fingers, which he reached out to touch my forehead, and savored the warm feeling of acceptance and affection as my clan leader touched my brow bone. Oh yes, I had missed that. I sighed and realized for the first time what had been bothering me all this time.

"Strange," I articulated and looked at my arm with which I was holding Lexingtin's hand. "My clothes are hanging in tatters ... and I'm not healed. But those around me have intact clothes and are unharmed."

"With magic, there's no need to ask for logic," Broadway explained. "Why did all the people who were gargoyles for a few hours in 1995 turn back without their shoes?"

"I still say Puck ate the shoes!" chirped Heather, who was hanging on to me.

"He used up a lot of energy that night," Goliath confirmed mildly indirectly.

"That's weird! The shoes of millions of people?" I asked in disbelief. Of course I had heard the story in the gargoyle "bedtime stories", but they had probably left out the part about the shoes. I remembered the evening when I was suddenly standing on the street without shoes. And how my mother had fumed!

"If that's Puck's thing. We don't criticize other people's kinks," Brooklyn chided affectionately in my direction and Katana pinched him, making him manly yelp.

"And why shoes at all?" asked Ali, who, like Chad, looked confused, because lots of people knew about magic by now, but both of them had still been in England at the time.

"Then your Puck or whatever owes me beautiful patent sandals - I knew I didn't lose them," said Lavonne and I laughed.

"How old were you in 1995? Ten? Don't you think there's a statute of limitations on the crime?" Anthony asked with a grin.

"I was 9 and these were gorgeous sandals!" Lavonne insisted and now everyone was laughing. Yes, LeXa ltd was in ruins. Yes, people had died in there and we didn't even have a count of how many. And the threat wasn't even gone because we didn't know if assassins were still lurking somewhere. But I just felt so relieved that everyone I really, really cared about was okay. That was an arsehole move but I just felt like that. And right at that moment, Lex groaned through the hiss of the oxygen mask.

.

Lex POV;

"Ahhhhh, by the dragon," I groaned and retched.

Something was pulled from my face. My throat felt like it was clogged with ash. And my eyes - completely caked with dirt.

Someone brought the finish of a plastic bottle to my lips and I drank so greedily that the contents ran down my face. Warm clawed hands rubbed away the moisture in a motherly gesture - perhaps Katana.

I heard my whole clan talking in confusion, including Katana, who gently inquired if I was okay, but her voice sounded too far away to be my helper beside me.

"I'm fine," I croaked, rubbing my eyes with the dampness of the water.

"Here, take this," I heard Nathaniel's gentle, soft voice and I rubbed my eyes awkwardly and roughly with the damp towel he had given me.

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome," he says, chuckling a little.

Nate. Nate was here. And he was happy and calm. So everything was fine. But ... was everything fine? The last thing I remembered was a tremor in the floor. I tried to open my eyes but it was so hard, I was still blind. I took a deep breath and wrinkled my nose because I smelled disinfectant but I was surrounded by the acrid smell of smoke.

"What happened?" I blinked. Everything was a blur. I saw the multicolored and multiform shapes of my family in the open doors of the- ambulance?- Okay. Ambulance. I had a headache and my whole left side, especially my arm, felt so furry like it had been asleep, my flying skin was tingling really uncomfortably. I looked up and there was an IV hanging there. A human woman who looked vaguely familiar was leaning over me, I hissed at the light she was using to check my pupil response.

"It's all good," Nathaniel said, and I felt his hand pat mine. His claws scratched gently and lovingly over my skin. His - what?!

I jerked my head around so abruptly that something cracked in my neck.

Nate smiled broadly at me, his beautiful fangs gleaming even though his clothes hung in black tatters and his hair and face were partially soot-smeared. My heart leapt. Then it leapt again. What was wrong here? Heather hung in his arms and wriggled until he let her down so she could smooch me. I just let her do it without taking my eyes off of Nate. I must have been making a seldom dim-witted face, because I heard fellow members of my clan laughing softly and making comments. Tachi next to Nate rolled her eyes and cleared her throat, then stood up and pulled Heather away from me.

"I think we'll give the two love-birds a few minutes of quality time together and see how far Xanatos' lawyers are with reminding the people who filmed this shitshow here that any recordings on the premises will be prosecuted."

"Glad you're feeling better, bro," Brooklyn commented, touching my ankle since my feet were closest to the back door of the ambulance I was in.

"Uhu," I said tonelessly and my clan leader laughed at my oral apathy in the face of the impossible. I quickly tuned out the many distant footsteps on the gravel, rubbed my eyes again, blinked, focused and saw Nathaniel STILL sitting in front of me as a gargoyle. His smile wide, his velvety blue lips so sensual with his otherwise soot-covered skin.

I really must look incredibly stupid with my slack jaw because he laughed softly again. I grabbed the hand he raised to cover my mouth. Squeezed it, felt his claws, his tougher skin. Suddenly there were tears in my already aching eyes and he looked like he wanted to cry too, but with happiness.

"Welcome back," he breathed.

"That-you are? Is this a dream?" I asked, no longer the genius but reduced to the desperate-to-believe.

"Not a dream. Unless we're both dreaming." As I raised my other hand, shaky as a Parkinson's patient, he leaned forward meekly and patiently, letting me mentally work through the fact that the sight of him had taken me off guard. I touched his slightly ridged, beautiful horns, his droopy ear, rubbed soot from his cheek, explored his jaw horns with my hands. He was so gorgeous. I couldn't believe he was going to be a gargoyle again.

"May I - may I kiss you? Please, please. Please," I begged in a choked voice and he smothered the next plea with his lips. The smell of fire and ash that must have clung to both of us didn't lessen the sweetness. It tasted familiar and yet renewed. I licked my tongue over his fangs, exploring. We both detached ourselves and laughed softly, brushing the tears from each other's cheeks. The memory came back to me when it wasn't me who hugged him but he beat me to it and wrapped his arms and wings around me as if I were a treasure he had retrieved from the Wyvern dragon's lair. I looked out of the ambulance for the first time.

"My company?"

"Can be rebuilt," he murmured, and I knew he was right. All vital information, all projects were in the external servers. Knowledge was the really valuable element. Besides, as a former medieval gargoyle, I knew how fleeting possessions were ... and life.

"Do we know how many people have died?" I asked, and Nate shook his head sadly.

"I took a deep breath and rubbed my chest. "How strange. Feels like I shouldn't be able to breathe so well."

"Maybe you shouldn't."

I looked at him and he licked his lips a little indecisively. "I-you were... you didn't seem alive anymore. Your arm was burnt and you couldn't breathe. And then I reclaimed my fire because for some reason I knew I could save you that way and I- everything was fine and you were healed and I got wind AND fire powers back. And this version of my body," he explained, not looking at me. He seemed remorseful. As if he had disappointed me in some way with his actions. But the exact opposite was the case.

I grabbed his hand again and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"Then I guess you're the hero now. My hero," I said smiling lovingly and his expression melted with gratitude and affection. Magic was hard to explain. Everything about Nathaniel seemed hard to explain. But I loved him too much to let something like that unsettle me. It sounded as if he had given up the humanity he had only recently regained, his life in the sun and in the greatest possible normality - for me. Few would make such a sacrifice.

I found the strength to lift my upper body - it honestly didn't take that much strength when the motivation was strong - and kissed him again. We rubbed our brows together again and again between our kisses. Even through the soot and smoke that hung all over us and in the air, I caught his own scent. He smelled so deliciously like Gargoyle. Like the man I loved and desired SO much and the encouraging humming he emitted made me think he desired me too. But we'd get to that later.

"There are a lot of people out there," I said.

"Yes. They've seen everything. They - they've seen me."

"But not how you turned from human to gargoyle?"

"No. But ... my gargoyle- self looks enough like my human self. My colleagues, all my coworkers, they know what I look like and-"

"Shh shh shh that's okay, Nathaniel," I cooed. "We'll see what happens from this point on. Xanatos will rebuild the company. In a year, it'll be better than it's ever been, and you... you can think about what you want to do until then."

"What if some of the recordings the humans made are leaked?"

I'm sure the clan and Xanatos' bloodhounds from the legal department will make everyone realize that wouldn't be a good idea," I said darkly, enjoying the way Nathaniel shuddered at that.

"I guess so," I heard Elisa say, who had just turned up with Goliath and Brooklyn. She had her uniform on and her whole vibe, while still cool and tough, was much more professional as always when she was in her Chief-work-mode.

"You want our statement?" asked Nate next to me, who had probably picked up on that vibe too.

"If you're stable enough," she said, handing Nathaniel what looked like clothes. I had no idea who she'd instructed to run to the nearest long-open supermarket, but he thanked her with a warm smile and proceeded to slip out of the rags and into the T-shirt and sweatpants. In a wonderfully unaffected gargoyle way, he simply cut two holes in the back of the pants and the back of the T-shirt with his claws.

.

"Man, haven't you had enough photos?" asked "Bob", annoyed. Just an alibi, of course. He hated gargoyles and the Maza chick knew he wasn't a fan - but he didn't have to jeopardize his job by revealing his real name to these fanatics here. The other two guys- like him in ski masks grumbling words of approval, were nervously in a gargoyle hideout with one of their "cubs". How likely was it that the other gargoyles-no matter how many there really were in Manhattan-would leave their artificial spawn alone for so long? Quick in, quick out - that was the plan. Had been the plan on paper. Which, thankfully, Miller finally remembered.

"Yes- okayokay. Let's get to the grand finale."

He positioned his somewhat antiquated-looking camera on one of the tables so that it pointed perfectly at the clone tank, checked the setting and the focus again. Switched it on. And then stepped up to the tank. He was the only one who didn't have a problem with everyone seeing his face. Because he had nothing to lose but everything to gain. He smiled at the camera. "Bob" shuddered in the dark. No human smiled like that. Not even a lunatic. That was the smile of a wolf that had finally caught its long-hunted prey.

"My name ... is James Miller of Stony Facts," the leader of their operation said to his so far imaginary but perhaps future followers numbering in the hundreds of thousands who would see this. "I'm standing here in front of one of hundreds of clone tanks spread across New York and America, maybe even the world. A tank in which, as you can see, a gargoyle clone is maturing." He knocked on the tank and HEAVEN, the thing in there twitched! Bob and his colleagues exchanged horrified glances.

"Yeah, I know, that's scary," Miller cooed to the camera. "Since 1999, the cloning of intelligent life forms has been banned worldwide and is subject to strict penalties. Nevertheless, the creatures known as gargoyles do it to push up their breeding numbers, which are otherwise inferior to us, in order to eventually-"

Something clattered overhead, causing everyone to flinch and raise their weapons. Miller looked wide-eyed at the ceiling of the cellar as if he could see up to the first floor by willpower alone.

"What was that?"

"Are the pigs coming?" one of Bob's colleagues asked, and something inside him wanted to smack the disrespectful asshole with his nightstick. But his suddenly racing heart demanded a different focus. He unslung his gun and looked up the stairs to the first floor where the door stood open.

"I rather think-," he began as the lights suddenly went out, leaving only the orange liquid in the clone tank and the lights on the machines connected to it to provide illumination.

"Shit!" screeched one of the others.

"Don't panic," Miller barked before any more sounds of fear and uncertainty could rise - his glorious propaganda video forgotten and his gun drawn. Everyone raised their weapons towards the staircase but flinched as the historic elevator at the end of the room, half-hidden behind filing cabinets and boxes, rattled into motion and went up.

"Damn it! Has the power gone or not?"

"The power's not gone. Someone just blew the fuse for the lights," Miller hissed, pointing his gun at the elevator. His eyes were wide but he bared his teeth, determined to face anything.

"And we're next or what?" said one of the others where "Bob" could only grunt. Shit, he had wanted to assist in the demise of the Gargoyles. Not wanting to die in a fight with the monsters or with his own colleagues. It didn't feel like it right now, but they here with their little "illegal" whistleblower team were on the right side. He just wished he was at home on the couch. The others - including him, no doubt - were all breathing hectically with a surge of adrenaline, but Bob audibly heard it scratching over him like the claws of large rats scraping concrete.

The men in the room screamed more like little girls when suddenly something fell from the ceiling onto one of the tables, right next to Miller's camera, who at least had the presence of mind to immediately point his gun at the thing. Then he whole team mimicked him. Bob had almost pissed himself and the others probably felt the same way. The creature must have crawled across the ceiling like a spider in the dark, squatting there now like a dark purple frog and staring wordlessly at Miller. Even from the side it looked like something out of a nightmare with tattered clothes, a bare skull with two sharp but short horns growing out of the brow bone and huge red eyeballs with white pupils. When it opened its mouth to growl, Bob saw the pitch-black teeth and the absurdly white tongue. But despite everything - it was a TINY one. It was a dwarf as it crouched there and it didn't have wings on its back but blood-red webbing waving under its arms. It resembled-

"Ha," one of the others exclaimed and lowered his weapon. "This is supposed to be the guard dog here? You've got to be kidding me."

"Yes. Haha," said the other one, audibly nervous, but he remained standing behind Bob on the stairs. "That really is a pathetic little freak."

"Freak?!" hissed the little monster, his dead white gaze scanning every person in the room with disgust as if THEY were the nasty critters.

"Ha, even more. See who this looks like?" Miller said, grinning almost gleefully. "Oh, I'm going to have fun killing this one. It's a clone. The copy of the-"

The ugly monster lunged at him, bridged the four yards to Miller with a snarling scream and a mighty leap, and set about clawing his face to a pulp. Miller screamed, shot, shot again as his arms flailed and wood splintered from the banister right next to Bob.

"Shit!" shrieked one of the others and Bob was shoved to the ground as the other guys ran up the stairs behind him, perhaps to escape not from this raging runt but from those who were much bigger and were sure to come. Bob lay dazed on the floor for a moment, hearing more shots under Miller's screaming, one shot hitting the glass of the clone tank, which didn't break but showed spiderweb of cracks. One of the other guys - who hadn't fled after all - had both hands on his gun but had no clear shot because Miller was wriggling on the floor like a maniac with the thing. Ignoring his aching leg and the blood running down his hair, Bob also stumbled up the stairs away from the creature that Miller was savagely mauling.

"Bob! Where the hell are you going, you rat!" screeched the other one. But Bob had no desire to stay in this horror cellar with the monster and a wildly shooting fanatic. If the other guy felt like it - fine, but he was smarter than that. Upstairs, he tripped over one of the other guys who was trying to crawl to the open front door in a huge pool of his own blood. Bob jumped over him, shrieking and falling because something bit him - but when he looked back, all he saw was the pale-skinned, white-haired kid with the blood-red pupils who had just cut his foot tendons with a knife.

He kicked the kid in the face with his other, still intact foot so hard he heard his nose break and him howl inhumanly, then crawled on his butt through the open front door, slamming the door shut before the ghastly brat could get to him. Bob heard something latch in the door - the mechanism they had overridden with the right code when they got in.

He was out! He had made it! He couldn't get up, fell straight down the stairs of the inconspicuous Brownstone house onto the sidewalk. All the screaming, all the shooting, all the dying in there was suddenly inaudible - just a gruesome echo in his head. He frantically ripped off his ski mask, pulled out his radio and put it on the general police channel. He didn't give a shit what anyone would think. He didn't give a fuck about his job, he just needed fucking backup.

"This is Coppa! Henry Coppa from 23 Precinct! 10-13! Officer down, officer down after gargoyle attack! Need immediate backup! 10-91V, 10-53, 10-57,- I repeat !-"

Well? Not so bad.

You didn't think Nate would stay human, did you? We'd much rather have him as a gargoyle.

And you remember Henry Coppa? No? You don't have to, he was the creep officer sneaking around the GTF in chapter uhhhm, I think from Souls of the Night, book 2, chapter 93- Shoveling up Gargoyle shit 1. And the codes? I did for the love of god NOT find a New York police radio code for animal attack, officer down, firearm discharged! I found some from California - if you want to assist me here (kindly) then I'd be open to subsequent corrections. Otherwise- here are the explanations for what I used:

10-91V Vicious Beast

10-53 Person down.

10-57 Firearm discharged.

10-13 Assist police officer (officer in serious danger)

Some things are probably redundant or inaccurate, but Copper is also in absolute panic mode, so we tolerate the imprecision.

P.S. And if I ever feel like it ... maybe I'll write a little story about the night when all the humans in Manhattan turned into gargoyles from Nathaniel's point of view. Well? Would that be cute? A little gargoyle Nate?

P.P.S.The little anecdote that doesn't fit in here at all - the mention of Puck eating the shoes of the seven million people he turned back. Where did I get that from? There's a series on AO3 called 31 Days of Crackfest: Gargoyles Edition by Lazy8 and one short story (really short, extremely short) is more hilarious than the other and in chapter 28 (On the other foot) Xanatos and Owen have a conversation about it that had me rolling with laughter. Really - read it. Every chapter is a delight.

Thanks for reading, Q.T.