"Where's the security guy?" Nico asked his father uneasily from the cargo bed where he and Marco were perched among the newly acquired weaponry.
"He and his friend had things to do tonight," Gianni told him quickly.
"Yeah, he wanted to check on the flamingos in the pond," Ragazzi added with a cruel chuckle.
"So they split. But he said we could use his jeep."
Nico and Marco shared an uneasy look as the men piled into the far less cramped jeep.
"Cameras caught them headed north on the beach trail," Gianni told Angelo, then yelling back to the boys, he tossed two packages over his shoulder.
"Here!" he yelled, "I got you two some souvenirs!"
Marco tore open a bag and found a heavy, knit cap with matching gloves. 'Lincoln Park Zoo' was embroidered across the headband.
"Now you weasels can stop complaining about the cold. It's just gonna get colder back there!"
"Thanks," Marco replied, adding the knit gloves to his burning fingers and the hat under the heavy hood of his coat. Nico opened the other package.
"Hey!" he cried in dismay and Marco cracked up with laughter as he pulled out a similar hat, designed to look like a panda bear with gloves that had a flap that folded over the fingers to look like paws."
"Are you kidding me?" he demanded and Gianni looked back at him and snorted.
"Sorry kid," I just grabbed the first two I saw.
"I'm not wearing this!" he screamed indignantly, tossing the bag into the bed.
"Fine," his father said, "You'll look like a real boss with the rims of your ears burned off and your hands missing a few fingers."
With an indignant scowl, Nico stuffed his hands in his pockets, while Marco howled with laughter at his expense.
The Jeep pulled out, and they raced to the staff exit gate. Angelo waved a badge on a long, black lanyard at a sensor and the gate opened, letting them out. Angelo accelerated so quickly that Marco and Nico had to grab hold of the roll bar to keep from flying out of the cargo bed. Then in the next moment, Angelo slammed on the brakes so hard that Marco almost landed in Andre's lap.
"What the hell!" Gianni cried, shielding his eyes to ensure that he was correctly seeing the outline of a small girl standing directly in the jeep's headlights.
"Hi, Uncle Gianni!" the girl greeted, "Remember me?"
"That's the kid!" Angelo hissed frantically, rising from his seat.
"I know, Boss, I know," Gianni answered in a calm voice, "Just be cool for a minute!"
He turned his attention to Bonnie.
"Hey, Angelface! Sure I remember you!" he crooned, "Ain't you cold out here?"
"Yeah! It's soooo cold!" Bonnie replied, hugging her bare shoulders with a dramatic shiver.
"Well, come get into the car and we'll get you inside!"
Bonnie gave him a shy smile, and didn't move.
With a soft groan, Gianni stepped out of the Jeep.
"Come on, Princess!" he coaxed her, "Uncle Gianni's got your back!"
Bonnie stepped back and shook her head.
"Come on, girl," Angelo added in a stern voice.
"I'll get her, Boss," Gianni assured him. He reached for Bonnie and she pulled away.
"No!" she said.
"It's alright, Angelface," he cooed, "We'll get you back to your family."
Slowly, but firmly, he seized her arm, which catalysted a deep growl like none the mobster had ever heard before, especially from a child. Gianni's eyes widened in surprise and he looked around quickly, wondering if the child's cries had summoned anyone to come running. Hastily, he scooped her up around the waist and rushed to climb back into the jeep, but to his horror, the child jolted and squirmed violently, her entire body twisting with the strength of an enormous python. Then, with another roar, a snarling gargoyle burst forth from the small girl's form and intensely strong talons pinched his shoulders in protest of being manhandled.
The man gasped and tripped over his own feet, landing on the concrete as the monstrous child pounced onto his chest, knocking the air out of him, and scampered off into the zoo.
"Get her!" Gianni called to the others as he struggled to his feet and Andre and Ragazzi raced after the hatchling, followed by Angelo. The two boys stood in the cargo bed of the Jeep, watching the scene with amazement.
"Stay there!" Gianni commanded as he stiffly followed his companions back through the gate. The two boys helplessly watched him depart, then looked at each other in confusion and a little fear. Marco was about to speak when the Jeep was jolted with a force that knocked them both off their feet.
"Augh!" Nico cried as he looked up to find himself face-to-face with a mischievous, blue face with a fang-filled grin.
"Hi guys!" the lithe gargoyle girl greeted them snidely. Then she swung from the Jeep's rollbar like a monkey, her sleek, black hair sweeping past them and hanging almost comically from her upside down face as she reached into the center console for the keycard that Angelo had used to open the gate.
"I'll have that, thank you!" she declared. Then, with a another graceful swoop and a leap, the wind caught her wings and lifted her over the gate, which clanged shut behind her.
"Did you get her?" Angelo asked as he and Gianni caught up with Andre and Ragazzi, who had the sense to grab the tranquilizer guns before racing after the Bonnie.
"Naw, Boss," Andre told him, "She went into those trees on the other side of the pond."
"Did you see that?" Gianni asked them in a frantic voice, "The kid was one of them the whole time! Maybe all three of them were!"
"I thought they turned into stone, not rugrats," Angelo observed skeptically.
"Do you think that's how he gets `em?" Gianni asked in a voice that was horrified, but still tinged with admiration, "Xanatos, I mean. Do you think all his gargoyles are just…kids he's turned into monsters?"
"Damn! What a freakshow!" Andre muttered with disdain.
"A lucrative freakshow!" Angelo declared, "Come on! Let's nab the little goblin!"
It took the Draconis a little while to make their way to the complete opposite side of the pond, particularly in the dark.
"She went in there, Boss," Andre told Angelo confidently, pointing to an area of the shore with an overgrowth of trees and brush, "I seen her land on that fallen tree."
Angelo sighed. Access to the wooded area required climbing a fence and traipsing through a channel of swampy lagoon. Gianni was eyeing the scene with a sense of dread.
"Hey, I don't know if it's a good-
"Shut up, Uncle Gianni!" Angelo barked, "I'm not gonna send you. You're the one that pissed the little demon off in the first place, remember?"
Gianni looked too relieved to be insulted.
"Andre! Ragazzi!" Angelo ordered, "You got the tranqs. Go get her outta there!"
Looking most perturbed at their lot in life, the two underlings reluctantly climbed over the railing and let themselves drop into the frigid water.
"Gah!" Andre exclaimed as the thick thick bed of mud sucked on his boots beneath the water. Ragazzi, being a much shorter man, made a hissing sound as he expressed his misery at the water reaching up to his crotch.
"I'mana kill that little monster!" he threatened through chattering teeth. Andre began to make his way across the channel with ice cold, slurpy strides. Suddenly, they were both startled by the wild call of a nearby loon.
"Oh, God, what was that?" Andre cried.
"Just a bird dumbass," Ragazzi remarked, taking solace in the fact that he still has one person lower in the gangster pecking order to bully, "You scared of a birdie?"
"How do we know this ain't where they keep the gators?" Andre asked, his voice quaking with both cold and panic.
"Cause they can't keep gators outside in the winter, fool!" Ragazzi snapped at him, "Now move your ass before my nuts freeze off!"
Slowly and painfully, they made their way to the wooded shore, though exposing their soaked lower halves to the biting wind didn't make for much of an improvement.
"Little girl?" Andre called gently, pointing his tranquilizer gun into the empty darkness, "Where're you at?"
They groped through the thick undergrowth until they came to a wide clearing and Ragazzi promptly stumbled over a log, landing face first on the ground and sending a dart blindly off into the darkness.
"Careful!" Andre warned him, "We don't have an endless supply of these things!" As Ragazzi rose to his feet, they heard a strange creaking sound. Slowly the two men looked around for the source of the sound, until they were threatened with a low growl. Ragazzi gasped, jumping to his feet and pointing the weapon again at two red eyes that were glowing at them from the thicket. In a panic, Ragazzi discharged the gun, completely forgetting that he hadn't reloaded another tranquilizer.
"Shoot it, fool!" Andre shouted as he was knocked to the ground and pinned there by a larger and more forceful creature who roared with a voice like an enraged tiger. Ragazzi whipped around to see more eyes ablaze in the darkness and the snarls of more gargoyles.
"How many are there?" he cried, not knowing which rustling bush he should aim at. He fired again, then shrieked as warm talons clenched his face and a rough, heavy force, like a tree branch, knocked his legs out from under him.
"Run for it!" Andre screamed, "There's too many of them!"
The two scrambled out of the clearing, soon finding themselves waist-deep in ice cold muck again. They trudged through it, now more concerned for their lives than the cold.
"What are you doing?" Angelo bellowed, "You were supposed to tranq `em!"
"We can't shoot `em if we can't see `em, boss!" Andre protested between gasps, "And there's too many of 'em in there!"
"How many did you see?" Gianni asked him anxiously.
"There had to be at least ten!" Ragazzi panted, "Maybe more!"
"We didn't see none of `em," Andre corrected as Ragazzi shoved him out of the way so he could climb over the fence first, "We just saw their eyes and heard all of `em howling at us in the dark!"
"Gentlemen, we are not losing out on this opportunity," Angelo declared in a warning voice.
"Well, here you go…boss," Ragazzi snapped, handing him the tranquilizer gun, "You have at it! I'm not going back in there unless it's with a flamethrower!" With that, Ragazzi stomped off and the other three men began to shout each other down as they engaged in another Sicillian discussion about what to do next.
The children watched them from across the lagoon as they collected the toy animals with the glowing eyes, which they had borrowed from the souvenir stand.
"Well, phase one was a success," Orion said proudly.
"Time for phase two!" Sister replied cheerfully as she gave Bonnie a squeeze, "Good job, Bonnie Boo!"
Ragazzi stormed toward the gate where the jeep had been left, still in the middle of the driveway. He looked with rage through the steel gate that had been closed by Lyra, grabbing it and shaking it violently. The two boys huddled and shivered in the back of the Jeep, looking quite frightened and miserable on their first mission as henchmen. Angelo's boy had become so cold that he had finally conceded and put on the panda hat and gloves, meant for a toddler. He looked like an absolute fool but his friend was so depressed himself, he had only found the energy to take a single photo with his phone to mock him.
"Get off your useless asses and get me a gun!" Ragazzi barked at them. Marco reached for one of the tranquilizer guns that the gangsters had left.
"A real gun you little shit!" Ragazzi screeched, "And a damn flashlight!"
Marco scrambled faster to fetch him the desired items and pass them through the steel bars. Ragazzi snatched them with a sneer and stormed back into the zoo.
Now on the other side of the pond, far away from the gangsters, the children had assembled on a deck overlooking the lagoon, that was covered with picnic benches.
"Come on!" Orion urged them, "Let's set up for phase two!"
"Wait!" Lyra replied, pulling on his arm, "What's that banging sound?"
Sister paused, her wide ears straining excitedly.
"I hear it too!" she pronounced, "Something's banging!"
They all crept to the edge of the deck, listening to a strange, muffled sound of dull, irregular thuds, followed by a strange, far off whining sound, like a bird in distress.
Curiously, Bonnie climbed over the rail.
"It's coming from down here!" she informed them, hanging her head to peak under the deck.
"Don't get your hair wet!" Sister beseeched her, "You'll freeze!"
"There's something down here!" she told them, "I need a stick!"
"Hold on a minute!" Orion scolded in exasperation.
Hanging on the edge of the deck was a white floatation ring and a long, retractable pole with a loop on the end, which Orion suspected was for retrieving things that shouldn't be in the water. He grabbed the pole and joined his sister under the deck, careful not to dip himself in the frigid water.
"Look!" Bonnie whispered to him, "There's something in there!"
Indeed there was, Orion realized. Floating in the murky, cold water under the deck was what appeared to be a large, heavy duty storage chest, similar to the ones Xanatos had in the courtyard to store seat cushions and table umbrellas. The chest seemed waiting down and lopsided, and there were continuous thuds coming from it that indicated that something alive was moving around inside.
"Get back, Bonnie," he ordered as he reached with the pole and caught ahold of one of the clasps holding the box shut. The box easily floated free and out into the open water.
"Is it some kind of animal?" Lyra asked uncertainly as they stared and the bobbing container, "Like a crocodile?" She had been taken to the zoo once in Central Park and seen an animal show where the trainer pulled lizards, crocodiles, and a huge yellow python from a large rubber box like this to show the children."
"Crocodiles have to be kept warm, not cold," Sister informed her.
"A penguin?" Bonnie squealed hopefully as she jumped from the rail to the top of the chest, expertly catching her balance as it wobbled in the water.
"Careful!" Orion cried, "You'll fall in!" But Bonnie didn't seem concerned by such trivial risk when it came to the business of possibly seeing a penguin. She quickly released all the clasps holding the lid shut and whatever was inside began to writhe so frantically that Orion held out the pole so Bonnie could jump for it.
Once she was safely returned behind the railing, her face peeking excitedly from behind the wooden flats, Orion turned his fascination back to the floating chest. The lid burst open, and a panicked form emerged, gasping and sputtering, for the container had been partially flooded. But the creature insider was sadly neither a penguin, nor any sort of water reptile. It was the ill-fated park security guard, who upon leading the Draconis to the store of elephant tranquilizer, had found the gangsters unwilling to pay his opportunistic asking price.
The unfortunate victim didn't have time to catch his breath though as his would-be coffin quickly filled with water and sank beneath him. The young man howled in icy pain and his head went under for a moment before coming back to the surface in shock. Sister quickly tossed the floatation ring and Orion leapt to the rail to help pull the struggling man out of the water, but as soon as he looked up and saw the faces of the four gargoyle children, he screamed in even greater panic.
This rise in adrenaline seemed to be to his advantage, however, as he quickly fled to the shore, drug himself up through the rocks and reeds, and flipped himself awkwardly over the wooden fence, ment to keep visitors out of the lagoon. The children watched as he fled in terror.
"He looks like a zombie!" Bonnie said, clearly disappointed by what they had caught.
"What was he doing in that box?" Lyra asked in astonishment.
"That was the man that brought the Draconis here," Sister explained to them, "He was going to help them steal the tranquilizers."
Orion snarled in outrage.
"They just stuffed him in there and left him to die?!" he exclaimed in a fury.
"Don't feel too sorry for him," Sister commented, "He was trying to help them put US in a box, remember?"
Orion's eyes flashed in rage.
"Come on!" he said with a new sense of determination, "Those guys are finished!"