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Souls of the Night – Vol 3
56.
The glass lay shattered on the floor of the banquet hall.
After endless seconds, Oberon slowly looked up from the shards. Everyone was staring at him. The music had stopped, the feasting had stopped. EVERYONE had sensed it and where the lower fey did not know how to interpret the energy that had swept over the whole world and even the magical barriers bridging Avalon, the higher ranks of his court did. Although not all of them were from his court. Not anymore. Not in this situation at least. The knowledge that old powers had been resurrected and were operable had to spread among the more obtuse. But clever fellows like Odin would already be thinking about who they would follow. Many were made up of all elements but one, or at most two, were dominant. Oberon looked to his consort and Titania clapped her hands, her features sweet and calm and conveying order and harmony, but the clapping not primarily a call for the servants but a reminder to ALL to stay put. The Pixies were already approaching to put the glass back together, subservient as they were. His wife stood up slowly and he did the same at the same second so that it wouldn't look like HE was following HER. He raised his hand and she placed hers in it. Without the others seeing, she stabilized him, interrupting the indecent trembling that was trying to take over his body.
"The lord and I shall retire. Dine and drink, good children. Be well."
With a sweeping motion of her hand, she and her husband were in their chambers.
She stepped to one of the windows. The sunlight shone unbroken through the panes, the petrified gargoyles on the battlements silent, faithful guardians, still unaware of the war that might tear away everything they thought they knew.
"That energy-" Oberon said behind her, sounding SO old.
"Yes-."
"They're loose again."
"And united."
"I felt a shudder days ago. And last year, too. But this time it was so pure, so raw! Like ... a nightmare from childhood that dominated my mind back then and is now rearing its ugly head again."
"But only a nightmare of the past. Not a real threat to you and your authority."
"Of course not! But ... They have broken their chains! Both of them! And now ... I constantly feel these presences. Under a veil, but THERE. United under ONE single mortal skin. How can that be possible?"
"Asking about the past is futile. Saving the future - this must be the focus of your attention. You are right- it IS still a mortal skin. Your power is unchallenged ... even if it can't hurt to arm yourself against upstarts."
"So wise, my queen." She felt his hands on her shoulders, his caress on the back of her neck.
"At your disposal, like all your children, my lord."
"All of them? Hardly. I can already feel some of them contemplating leaving the island to join THEIR side. We must eliminate the threat before they tear down worlds and kingdoms."
Titania did not turn around, knowing her husband would not be able to keep the terror out of his eyes and would not want it to be seen. Instead, she watched as individual children scurried through the courtyard to spread the news of this energy to others.
"Seal off the island."
"For what reason?"
"Oberon needs no reason. You can do anything, my lord. Command anything."
"That won't stop them all."
"Certainly not. A few will always be able to slip through your nets. They will be held accountable for their repeated disloyalty. But ... you can include the other two. That prospect alone will keep many here. No one wants to get caught in the middle."
"IT will have sensed it too."
"It's still so consumed by loathing. It won't respect your rules."
"Rules to protect the humans are ineffective if the others don't play by them, my love. I will find loopholes so I don't discredit myself."
"You will, my Lord. The humans have a saying for that; Si vis pacem para bellum."
"Fitting. Let this be our maxim. Let the elements fight their own war and choose their unclean warriors, who walk the dust of the earth unbound by the laws."
"Brilliant. And when they have distracted and blinded the others, you can put them in their place once and for all with a single stroke of your hand."
"Yes. Fight fire with water."
"So be it, my love," Titania whispered before kissing her omnipotent master and mate.
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Nathaniel's POV:
Where my scream was that of a spooked small animal, immediately fading into silent shock and thus not surviving the reverberating echo of the gunshot, Brentwood's scream was long and howling. He was crouched on the floor with his legs apart, covered in blood that shimmered orange in the dim glow of the lights from some ruined Plexiglas tube. My eyes skimmed the corpse not a yard away from him with a face that was no longer a face. And another corpse crouched against a wall with- heavens, this person's head was crushed like an eggshell! I croaked and felt myself swaying and only the banister on one side and my friend's arm around my waist kept me upright. This was a slaughterhouse! With computers and filing cabinets and this strange chamber that dominated everything, but with saws and other tools on the walls, half of them from Bosch, but the others so silvery that they were probably more for medical purposes. And some of them were rusty! Even without the bodies, it looked like ... a mixture of tool shed, office, tech lab, torture chamber and Doctor Frankenstein's laboratory. I didn't have to look at the files in the computer on one of the tables at the back to sense that gruesome things had been going on here long before tonight - the horror had seeped into the walls over the years. A cellar of terror.
And the only survivor was the gargoyle who had ambushed me a few weeks ago, tied me up, beaten me and tried to make me his mate by raping me. And now that I saw him again - he was so shaken by grief-stricken horror, so devastated, almost destroyed, that I felt SO infinitely sorry for him. That part of my brain recognized that he looked somewhat like Lexington only made it all the more horrible. I couldn't understand what Thailog had meant to him. Had he been his master? His father in some way? His friend? His ... whatever? The little clone started to move, whimpering incomprehensible fragments of words as he crawled through the liquid to the corpse that had just been an archenemy of the clan, Goliath's clone in child form at that. Of course, he hadn't been a child for the last few seconds of his life, but even as a gnarled, gaunt old male, even with the back of his head blown off, what had died was still a piece of Goliath.
Goliath himself turned to Elisa, who stood below us on the stairs, lowered his head, his lips trembling, and a silent tear ran down his cheek, which Elisa brushed away. He might not really be mourning Thailog. Maybe he regretted not trying harder to bring Thailog into the clan, not convincing him at EVERY opportunity to leave his dark ways, or not taking the child in when Thailog had been made one in 2009 - and that was just the short form, which I caught on the fly and yet didn't understand how or why. Heather pressed herself into Nashville's neck, burying her face in his stubborn hair so she wouldn't have to see.
"I didn't mean to," she said.
"He did this, Heather. He wanted it," Lex said, stroking her wings.
"Yes, little one, he chose this path and his destiny was determined long before you came along. You may have kept much suffering from the clan with your intervention. You protected us without killing," Katana assured her gently and Heather stretched out her arms and sank into the embrace of her clan grandmother - perhaps only because Katana had more distance from the dreadful things, stood at the top of the stairs and now also went up with Heather to the first floor to tell the human forces outside how to proceed. Tachi and Angela followed her. No one assumed that the pile of overwhelmed crying misery that Brentwood had become posed any kind of danger that the males in the clan wouldn't be able to handle. In general, the others seemed less disturbed by the corpses than by what Thailog had done and what they were supposed to do with SUCH a Brentwood. I felt a little differently. My experience with corpses was really limited to tonight, and since I hadn't quite been me when I climbed over asphyxiated bodies at LeXa ltd earlier, these corpses here felt like my first ones, even if I hadn't killed them.
"That Thailog would do such a thing," Broadway muttered.
"He's always been a coward of that sort," said Nash, unconsciously giving me quite a jab. Perhaps deliberately to himself too, because he had already thought of suicide himself and was therefore perhaps the only one who had the right to make such an assessment. "And he shared with Xanatos and Sevarius the fear of frailty, old age and oblivion. Only unlike Uncle X, Thailog never developed further," he added quietly, which was only understandable because Brentwood, perhaps weakened by his previous grief, had switched to breathless hiccups and quieter weeping.
He cradled Thailog's emaciated body, as well as - what was he holding in his other arm? I felt Whisp fluttering inside me, as well as a nausea-building heat in my chest for the first time, which must have come from the other entity. I pushed past the others and found myself standing over Brentwood - although I REALLY wasn't interested in getting a better picture of Thailog's blown-away skull and gray brain matter shimmering in the light. The little guy looked up for a moment, snotty and haunted, infantile vigilant petulance flashing across his gruesome foreign and yet familiar features before that expression collapsed again and he lowered his head.
"Away! Go away," he whimpered shrilly and quivering. But I had already seen it. The other thing in his arms. It hurt my butt and tail when I slumped to the floor, not slowed down by the few inches of pooling liquid. But my horror was greater. Brooklyn and Lex were suddenly beside me, looking for what had shaken me so.
And realized the same thing I had. A collective gasp went through the others.
"... Wow, so... um, welcome to the clone club," Brooklyn mumbled in that unique dry tone that invited a smirk or an eye roll because it made him sound younger but you didn't really want to hear from your clan leader.
"There-there-that's me," I stuttered with rising nausea, remembering the baseball bat Brentwood had hit me over the head. Blood. All it took was a little blood or hair and you lost your identity. I felt Goliath's hands on my shoulders where my friend crouched beside me.
"No, Nathaniel. That's not you. Only you are you," Broadway assured me from behind.
"He-he wanted me as a mate!" I gasped, wanting to curl up into a ball. I felt raped even though no one had touched me. Somehow this was even worse. A life had been created by someone with really wrong, degenerate intentions. In a few weeks this ... Gargoyle fetus would have become an adult copy of me, with my voice, my body, perhaps willing to do ANYTHING Thailog and Brentwood wanted to do to him. A me just to exploit and play with. I thought of Jussuf and wanted to throw up.
"And because you couldn't have him, you just made yourself a fake! Don't you have a decent spark in your body? People are not things! We'll lock you away until you can't even remember the moon," Lex hissed, his eyes blazing, looking like he wanted to spit at Brentwood. Brentwood returned the hateful look for a second before shrinking even further into himself to protect this tiny me and Thailog's upper body from our greedy eyes and hands. As if WE were the bad guys!
"Goway. Go away! You take everything from me. Thailog. Etan, House. Destroy evrything. Evrything."
Brentwood began to tremble and I looked around helplessly among the others. This was all so traumatic and awful - yet I felt SO sorry for him. He gave me the creeps but he was all alone and just the thought of having him around made me feel disgusted. Brentwood was morally depraved, perhaps cognitively impaired, certainly a psychopath and a murderer if you could surmise from the blood on his face that he had killed these people? But he was SO lost. He had only wanted someone he ... God, maybe he really would have loved this clone in his own way. And now ... he had practically been stomped into the ground, crying and grieving as if he had loved Thailog AND my clone already like real family. And I didn't know what I wanted to say when I opened my mouth. Something as batshit crazy as `let's take him to the castle, give him one of my cuddly ponchos and lots of warm soup and a garg beast to hug`.
But Broadway, wet-eyed himself, said, "Brentwood. You are not alone. What about Enya?"
Brentwood shook his head without lifting it.
"Enya don't come. Enya stay away so she doesn't go to jail. Because smart."
"Who's-" I began whispering and Lex enlightened me just as quietly (although whispering with gargoyles was actually pretty pointless.)
"Mad scientist. Clone of Sevarius. Third member of this shit show - whatever this was."
"Clan! We clan," Brentwood barked, staring up at Lexington with those sickeningly scary eyes that were as red as his face was now. Although the tears and snot marred the nightmarish impression.
Lexington rolled his eyes and turned away from Brentwood with a brusque "Whatever".
I never knew him to be so heartless, so indifferently cruel towards a currently so much frailer foe, and kneading my cold hands, I waded after him. Unfortunately, his path led him to the corpse with the missing face. God, I knew gargoyle claws could cut through stone and metal - but to see what they could do to a human in the heat of blood - that was ... Thank dragon I hadn't eaten since breakfast. What had the people here wanted? Both of them down here (as well as the corpse in the entrance hall) were wearing some kind of combat uniform, but nothing that really looked official. More like survival weirdos preparing for the end of the world. Oh ... had that happened here? Had those guys, somehow, found Brentwood's and Thailog's shelter, destroyed the chamber in which the little me had grown? I purposely only looked at the dead man's shoes where Lexington started checking his pockets for an ID or something. Still, I could practically feel black smoke of frustration and disgust over everything here, especially Brentwood, rising from him which made me stretch my wing out over my friend and brush against him as he worked. And indeed, his movements became calmer.
Broadway, Nashville, Goliath, Elisa and Brooklyn spoke in hushed voices, their postures still a little wary but not alarmed. It was the aftermath of this thoroughly awful evening, all of them still a little on edge but basically certain that it was over and they would now be busy evaluating the outcome of the night.
"Brentwood, you must let Thailog and the clone go when the humans arrive," Elisa said after explaining to him his rights as per procedure.
"Etan! Name Etan."
The name made me cringe again. They all had a thing for anagrams, this clan so strange and twisted was scary. What would the courts make of it?
"He ... has lost the most important person in his life so far. And the ... person who should have become important to him. Let him hold them until the humans come to pick him up," Goliath said.
"Don't think any of us would have voluntarily touched Thailog or - Etan. Look at Brentwood, the humans will have to electroshock him to deprive him of them," Nash commented without a trace of sarcasm. Brentwood growled venomously at the prospect, confirming the assessment.
"Creating clones is illegal worldwide. 10 years at least. How did Enya get the parts for the chamber together?" our clan leader wondered aloud.
"Black market, probably," Broadway mused, looking to the cloning chamber and then back to Brentwood. "The human lawyers will take one look at him and talk to him for three minutes and declare him unaccountable. The most he'll get is accessory to clone creation. Maybe accessory to murder. And we have no witnesses that HE killed the humans here. The people won't believe him capable of it if they see him like we do right now. When he gets out of prison, what are we going to do with him?"
"A gargoyle should always be under the care and custody of a clan. To provide a sense of belonging and moral values. If not..." Goliath puffed and let his gaze wander over the cellar.
"If not, the outcome can be seen here," Elisa said.
"Brentwood," Brooklyn said, kneeling down in front of the little weary clone.
"What?" he said after a few seconds, no longer sobbing openly under the scrutiny of so many pairs of eyes that were not necessarily sympathetic towards him, but silently shedding tears and sniffling.
Our clan leader scratched his mane, somewhat unsure. "When you get out. No matter how long you have to stay locked up. We'll talk to your brothers. With Delilah, with Talon. If everyone agrees, how would you like to live there?"
Brentwood threw back his head, laughing so tired and jaded that it sounded like a toneless croak.
"Labyrinth? Like rats."
"You- only part of the facility is underground these days. And it's not like it used to be. The Manhattan Labyrinth Sanctuary even has an entire high-rise building. Doesn't that sound good? Petrified on the top floor in the sun with your brothers, sister, nieces and nephews? You'd have a real clan again."
Brentwood looked at him with the corners of his mouth pulled down before shaking his head as if it was too much for him to explain to Brooklyn that he wasn't buying his gaudy fantasies. "Not like them. I never have been. Haven't been my brothers for a long time," he said.
"That was hardly their decision," Lex grumbled beneath me and I put a hand on his shoulder, making the tense muscles in his back relax.
"Sorry," he whispered, still not looking at Brentwood.
He's afraid of him, I realized then. Maybe not afraid like of an armed, overpowering opponent. Perhaps it was more of a diffuse fear and disgust, like you feel in a hall of mirrors when you see yourself distorted and twisted. Frightened not because of the differences but because of possible similarities, which perhaps unconsciously made you aware of your own inner ugliness.
Lex had picked up a camera from the floor and was examining it with an intense, concentrated look on his face. It was not only old but also broken and certainly didn't belong here. Something that triggered an unpleasant memory in me. I walked over to the others and tugged on Goliath's shoulder. "I think maybe we should-"
"AHHHH!" Lexington suddenly screeched. We all whirled around and saw that my friend had fallen to the ground. And was being choked by the death-thought human with the mangled face!
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Lexingtons POV:
I heard myself shriek more shrilly than I had in many years as the man, who couldn't possibly be alive but was it anyway, strangled me with a force that seemed inhuman. He had first grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, surprising me so completely that I was on the ground and he was half on top of me before a sound had even come out of my throat. And now? Now I was screaming in panic, still able to breathe because his wet, bloody hands couldn't choke me off completely, but otherwise I was paralyzed because all I could do was stare. This face that was no longer a face. His skin completely scratched away, deep gashes through fat, muscle, sinew, even bone, so that even his brain matter was visible and part of his lower jaw was shattered. His lips were completely torn off as was his nose, which looked bitten off and I saw more teeth than I thought humans had. He looked more like spaghetti bolognese with an eye poking out of it than a human.
This was a monster! Whoever it had been, now it was just monstrous, its features irrecoverably lost but capable of a force that had to be fueled by sheer hatred, it moved, found strength. It slammed my head on the ground. Once. Twice, and tissue and blood and foam from its mouth splattered on my face and its one eye, which was still in the cave where it had lost the second, stared at me without even blinking because it had no eyelids. And yet, despite everything, I imagined I could hear gurgling words coming from the dank foam-spitting cavern of broken teeth and blood.
"Wvrrrn! Iwillkillyoall! Iwillhundyoall! Iwill-"
A third time, much harder than before, he slammed my head on the ground so hard I saw stars and nearly bit my own tongue off. And still I could only scream and scream and scream until Nathaniel suddenly appeared above me - above us - eyes glowing white, releasing a shrill gargoyle screech and lifting something that glinted in the dim light, before ramming that very thing deep into the side of the berserker that might have killed me if no one had intervened. The mad faceless guy collapsed on top of me. His sludgy face landed on mine with a wet slap and the last puff of life was blown at me with breath reeking of blood and pain and madness. Then the now really dead body was dragged off me by Goliath. Nathaniel pulled me to him and squeezed me with an unyielding intensity that held me together. I clung to him so tightly that I was convinced I was hurting him, but I couldn't help it. Only then did I realize that we were both panting breathlessly. My heart was racing a thousand miles an hour and, sobbing, I clung to my friend who had saved my life for the SECOND time tonight.
"It's over. It's over," he kept whispering as he stroked my head, probably saying it for both of us and God, please just let this night be over. I looked at the clock above one of the tables, shaking and my eyes blurred with tears. It was only 15 minutes to 11pm. We've only been here 10 minutes? Only thirty minutes since I had woken up in the ambulance. Less than two hours since my company had gone up in flames. Why did time pass so infinitely slowly on nights like this?
Nate stood up with me in his arms. When had he gotten so strong? But I didn't mind that he carried me like a child. It wasn't easy and it wasn't graceful because we were almost the same size, but I wrapped my legs, arms and therefore my wings around him as best I could. I never wanted to let him go again. Gargoyles weren't usually this spooked and I blamed it on the overwhelming events of tonight and just allowed myself to be the weak, needy part.
"I'll take him out," my friend said close to my ear but not to me, of course.
"You do that," my red brother said, rubbing my brow bone comfortingly and causing me to let out a rather unmanly chirp, but everyone here loved me enough to probably never rub it in my face.
"Hey. Do you smell that?" Broadway said at that moment, lifting his nose into the air. The other gargoyles, even Elisa, did the same.
"That's odd," Nate said, wrapping his wings possessively around me as if another enemy was about to jump out of nowhere and attack me.
"What's that?"
"Gas! It smells like gas!" someone suddenly shouted from above and the upper floor was filled with frantic footsteps and shouts from one moment to the next. Brooklyn whirled around and tried to grab Brentwood.
"Brentwood, come here."
"No! I'ma staying here!" the clone screamed at him and snapped at his hand, which our clan leader pulled back with an indignant look before growling.
"Your horror castle is about to blow up! No matter where the gas leaks if you don't want to be torn to shreds or suffocate first, then come with us."
"NO!" Brent shrieked and scratched Goliath who had grabbed him under the arms so that the two bodies rolled off him, almost to the bone. Our clan mentor roared and stumbled back against Elisa and Broadway. Brentwood crawled into a darker corner, dragging the bodies behind him, his eyes glowing red. And in his trembling hand, pointed at Goliath, was the weapon Thailog had used to redeem himself.
"Go," he said shrilly.
Nathaniel was already on the stairs with me clinging to him, the smell of gas from upstairs so overpowering that I was already imagining myself getting dizzy.
"We have to go! Now!" he shouted.
Elisa held a cloth over her nose and mouth, coughed, looked frantically back and forth between her clan members and Brentwood, her voice muffled but icy cold.
"Nathaniel is right. Let him be. He'll make his decision like Thailog did." With that, she dragged a Goliath, who was clutching his torn arm, up the stairs behind her. We all left, escaping the stinking invisible death sentence.
Goliath's book had stated: No gargoyle is left behind. But it didn't seem as if Brentwood had ever seen himself as one. Not part of a community, not of his old clan. No one was wasting time arguing with my deviant clone who wanted to shoot anyone who tried to drag him away. And honestly ... that was fine with me. I felt bad thinking that, like I was one step closer to this Future Tense Lexington that no one really believed I would ever become - but who still hovered like a disembodied spirit over everything I did. And yet I sighed with relief as Nate stumbled out of the house with me. Brentwood was a piece of me. A rotten, evil fragment. And if he died ... maybe the one who really would have become some kind of Future Tense Lexington died. Not brilliant, of course, but depraved and sick. If other people could have tumors removed ... why should I be denied relief over Brentwood's passing...?
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Enya Sevarius limped through the hidden emergency exit door, which was connected to the secret passage. No hideout without an emergency exit and no plan without a plan B. A clever person had once taught her that. Enya surveyed the chaos, the shattered chamber and the two human corpses. The artificial smell of gas would give her a headache and dizziness pretty quickly, but if the intruders had been thinking when they had fled, they would have realized that real gas wouldn't have suddenly leaked out without damaging any pipes. This one wasn't flammable, one of Enya's added safeguards that would keep humans and gargoyles alike at a FAR distance for quite a while. Enya didn't really enjoy playing with other people's instincts, but she had no problem using them for her benefit. Humans were animals. Gargoyles were somehow too, although they were of course more highly developed, but they all had instincts and followed them without much thought. Presumably the intruders would notify other institutions whose staff had to clear the building first. They had time to get away. Enya looked in the direction where she saw movement, Brentwood was crouching between two filing cabinets. He looked... beautiful all covered in blood and Enya hadn't seen him cry much in the past but it looked so good on him. However ... basically, she didn't like to see him suffer.
"Brentwood! Come here, baby," she whispered. Sniffling, Brentwood came out, his opening wings revealing not only the dead Etan-fetus but also Thailog. What Thailog had once been. The scientist in Enya was ABSOLUTELY fascinated. As a clan sister, she was absolutely horrified.
"Oh. Ohhhh, Brentwood, no. Shit. They had their jinxed hatchling with them."
Brentwood gasped with a nod and crawled to her, dragging the two corpses with him, and fell into her arms, utterly exhausted.
Her adoptive father, her earliest childhood friend, her clan brother, her ally was shaking like a leaf, collapsed in on himself. His head had dropped down towards his lap and his torso hunched over his legs. As if all his muscles had given up on supporting him. The gnarled corpse of Thailog and the squishy clone baby between them. Where the latter was already beginning to stink, Thailog's skin was dry and brittle as parchment paper. In moments like this, Enya was all too aware that she was SO much different from other humans or even Gargoyles. It wasn't just physically that she felt things differently.
Brentwood was crying and had literally broken apart over this loss into a mess of stifled whimpers and soft yips as he tried and failed again and again to catch his breath. He was drowning in emotion. And Enya? She found everything here ... primarily engrossing. Did she feel the loss of Etan with deep regret at not having a new clan brother (and toy) soon? Absolutely. But it wouldn't be as if she had known him. Did she find Thailog's death upsettingly sad? Yes, certainly. But even though he had been one of her few attachment figures, Enya knew that he had never felt any real affection for her or Brent. He had tolerated them both and used them as he saw fit. If he had found better, more useful, allies and clan members he would probably have thrown them away long ago. And ... they had both been out of the house tonight because of him. Mhmmm. Something wasn't right here. Everything had collapsed too hard too quickly. She would have to think about this.
"Thailog dead. No more Thailog. Etan dead. Nothing left," Brentwood croaked. He palmed the remains of the fetus's torn umbilical cord before wiping away the snot and looking at her with the sweetest monster look Enya had ever seen.
"You remake? You repair machine?"
She looked at the incubator. It was completely destroyed. She saw that there was a bullet hole in the technology below the chamber. There was also one in one of the most important computers. Cloning was forbidden worldwide. Of course she could find the parts - in less moral countries of the world. But it would be expensive and would take time. Months. And time was an important factor at this point. That also ruled out creating the parts with the 3D printer. She'd have to run ten printers around the clock to get every plastic or rubber part, have other things custom made by different manufacturers so it couldn't be traced back to her or the clone itself, put it all together like a ten thousand piece puzzle and then calibrate the machines - and then there was still no telling that the fetus would last months in a jar if it was patched together from scrambled parts because this Etan was already decomposing. And above all! Outside, the police and the Gargoyles were waiting to search, tear apart and destroy everything. A few minutes.
Enja lifted a plastic shard of the chamber pane from the ground next to her. She could only blurrily recognize her own face in it. Perhaps it was just her field of vision that was clouded by the smell of gas. Or maybe she had a concussion from her car accident. But ... she and Brentwood were alone now. Alone in their already tiny clan. It should have grown, but instead it had shrunk. What a pathetic geneticist Enya was that she couldn't even -
And a new thought formed in her twisted and clever mind, one that couldn't quite match her creator's genius but was equal to his madness - if not by genetic determination, then by imprinting and upbringing.
"One possibility," she said, and Brentwood flicked his ears and looked up from the bony corpse.
"If we secure it right away, there might be some of Etan's DNA left to salvage. Maybe ... even some of Thailog's!"
"Thailog?" Brentwood regarded her as if he had never thought of this option, but as if he was anything but averse to it. It was a lever she could pull for her own manipulation, because she not only wanted to make Brentwood happy, but also to get the greatest possible benefit for herself. After all, Thailog's thinking had somehow influenced her too.
"Yes! You always wanted him. Now we can make ourselves a new one. One that is good to us and obeys us. Who doesn't -"
"-deceives us," Brentwood concluded and stroked his old master's fine hair, which broke off just like that.
Enya took a deep breath before smiling. "Yes, one who does not deceive us. He really would be our brother ... really our child."
"Our ... child ..."
"Yes! We can't take this incubator here. We can't fix it fast enough and this house will never be safe for us again. But ... We have ONE incubator that would be ready for use more quickly." Brentwood saw her features twist into a grin as she brought a hand to her stomach and the corners of his mouth lifted as well. Did he really understand what she meant? What she wanted. Even if he didn't, she would make the idea palatable to him. That way, she had even more fun. If only she could conquer his programming.
Enya stood up, groaning in pain but driven by a new zest for experimentation, walked to one of the cabinets and pulled open one of the dozens of drawers. A syringe and a long, thick needle were pulled out, unpacked and put together.
Yes - she was not as brilliant as her creator had been. But she was clever, highly adaptable, inspired by scientific ambition and just as morally depraved as the original. Enough to see everything that was to come as an experiment with unforeseen possibilities and incalculable consequences. All in all, great fun and an opportunity for self-realization. And to create one or two allies along the way.
She came over with the needle to Brentwood, who was still crouched over the corpses but was looking at her with an expectant smile, his tail swinging excitedly back and forth behind him. She stroked his head as she settled down, gently picked up Etan's body. The little creature looked like a fish out of water. Just as gray - probably the first signs of petrification and then crumbling. She picked up the gray-blue thing, a mere two pounds, delicate beginnings of wings hanging from it, and rested it on her thigh. As a woman and soon-to-be gestating woman, she should have felt something, but her main regret was that she couldn't organize a glass canister of formaldehyde to preserve this interesting piece. She felt the tiny spine, inserted the needle and extracted fluid. This sample was secured in the canister of liquid nitrogen that Brentwood - her clever little accomplice, her own supersweet Igor - had dragged over with a manic grin.
"Don't burn yourself when you put the vial in, darling," she said affectionately, enjoying not only that she had given Brentwood new hope but also how exciting she found it to work with him on this project. She would buy him a little lab coat and save a picture of him in it on her cell phone so she could masturbate to it later. She pushed her fantasies to the back of her mind so that she could have her way with Thailog's carcass. He had always been SO overpowering in life, even as a child. Now he was so frail, so unimpressive in death. And how infinitely OLD he looked. As a final gesture of affection, Enya stroked the edges of the torn skull bone and a bit of the gray brain matter where so much nastiness had fermented. Enya would have loved to keep him to dissect him. But that was hardly possible with gargoyles. You could already tell.
The skin was falling apart under her fingers, the tissue underneath was also like rotting fabric. By sunrise at the latest, what had once been the mighty Thailog would have crumbled to dust. The blood was gone from the body, the brain and the other organs where she could have pulled something out were sludge at best. From the spinal cord she drew nothing at all in terms of DNA-containing fluid. But if you could still extract something from mammoths after ten thousand years, you could extract it here too.
"Get me the bone saw, a spatula and a beaker with a lid," she ordered and Brentwood looked at her for a moment in horror. What did it mean that BRENTWOOD was the moral one of them? Or was it old programming?
"Do you want your perfect mate or not?"
Then Brentwood jumped up and obeyed. He had grown smarter over the years. He was certainly far superior to his brothers of the former Labyrinth Clan by now, even if his language didn't suggest it. But he was still a particularly obedient assistant. He gripped Thailog's leg while she sawed his skinny thigh with the large femur bone in two with rasping noises and scooped out the gray-yellow bone marrow and put it in the cooler with the nitrogen.
"Now we have to go," Enya said, letting Brentwood help her up.
"You're hurt," he realized for the first time, now that he was no longer immersed in grief or a thirst for activity. Now that a new vision for the future (his, Enya's, her clan) had been instilled in him, it was easy for him to leave the corpses of the past behind.
"It's nothing serious. Just ran into a car. Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Okay, then let's get out of here. But first... we'll leave the stupid hoomans and the Manhattan clan a parting gift," she said, and Brentwood's grin stretched so wide it almost took up his whole face.
.
"What do you mean this house isn't connected to the city gas lines?" Elisa asked the utility guy on her cell phone before she was thrown to the ground by the explosion that blew up parts the Brownstonehouse.
Elisa groaned, instantly feeling the mighty form of Goliath above her, checking her for injuries. But the barriers around the house had been generous enough. She had only fallen down from the shock, even though her ears were ringing. When she looked up, her entire clan was around her, inhuman features dancing in the firelight.
Broadway sighed. "Man, good thing the whole block was evacuated. If Brentwood-"
"We'll find out eventually," said Brooklyn, who, like the others, watched as the fire crews already present got to work. Elisa sat up and grabbed her cell phone. It was shattered and no longer working.
"I miss the times when I only ever had to justify myself for wrecked or lost service weapons," she growled before letting her winged husband help her up.
WOHOOO My deviant misfit pupils survive to continue spreading horror and terror! AND THEY BREED! Wuhahahahha, mad scientist laugh.
And they are so cute together, Enya is manipulative but so doting on Brent and he is so vulnerable yet willing to do anything to get what he desires. Like a close-up peek at the mutants from The Hills Have Eyes or-or mhmm that X-Files episode where Mulder and Scully confront this deviant incest family and they escape. Season 4; Episode 2 = Home
Perhaps some people are surprised that Brent is just squatting there while his "enemies" are roaming around his territory. Well, apart from the shock - of course! But even in the comics, Brentwood wasn't really the fiercest fighter. When Thailog kidnapped the male clones from the labyrinth and they crashed the Halloween party at the castle and the clan fought with the clones - Brentwood partly just watched with a perplexed look on his face and I thought - ohhh, someone's been thinking - and in different directions than normal. And when they kidnapped Maggie and Mary in the Dynamite comics and the clan comes to Thailog to get them back - I think Brentwood gets his gun shot out of his hand and that's the end of it for him. Brentwood is pretty smart in his own way. He's not tilting at windmills. There's no fight to the death, he'd rather not even get beaten up, sit it out on the sidelines and let the others do their thing. Honestly, the Manhattan clan gargoyles are pretty easy in comparison, plunging like fools into the biggest mess due to do-gooderism, morality and a protective instinct. Go to Brent's I don't give a shit school!
Si vis pacem, para bellum = If you want peace, prepare for war.
Thanks for reading, Q.T.