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Souls of the Night – Vol 3
57.
Trigger warning: Violent interracial sexual intercourse.
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To accompany the last part of the first half:
Spotify or Youtube: On The Dark Side (Corey Tailor)
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Enya and Brentwood were several blocks away before they climbed out of the sewer. After Brentwood had hauled the two bags of computer hard drives, the nitrogen container with the samples, other essentials and the contents of the house safe out of the manhole, he helped Enya out and she clung to him more than she wanted to, trembling in pain. And if even her hurt something and didn't excite her - that wasn't a good sign. Brentwood pulled up the hem of her tank top while Enya struggled in the dark of the alley with the lock that secured the rolling gate to her to their rented garage. She blamed it on the original Doctor's fondness for old German cars, that she had wanted a car (THAT car) back then even though she basically never drove (and didn't have a license, by the way). But (and this was probably also a bit German about her), although the car had basically just been standing around for years, she always kept it roadworthy, the battery charged and the engine in good shape. She hissed as the only remaining member of her clan palpated the red and blue bruise on her ribs.
Enya looked down at him, in the light of a distant streetlamp the now brown encrusted blood on his face like an aged war paint. She smiled, leaned down to the nearly two heads shorter male, even when standing upright, and licked his cheek in a big wet swipe of her tongue.
"Don't worry about it. It won't kill me. I'll give you your mate. I promise," she assured him, and Brentwood looked like he wanted to say something but visibly bit his lips to keep from doing so. Then he reached past her, pulled up the roll-up door, pushed Enya into the rented garage and pulled the roller shutter back down. Instantly, the sirens and city lights were shut out, along with the orange glow above the next row of houses in the direction of their former home. It was dark and stuffy in here and Enya, human eyes as good as blind, was magnetically drawn to the skylight of the room through which the full moonlight shone dominantly. Brentwood laid the bags at her feet with the potential to resurrect her clan.
More than enough stem cells for dozens of experiments. More than enough stem cells for a new clan. But she only had one womb and would have to limit herself. She would, however, try to avoid the malevolence of the old Thailog. She didn't want to produce the Antichrist. She would also have to work on his size if she didn't want to explode towards the end - the DNA of the other involuntary proband would have to serve. Or Brentwood's for a start. Enya shuddered at the thought. After all, concessions had to be made at the first attempt. And everyone would have to say goodbye to petrification - after all, that was a pre-programmed reason for miscarriage that could probably cost her life. But everything could be worked on. In the days that would probably pass before she ovulated, she could at least solve the problem with the petrification - and everything else could be filtered out of the being or added while she was carrying it.
Enya pulled the dusty tarpaulin off the old BMW 507, coughed under all the dust that was stirred up, then stroked the almost untarnished shiny black paintwork and chrome with delight. Those streamlines alone - an orgasm in automobile form. Enya finally allowed herself to settle down on the driver's seat of the roadster, which smelled of dust and slightly rotten leather.
After plugging the nitrous canister into the only outlet in the garage, Brentwood crawled into the passenger seat.
"I wonder if they'll deliver a pizza over here? I'm totally hungry," Enya mused aloud, to which Brentwood didn't respond (judging by the blood around his mouth, he had already eaten).
"How long are samples usable?" he asked, looking up at her like she was God.
"Mhmmm," Enya said thoughtfully but reveled in the truth under that gaze.
She had managed a lot of projects in the last few years - but she just didn't get that innocent look from people. Could one be blamed for developing fantasies of omnipotence? Despite the pain that didn't excite her, Enya shuddered under his gaze and felt that itch again. Which had to be scratched. Enya knew how Brentwood's subsequent imprinting and programming was scripted. It wasn't quite as simple as the first "Obey Thailog" programming of the clones at the time, which they could practically grow out of. Brentwood's mental shackles needed a very special key. And now ... after all these years, maybe she had that key.
Brentwood tugged at her urgently. "Enya? Samples? How long okay?"
"Enough samples of the stem cells- they'll last maybe two weeks in our small, less than ideal canister. Maybe three. But I still need a donor to culture the DNA. That would be you."
Brentwood tilted his head, the wheels in his brain turning almost audibly. But he didn't seem to have fully grasped what Enya wanted him to do. Still, the way he stared at her. Always, constantly, unwaveringly - now that she had offered him another glimmer of hope.
She smiled at him as she grabbed his pants and pulled him towards her by the waistband so that he crawled over the gear stick and straddled her hips. He followed but frowned over his dominant brow arch.
"I can't do this. We're making ourselves defective," he said without missing a single word, which was extremely rare. Enya almost giggled because they killed, tortured and consumed humans, but Gargoyles fucking humans or vice versa was "unnatural and defective". Oh, the doctor had done quite a number on him. She unzipped his pants and pulled his unerect member through the front opening of his boxers. Enya knew she would get him hard when she spat into her hand and began stroking him, causing him to clench his teeth. But this wasn't going to be a hand- or a blowjob. This was different now. Not only would this lead to the creation of new clones (or hybrids of multiple Gargoyles) that would germinate in her otherwise eternally useless womb. It would finally scratch Enya's itch that she'd been carrying around for so long AND break Brentwood's mental shackles. Three birds with one stone that couldn't be killed without the other. Brent didn't need to know the details (that her fertile phase was days away, for example). He just had to play along.
"Don't you get it, Brent? There's no doctor anymore. Not the original one. Not for many years. And neither is Thailog anymore. WE make the rules now. You won't break me or soil me. No more than I've always been. Instead, you're actually doing something important. Something very good. We're partners in this project."
Brentwood lowered his head, staring at her moving hand on his cock with a terribly bitter expression.
"Thought Thailog and I were partners. But ... never partners in his mind. He told me before he-."
"Shh, shh is okay. I'm not like him. You and I are no longer beholden to anyone, no longer have to be accountable and no longer have to bend for anyone. Why are you still playing by the rules the doctor planted in your head? Remember exactly what he said, Brentwood. Do you remember? I do. He spoke of value and purpose. But there would be a future purpose now. Unless... you want to bury Etan and Thailog altogether. Forever. The Manhattan Clan won't let you near the blue firebug to take any more samples. We have to use the ones we have - before they go moldy. Just like the ones from Thailog. If they're not already spoiled."
Brentwood growled and squinted. It was hard to tell if that was the programming just starting to falter or because he was finally getting hard. Enya counted either as a success.
"And the subject wouldn't have anything from you in the end - don't worry. I would filter out your DNA. The input from you would be...-" Enya waved her free hand, searching for words, but a lot of it was more show than actual cluelessness. After all, she was a bit Anton Sevarius. Anton Sevarius had been a utter ham. "Your contribution would be like providing a transport ship to get the cargo safely... into port - my God, I'm not good at comparisons. Any volunteers?" she joked and began to nuzzle Brentwood's throat and collar as she continued to pump him.
Enya wasn't sure if he could get it up for humans. She wasn't even sure he could get it up for women. She had given him head before and he had aroused her countless times without either of them ever making a fuss about it. For a moment it seemed that Enya was going to lose this game. That Brentwood had been so messed up (or moralized in that regard) by the doctor that he couldn't even get into action. She sighed and reached out of the open driver's door and rummaged in one of the bags until she found one of the prepared syringes and pulled the cap off the needle.
"Okay, I get it. Let's try something else before I hit the damn menopause," she said in frustration, but Brentwood grumpily took the utensils from her, ripped the long needle from the syringe, broke it in two and dropped it - a little dramatically himself - into the footwell.
Enya grinned grimly. "Not a fan of needles - especially not in these parts of the body - understandable. I appreciate your dedication but-"
He pressed his mouth to her lips so suddenly and so hard that Enya fell out of the driver's door onto the floor, completely surprised by his sudden initiative.
It hurt when the back of her head hit the concrete, the pain from her possibly bruised hip and cracked ribs knocking the air out of her and sending searing white rays of heat through her body. She must have been unconscious for a few seconds, because when she regained her focus, she was lying on the dirty ground next to the car with both her top and pants ripped off. Where had she actually left her underwear? Brentwood tugged the remains of her pants from her ankles with as much ruthless determination as if the fabric offended him personally. Enya giggled at this and Brent looked up with his lower lip pushed forward defiantly.
"Quite different from Kermit, I see. Well, that's a relief that you're not exclusively a turd burglar when the good cause calls for it," Enya groaned as she tried to sit up.
"Pfft," he dismissed the comment, suddenly squatting on top of her, lowering his head and biting her nipple, causing her to cry out. At the same time, his arms found their way around her, his claws scratching her back, perhaps in an instinctive effort to find wings to cling to. But he found nothing, and his glowing red eyes triggered in Enya (along with the thrill of sexual pain) a surge of rare common human instinct. To flee from the beast that wanted to hurt her, that wanted to defile and tear her open in more ways than one. Enya sucked in a sharp breath, and not just because Brentwood was squashing her injured hip. But because she realized in that second that the doctor must have implanted a protective mechanism in her brain as well. SHE had been an experiment long before she had been anything or anyone else. Reflexively, though her ribs rebelled, Enya rolled over, trying to crawl away, for the first time not enjoying Brentwood's closeness because her programming made her. But this time he solved the problem himself without realizing it.
Suddenly he was on top of her and wasted no time grinding down against her ass. She felt his stiff member brush over her rump, down her crack and against her labia. And she was so wet and he was so hot and she wanted that, she had wanted exactly THAT even before she had understood what sex was and that made the instinct to flee subside in favor of completely different urges, which this time were her own again. Enya felt her hormones come to life as if someone had flipped a switch and for the first time in her life, despite the ability or curse to feel less pain than other people, she was one hundred percent aware of every touch, every ragged movement of Brentwood's hips, every insistent scratch of his claws as he squeezed her breasts and that was exactly the kind of pain she needed. It was the original Doctor's fault that he had made her like this, Enya thought, grinning at his illusions at the time.
There was a hot line pressing against her, stretched across her, the heat muted and distorted into something shudderingly clammy by the musty, chilled environment in the near-dark garage. Damp cold from breeding fluid, clammy from blood. Enya struggled to keep up with the ride she had agreed to, even initiated. Brentwood's tail swung out, obviously unintentionally hitting the panel of the car radio in the roadster through the driver's door, which was still open, because suddenly music blared through the garage, not loud but loud enough to rock Enya's heart.
The dark side's coming now, nothing is real
She'll never know just how I feel
From out of the shadows, she walks like a dream
Make me feel crazy, make me feel so mean
Ain't nothin' gonna save you from a love that's blind
Slip through the dark side, cross that line
...
Something wild stirs inside her that she didn't know was there. Something that tempted her for the first time to give back what she received. She turned again, face to face with Brentwood, wrapping her long arms around his neck like a vise. Not squeezing but holding him in place, slamming her hands into his flesh where his collarbone lay. He screamed, pulled away, manhandles her brutally again on her stomach before thrusting into her, harder and clumsier but she was so fucking horny she actually approved. Enya tasted blood that she didn't know if it was his or hers because she had been biting open her lips and cheeks for a long time.
Her eyes fluttered shut as Brentwood's teeth sank into her neck as if he were a tomcat trying to keep his mate still. The thought made Enya moan even though the pain barely reached her because other parts of her body hurt more.
There were no soft whispers of love like Enya had seen in movies, which parts of her brain were never sure if they reflected life or distorted it into sweetness or bitterness. And there was none of the snarled moans and grunts of degrading or uplifting dirty talk that Enya experienced on one of her rollicking forays through the nocturnal city. Now there was just the music - soundtrack of their lives, Brentwood and hers. It was animalistic, crude and raw as she felt raw. It hurt where it needed to and pushed her accidental injuries of the first half of the night far away. She looked up at the ceiling where a fat plump moon shone through the greasy skylight. She was hurt, torn open and getting torn open even more, not only by the clumsy creature on top of her, made fierce by grief, shock but also primitive drive, but on top of that because every push from him shoved her busted hip more into the rough dirty ground, scraped her skin, rubbed dirt and dust into wounds that no doctor or nurse would look at. She felt everything and it was pure agony. It - this - all of it ... was perfect.
Perfect if completely unnecessary.
She could have explained to Brent that even with the use of ovulation-boosting drugs, it would still be two weeks before her body was ready to conceive. She could have told him that she would have preferred to inoculate one or more of her eggs in advance with spliced Etan-Thailog DNA. But she wasn't just a scientist - she was also a woman with special needs. Moreover, she was unbound both by a mate and by moral principles or other things that humans regarded as civilizing values. Anyone who grew up in this environment and among such beings was bound to become like this.
And finally - for Crying out loud, she was loving the drama!
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It was strange to allow a semblance of normality - necessary normality - to return when traumatic things had happened just a few hours before. Like having breakfast now. Or eating dinner? Whatever - it was sandwiches made from everything the gargoyles' fridges had to offer. Everyone was still a little shaken up - Lex had his tail around my ankle but that was totally okay because mine was around his and if one of us got up we'd probably end up on the floor in a pile of arms, legs, tails and wings. Heather got to sit on Goliath's lap and wolfed down a Nutella sandwich - something that was actually holiday food for the already normally hyper kid - in the most unappetizing and sticky way possible. But aging someone 170 years and then watching that person blow their head off - aside from the other gruesome corpses, qualified Heather for every goody.
I was a little taken aback by how easily and effortlessly I felt at home in my new old gargoyle body. The entities inside me were silent, there were no more echoes and I would probably live at the castle again until I figured out what to do next. I smiled at Lex over my tuna sandwich and he grinned broadly back at me, tempting me to lean over and kiss his cheek again. I knew he was glad that I was a gargoyle again. I wasn't the least bit upset about it. Somehow I was glad myself. I would think about it further in another night. And tomorrow night I would have to talk about the matter regarding Jussuf and my human family. I had survived this night and would therefore have to face the family dinner I had promised my brother in a few nights' time. I also sensed that there were issues that Goliath and Brooklyn wanted to address - probably how I had extinguished the flames, appropriated wind, and revived Lexington. At that point, everyone would be left unsatisfied, because I simply had no helpful answer. But for now, we ate largely in silence yet with that exhausted but quite contented serenity that comes with having experienced, endured and survived terrible things with all your loved ones.
Until Nash lifted his head and everyone followed his example to see Alexander and Flora come through the archway. Both looked a little pale and still carried the strange smell of burnt rubber, the way the stench of sickness clung to normal people who had just recovered. But it was hardly noticeable and they were both smiling.
" I wonder if there will be two sandwiches to spare?" Alex asked with his charming smile reserved for family and Broadway jumped up, proving once again his maxim that no one need go hungry in his kitchen as he picked up things from the kitchen counter that he probably knew Alexander liked to eat.
Alexander and Flora sat down on empty seats, were cuddled, patted on their backs or simply touched on the shoulders as was the gestural custom in the clan when members who hadn't been seen for a while came back. I smiled but bit my lip. Where was Ares now? Was he hiding, knowing he would be questioned and probably punished by the clan? Tachi had briefly outlined that she had fought Ares because he had tried to shoot me with an arrow. He had pierced a human with his arrow in front of me. Tachi and I exchanged a long look. God, Tachi had fought with Ares in an effort to protect me or me and Lexington from his arrows! Thanks to me - whatever I or the beings inside me had done - she was healed but Ares had beaten up a kid! One of MY kids. A low rumble came involuntarily from my throat and I reached for the glass in front of me and downed half a liter of water almost in one go. When I put it down and looked up again, everyone watched me but Alexander and Flora's looks were ... so profound. And I, a brainless idiot, didn't know where to start, where to end and what tone to use.
Alexander smiled leniently, almost compassionately.
"Is it okay for you to be a gargoyle again for now?" he asked, tempting me to start the conversation myself, but disturbing me a little with the `again for now`.
But I nodded eagerly, smiling back in a pained way. If Alex wanted to delay the subject of his renegade mate for a few more moments, I was just the harmony-seeking gargoyle he needed.
"Yes, it's okay. I- well, I think... I pretty much messed up the spell you and Puck cast. I gave you- so if I got that right. I gave you back my fire along with the gargoyle form. And now I've asked for it back and the gargoyle came along. But ... I don't regret it."
Alex and Flora both looked at each other smiling, but with this hint of sorrow that I didn't know if it was exactly because of me. Before they looked at me again.
"We don't regret you being a gargoyle again either. Somehow you're more right this way than as a human," Flora said and I felt myself blush and lowered my eyes. She was kind of right.
"We'll have to discuss how we all want to handle the aftermath soon, but we'll leave that for another night when everyone is receptive to new information," Alex said before grinning broadly and thanking Broadway, who gave him a - was that a Nutella sandwich, too?! Classy. Flora eyed the brown paste between two baguette halves and the large glass of milk with it, but giggled as her mate bit into his food with gusto. And this giggle calmed my almost hundred questions and uncertainties about Alexander's massively unspecific statement. Flora got an organic multigrain bread with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil and again everyone ate with that strange, now refreshed feeling of urgency hanging in the air. Or was it just me? Obviously not, because by the time I'd figuratively had my pants full that I had to bring it up, Tachi had finished her roast beef and rocket sandwich, picked something green out from between her teeth with her claw and said as if it was completely casual.
"In case you're wondering where your mate is - he's in the dungeon in one of the cells."
Everyone stopped moving or chewing and stared at Tachi. You could have heard a pin drop, but Brooklyn's downright hilarious, extremely loud swallowing as he apparently choked down a beakful of chicken-mayo-avocado sandwich was also good.
"When were you going to tell us about this?" he panted, thumping his chest with tears in his eyes, whereupon Nash pushed his glass of Coke over to him and he drained it.
While his daughter rolled her eyes and said drily.
"Now. After my plate is empty. Getting beat up and saving lives always makes me hungry and bitchy and no one here wants me bitchy."
"Point for her," Broadway muttered.
"How did you get him in the dungeon? We thought he'd escaped," Angela said, glancing tentatively at Alex and Flora, who both looked like whipped children, like they'd done something wrong.
"He did. He escaped to this place. He never wanted to go anywhere else. According to his cell phone data, he never went anywhere else. And I didn't get him in there."
"He's in there voluntarily, isn't he?" Flora asked quietly, looking agonizedly at her fey prince, who was cleaning his Nutella face and taking a deep breath.
"I'm so sorry he caused you problems. That he hurt you," he admitted, looking at Tachi and holding out his hand.
"May I?" he asked.
She cracked a wry smile. "You know I wear my battle wounds with pride. And I gave him back three times as much as he gave me."
"Please, Sis. For me," Alex asked and - wow- was that magic or was the billionaire's son just extremely good at performing the Puppy eye look. With an unusually expressive grin, Tachi displayed an extreme amount of fang.
"There's nothing to heal. Uncle Nate took care of that. He even knitted my blouse back together and I was clean again, our anti-stain devil. But I have to see if I can get the smell of smoke out. I'm sure he doesn't know how he did it himself, but I was in his orbit when he healed Lex."
"You bet I don't know how I did it," I muttered. My shoulder still hurt quite a bit but I wasn't overly eager to let Alexander heal me magically. I'd had enough magic for one night and was glad that Alexander probably didn't think to offer it to me either. My injuries were nothing that a pebble nap wouldn't heal. After Tachi's words Alex and Flora exchanged an alarmingly horrified look. Which Lex probably interpreted correctly and touched Alexander on the shoulder.
"I'm fine. I didn't notice any of this. It was ... Like passing out and waking up again."
Alexander put his own hand on Lexington's.
"Then it was worth it. I wouldn't have wanted to lose you, Co-Dad," he whispered, and my heart nearly melted at the sight. Even though I didn't know what it was that should be worth "it". Maybe my once again lost human form.
"So Ares tried to shoot Nathaniel while he was trying to save Lexington, attacked our kids, escaped, only to lock himself in the dungeon?" asked Elisa, who had earlier looked very ready to get some Zzzz's but was now chipper and in cop mode again.
"Did you only locate Ares' cell phone signal or did you also talk to him?" Alexander asked Tachi.
She waved her hand. "Fleetingly spoken."
"What if he had attacked you again?" Katana asked, more inquiringly than reproachfully - something my mother would never have been capable of.
"As soon as Nate was gargoyle again, he stopped fighting. Like he had - I don't know - lost? And even in the dungeon, he was more ... despondent."
She turned her staring gaze on Alexander, but before her very own magic could work on him, Goliath drilled on:
"What did Ares say? You spoke to him."
"Only that he was sorry."
Alexander rubbed both hands over his face in an extremely vulnerable gesture. And his sorrowful face really pained me.
"If only Flora and I had been able to monitor him better. To allay his fears. But I never thought it would come to such a confrontation."
His one mate present nodded. "He dishonored himself and put the clan in danger, where he should have found a new family. He thought it would be dangerous for us, for the clan, if Nathaniel demanded his fire back and wanted to eliminate the danger first," Flora explained, wiping her cheek with the palm of her hand before the tear (or dewdrop) could continue to flow.
"Nathaniel is NOT a danger," Lex snapped, apologizing immediately after.
"Sorry, I mean. What made Ares think Nate would be dangerous? He saved me. Chad, Tachi. He put out the fires. He's got those powers under control." While the other gargoyles agreed and I could have felt comfortable basking in their gratitude and assurances of my control, I remained silent. And reflected. I knew by now that not all of my actions involved my full awareness or control when it came to using those powers. While I had extinguished the inferno, I had felt so untethered from everything. Nathaniel Sharif just didn't feel so unquestioningly free and at ease even though there were corpses and destruction all around him. It hadn't been like a hunting frenzy. It was ... even if that sounded aloof - the feelings of a being for whom mortal losses were not only bearable but sometimes even necessary or deserved. NO death was deserved! I was not even an advocate of the death penalty! Taking a life didn't make any crime that person had previously committed any less bad. Even though I had occasionally wished that Jussuf would drop dead or suffer terribly, his death at my hands (or those of my new inhuman family) would only be a confirmation of our own inability to do otherwise. Death was easy, as I had seen today, everything else was hard. So if I wasn't quite me at certain moments - if perhaps I was thinking more like the fire demon ... maybe Ares was right to want me out of action.
What did Ares know that we didn't? What did Alex and Flora know that they just didn't want to or couldn't share with us? What if it would have been better if Ares had killed me? He had acted as he thought was right and proper, knowing at the same time that everyone else - even his mates, whom he had wanted to protect - would see him as the bad guy.
"So what do we do with him?" asked Angela. Brooklyn looked at Flora and Alex, but as they just stared at him with those tired, broken expressions, he let out a long sigh.
"He hasn't committed a crime that humans would lock him up for. A crime among Gargoyles, in which no humans are involved. Thus he is under the sole jurisdiction of the clan. The dungeon is a good place for him for the time being. When everything has calmed down, we will question him, hold a trial and then judge him accordingly."
"What could the maximum penalties be?" I asked cautiously.
"In my birth clan, we tied the wings of the gargoyle together according to the severity of his transgression. After that, honor was restored and the gargoyle was allowed to return. But ... attempted murder, betrayal of the clan and clan leader and accepting the deaths of innocent people ... Ares would be crippled and unable to fly for the rest of his life," said Katana. I swallowed and then looked at Goliath.
"Confinement like back then with Demona or Fang. Or banishment from the clan and the protectorate. Informing all other clans of his actions. The worst thing for a normal gargoyle is to be separated from his community and mates without the possibility of joining another clan," he explained. "Ares would become a pariah. And gargoyles who live too long without a clan become..."
"Bonkers," Nash muttered bitterly.
"But he acted out of fear. Even if he was wrong. What he did, he did to protect the community," I said scandalized. The others stared at me, baffled by my loud tone and my willingness to defend the one I had almost become a victim of. And by omission, he probably would have let Lex, Chad, Tachi burn to death.
Alex sounded bitter and broken. "Does motivation matter if you got hurt, almost died, and Lexington too? He would have accepted that. If you hadn't ... reclaimed your powers ... or they hadn't come back to you, you would have both died miserably. He was willing to let part of my family die," Alex said tensely, lowering his head so no one would see his tears.
"Nathaniel, it's a tribute to you that you see it that way, but Ares is in very similar waters to what Demona did back then. And it almost cost the entire old Wyvern clan their lives. An unfaithful gargoyle is a danger," Lex said, stroking my arm in an effort to muffle my emotional outburst. Instead, I stood up slowly and looked around.
"Perhaps Demona would never have fallen so deeply if she had dared to show herself to you immediately after her terrible mistake and confessed. But her guilt weighed too heavily in her opinion. So she hid, so she didn't realize how you were enchanted. So she remained an outcast for almost a thousand years and then turned so evil that she wanted to destroy all humans," I argued passionately and took a deep breath when I noticed white smoke rising from my mouth. Apparently the fire creature inside me had perked up a little and I could feel it grumbling appreciatively at my vigilance in the deepest recesses of my mind.
"Uncle Nate is right. Maybe Grandma would be here now if ... if she had dared to come out then," Heather said quietly, not daring to look at anyone.
"So we just let him out of the cell, pat him on the back and say - all forgiven and forgotten?" Lexington asked provocatively and then snorted dismissively. He resented Ares for his actions against us more than I did. Maybe - no, definitely - I was just a wimp. Maybe I just didn't want to contribute to someone suffering forever because of one bad judgement. Alexander had saved my life, made me a gargoyle, given me new perspectives, indirectly cemented my love for the clan and for Lex. Didn't he deserve it that I tried to give him his mate back, even if I had to be pushy and too soft to do it? Some people didn't need a whip when they'd done bad things - they needed leniency.
"Mhmmm, you forgave Coldstone back then too, even though he did a pretty shitty job of siding with Demona. How much different is his behavior compared to Ares'?" Tachi pondered.
I looked at Alexander who, like Flora, was looking at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. The others simply accepted my "hot temper" again without being affected.
"Do you love him, Alex? And Flora? Were your feelings extinguished by a single deed?"
"What?" He gave a somewhat bewildered look and his red-rimmed eyes also showed his anguish.
"I want to know if you still love him. After all this. Do you both still love him?"
Alex looked at Flora, then his glassy eyes flew over his clan. "I'll love him until the end of my days. And Flora loves him too."
She nodded tiredly.
"But ... he took advantage of the clan's trust. He has taken advantage of our trust, even used my magical tools to do so, even though we tried to convince him not to take action. And Ares is as protective as he is proud. He knows what he has done and will want to atone for it in the dungeon. But that doesn't change what he did. He knew how serious this betrayal would weigh. We are clan and an attack on one of us is an attack on the whole clan."
"And Ares isn't your clan?" I asked, tears welling up in my own eyes during Alexander's speech, which sounded like a piece of him was dying with every sentence.
"If I have to choose," he whispered, burying his face in Flora's hair. Lex stroked his back gently, his face so helpless and desperate as quiet sobs came from the man who was the most powerful being I would probably ever meet. The one who had saved my life. But right now, he was not the sovereign billionaire scion, not a near omnipotent fey. He was a man facing a betrayal from the person he had wanted to share his life with.
"You won't have to choose," I said harshly, getting up and walking to the kitchen counter where I took a large piece of Broadway's Ban Bread (made from my own family recipe) out of the breadbox and sliced it crosswise. Then I came back to the table with it and cut a gargoyle fit piece of cold roast that I slid between the slices of bread. Then I poured water into a large glass and sweetened it with a slosh of lemonade.
"What are you doing?" Broadway asked, puzzled.
"You're bringing him food?" Lexington inquired, ghosts of fear for me and anger at Ares flitting back and forth on his face.
"I'll make us dinner. Him and me. I could use another sandwich and no gargoyle likes to eat alone. He and I will talk it out, he'll see that I'm largely harmless even with powers, and if I - as his victim - can forgive him, then eventually you can too. I'm sure Tachi suffered the most at his hands tonight and I trust she'll find a suitable method of torment for him." I winked at my red niece and she smirked rather smugly and proud.
"Nathaniel, you don't have to do this," Brooklyn said. "He tried to kill you."
"Very unsuccessfully," I said, shrugging my shoulders. "Ares did what he did out of love. A little dysfunctional, a little in need of communication - definitely. I can relate to that. I don't understand much, but I understand love - a bit more every night." I pressed a kiss to Lexington's forehead and stood up with the tray containing two large sandwiches and the glasses for Ares and me. In the doorway, I turned again and smiled at my family of choice.
"And I know I can't hate him for an act of love, and if you want to hold a trial for him, that's your choice. I don't want to drive a wedge in the clan. But I think ... my approach here is fairer and allows understanding and healing. I forgive him and will show him that."
Tachi: "Oh yes, the potential murderer has locked himself in the dungeon."
Not much of a showdown on that front either.
And the song - so you can tell I'm a sucker for Brentwood and Enya when they get the coolest songs.
Thanks for reading Q.T.