Souls of the Night Vol 3 Chapter 39: 39 - Chasing the pain 1, a gargoyles fanfic

Souls of the Night – Vol 3

Accompanying piece of music to the second part of the chapter (Enya's POV):

YEAH (feat. ClockClock) - Glockenbach, Joel Corry, Tenchi, ClockClock) on Spotify or Youtube

Youtube: watch?v=7LMtA4RgO-4

Lyrics at the end of the chapter

It was one of those rare post-patrol nights when almost the whole clan gathered to watch TV together. Angela had won the straw drawing but Heather and Tachi had managed to convince her to switch from Freaky Friday to The Last Unicorn and I hadn't seen The Last Unicorn in ages so I was quite content with the decision. It only struck me during the movie that it was quite thought-provoking because it was about the search for the identity of one's self, perception, enchantment, and love. That was ... well ... weren't those the themes of many movies ... I shouldn't read so much into it. Although I did notice Tachi looking at me several times during certain parts of the movie. She wasn't staring but it was really close. Still, I told myself it was my imagination and so I just smiled at her repeatedly like the clueless idiot I really was.

Apart from that, it was very nice. Lexington was in my arms on one of the couches, Heather was on top of him, Brooklyn and Katana were cuddling on the other end of the couch while Goliath, Elisa, Broadway and Angela had claimed the other one. Nashville and Tachi were lounging on the floor with the beasts and it was adorable. I was only human, but I felt more at peace and unencumbered than I had in a long time with my clan around me chatting about the movie, the popcorn snacking, and Heather's relentless questions of why who was doing what in the movie. I even tolerated it without a cry of pain when she pressed her claws into my arm because (unlike Tachi) she had no problem with the scary harpy and not with the funny drunk skeleton, but she found the red bull terribly creepy.

Lexington lifted his head from my shoulder and looked at me with concern- his gaze a plea for the twentieth time since my run-in with the lunatic instructors to let him look at the sore areas. But though I longed for more physicality with him, I smiled and shook my head, pretending to keep watching the movie when in truth I was basking in the pain of my many bruises and contusions that kept me in the now, because once again, whenever I concentrated hard, I saw in the reflection of the massive flat screen my clan as they were ... and me as I shouldn't be.

And then ... Just as the unicorns were freed from the water they had been herded into, all the clan cell phones rang in unison. Heather didn't have one of her own yet, but not even she grumbled as the TV was turned off and the lights switched on, the silence shattered by hurried briefings. Then everyone rushed to the nearest elevator and down to the locker room. It wasn't until I was about to go to my locker that I realized I wouldn't be coming with them. Before anyone else but me could realize that this had hit me, I turned to Lex and helped him put on his uniform and Kevlar vest, just as Elisa helped Goliath. Less than three minutes later, everyone rushed out, Heather pouting in my arms because she wasn't allowed to go.

"The sun will be up in two hours," I said anxiously.

Lex stood up straight and kissed me, giving me an encouraging smile like the husband who went off to war and left his wifey behind. "Don't worry about that. Four police units are already on the scene, we are just helping. We'll be back before sunrise."

"Okay," I replied, then Lex gracefully - and no doubt showing off to humor me - jumped off the platform in a backflip.

I took a deep breath as the "adult" and winged part of the clan glided off to face mortal danger. With nothing I could do but feel left behind. I hadn't liked putting myself in danger on the patrols and seeing those I had grown to love in danger. But I had never thought that staying on the ground would feel worse.

"Nathaniel?" Elisa said from beside me.

"Mhmm?"

She put away the cell phone on which she had just typed a message. It was probably work-related or even related to this one case that everyone was on their way to. We weren't in the nineties anymore. Elisa was no longer a young woman who let herself be carried to dangerous missions at breakneck speed in the arms of her overpowering paramour. She had matured, sobered up, knew that she could be more valuable as a string-puller or as a ground force clearing away bureaucratic or legal barriers. She might be about to leave to do just that. Still, she sacrificed a minute to take care of this clan member and looked at me lovingly as I turned to her.

"You know... even if we stay on the ground and don't fight alongside them, we're still their clansmen, their family. We're not less just because we're human."

I nodded but hugged Heather closer.

"I'm worried. I know ... even as a gargoyle, I wasn't much help. But at least I was with them. Does it always feel like this? Letting them go feels like ... sending them off into the great void. Anything could happen." My eyes widened. With Heather within earshot, I couldn't make it any clearer that it felt like any mission could be their last. But not only had Elisa been a clan member for decades, she was also the child of a cop - she nodded knowingly.

"You have to learn to live with that feeling. Bad things happen, but Gargoyles are tough and warriors by heart. That's their instinct, isn't it, Whirlwind?" Elisa pinched Heather's cheek teasingly, who giggled and playfully swatted at her grandma with her tail before Elisa pinched my cheek teasingly as well. "They find meaning by serving a greater cause than themselves or than us. But our role is important too. We are their anchors. We ground them and give substance to the people they help night after night. They serve them ... and are reminded every time that they could be us."

Those were good words and deserved my nod of approval. But it didn't make the feeling go away.

"You are strong Elisa. You're the department head in the 23rd precint. But I am..."

"You're just as important. Never think otherwise." She gave the kid and me each a kiss on the cheek, then she too ran off in a hurry.

I grumbled, aware again that it didn't sound human, and Heather replied, perhaps instinctively, with a hatchling hum meant to soothe me before she found her tongue.

"Uncle Nate?"

"Yes, my darling?"

'When I'm sad, ice cream helps me."

"I'm not sad," I spoke up, but she knew that wasn't true.

"I'm just worried." And that wasn't a lie, even though there were many other feelings fighting for supremacy inside me.

"Ice cream helps there too," she enlightened me. I sighed and shifted her from one hip to the other, letting the pain roll over me briefly before walking to the elevators.

"Okay. Convinced. Show me where that ice cream is."

Play: YEAH (feat. ClockClock)

Sometimes it just felt right to crawl. It wasn't like it used to be. Shortly after her "birth" she had found it so easy to move like Brentwood - on all fours, even hopping, though of course not with the naturalness and eerie grace that his bones and joints allowed him. But she had been born adult and was getting older. Walking was more comfortable for her hips and simply anatomically healthier. But sometimes ... or right now ... crawling was her only option. As soon as the door closed behind her, Enya collapsed and could only pull herself up the stairs.

She grinned through tears at the fact that the neighborhood kids had seen her when she got out of the cab - torn pantyhose, torn buttons on her blouse and blood and other fluids pouring out from under her stained skirt. Her snarling grin and the fact that she had waved had not reassured the children or their mother, who had probably just wanted to take them to school. One of the children had even started crying! The master would have been proud of her. She wanted to take photos of the people's horrified faces to study their expressions.

The cab driver hadn't been amused either when he saw the stains she had left on his rear seats. But he had leather seats - he shouldn't make such a fuss. It had been very nice of him to give her a lift and offer her a ride to the hospital on the assumption that she had been assaulted (nothing could be further from the truth). She still had her wallet with cash and credit card. She also always tipped generously. But okay- Enya understood that someone didn't want their backseats stained with blood and dirt and slick and cum. She always found people's indignation funny and petty - but cognitively she understood it.

She hadn't let go like this for a long time. Was it because Etan was swimming in his nutrient solution and was already more to Brentwood than she had ever been? What was the word? Jea-lous-y? Probably not, because Ethan belonged not only to Brent but also to her. She just needed to let off some steam. What could she do - she was who she was. The all-consuming fear of being defective, which she had had after her creation, had long since given way to the certainty that she was totally fine. Even better than all the other people who had been conceived through the sex act, which was far too difficult to control. Hundreds of millions of spermatozoa shot at an ovum - and not the most superior sperm won, but the one with the most luck.

No. Thailog, Brentwood and her. They had been engineered. Perfect. Her almost 60 percent insensitivity to pain was not a flaw - it had been written into her DNA. Superior. The others had the problem when they thought the pain was bothering her. Only when it hurt did she know that she was there and real and right. It was just sad that she didn't get pain from Thailog or Brentwood. And/or sex. It didn't have to involve sex but Enya was a little lazy all things considered and killing two birds with one stone and soothing the itch in more ways than one just appealed to her.

Thailog found her too disgusting, as he never grew tired of pointing out. And Brentwood had simply been reprogrammed so that he didn't want to use his claws and teeth, let alone his prick. She knew there were ways to overcome the programming ... but you needed the right levers to override the mental mechanisms that bound Brentwood. And she hadn't found them yet. That's why Brentwood's little mate project was also her project of hope. A gargoyle unbound by elitist arrogance, disgust, morality or programming. A lump of clay that they would all be able to shape. Someone she could teach to hurt her the way she needed. It had to hurt for her to feel it. She had to feel it or she would SENSE the void in her body deep down to her bones. Of course, that wasn't a flaw either - this emptiness came from outside, threatening to creep into her head. But as a superior being, she knew how to counteract it.

Enya stretched to unlock as well the door to the attic with her chip implanted under her skin and crawled to Brentwood's and Thailog's statues, petrified there in their belligerent poses. Both were small enough that she barely had to straighten to be face to face with them. Because of the positioning of the large mullioned windows, only the evening sun would kiss them. But Enya's kisses - on Thailog's cheeks and around Brentwood's open mouth - she considered quite nice too.

Kisses didn't hurt - she never let any of the people who did her the favor of hurting and fucking her kiss her. Those were her only rules - no kissing and no vaginal sex without a condom. The thought of incubating something she hadn't developed from scratch was repugnant to her. And kissing - Brentwood had explained to her - was between people who liked each other. Brentwood would be allowed to kiss her, Enya thought. Not that he had ever done that once after that one dramatic night many years ago. He just didn't like humans that way. That was okay. But Enya thought that even if kisses didn't hurt, she would enjoy being kissed by Brentwood. Of course they exchanged kisses when they were very happy or hyper. Big, wet, slobbery "baby kisses", but not ... real kisses. Like between ... what was that word? Like between lovers? Of course Enya loved Brent and Brent loved Enya ... but not like this...

When one of his statues lower fangs slashed her lip, she shuddered and a gush of liquid poured out of her, which she wasn't quite sure if it was blood and slick or urine because her muscle control wasn't the best right now as worn out as she was. Although she had already emptied her bladder during her nightly activity so it couldn't be much of the latter anyway. Enya crawled over to the mattress that had been there in the corner for years, pushed Brentwood's books aside, pulled the old blanket that smelled of Brent into her arms and curled up into a ball. She was in pain, she was in her den with her clan, which would soon be growing and thus opening up to new prospects. Life was good and Enya dozed off into unconsciousness, looking at the statues she considered her family.

She jerked out of a dead sleep as Thailog and Brent shed their skins. She loved watching them flex and stretch. She was simply a voyer and her voyeurism was not limited to humans. As soon as the two gargoyles were at full receptivity, Thailog immediately let out a choking sound.

"Bwähh - what-?" he began and turned around with glowing eyes. Instantly, his expression became disgusted and hateful at the same time.

"Seriously? Again?" he growled where Enya blinked affectionately and sleepily at the Gargoyle child with the wit, acumen and viciousness of a super-criminal without moving from the mattress. All her muscles felt like rubber and it was too much effort to stir.

"Hi," she croaked.

Thailog raised his hands in a gesture that supported his words. "I'm certainly not going to deal with that. Scrape off her the rancid juices of half of New York while I go downstairs and find something to burn the stench out of my nose," he ordered and Brent nodded as their master stalked down the stairs to his quarters. Brentwood looked at her for what would have been agonizing seconds for other people, and Enya's smile widened. Even the smile hurt - a sign that she had found a good group of freelancing sadists this time. It was strangely hard to find such people in New York. Perverts were far too often loners, Enya found. It was impractical for her needs. And when she did find some, it was far too often the case that many of them dropped out because they were scared off by Enya's willingness to do just about anything and gave her the feeling that there was something wrong with her, so multiple meetings with the same people were rare.

"Did you sleep well?" Enya asked, managing to lift a hand to rub dried blood from one eye. Brentwood nodded tersely, his features petrified as if the sun had not yet set. Enya was fascinated by the fact that sometimes she couldn't tell what Brent was thinking.

"Go check Etan downstairs," he said, and turned and was gone. Enya snorted. The clone was in a stable phase and checking every 24 hours if the error alarm Enya had added didn't go off was enough. It was still tiny but all body parts and organs were where they should be. Soon it would be all about growth and muscle training and programming basic functions so he wouldn't have the trouble Enya had had. She understood and was grateful that Brent was doing the check. Why did her chest hurt so much right now - not because of a kick or because someone had physically hurt her, but at the thought that Brent would only take care of her after the clone. Even after more than ten years, some emotions were alien to her and just too much, and Enya closed her eyes and simply waited her turn.

It was completely dark until Brentwood came back and he turned on the light that woke her up. Then he forced her to her feet with almost monosyllabic small-step instructions, helping her down the stairs to the bathroom (Thailog had his own, of course). There he cut her ruined clothes off with his claws and pushed her into the shower. She gave him the shower head, but then her most important task was to hold on to the faucet so that she didn't collapse. This was not their first dance of this kind. When she was on the road earning money, she kept a low profile. Most of the time she found an attendant or guard who could hurt her and fuck her, as she had done in Russia, but that only fulfilled her minimal cravings.

But when Brentwood was around, she had someone who took on this kind of task without a murmur. Then she could go all in because she knew he was here and would take care of her. The feeling this nursing caused her never hurt, but it was warm and fluttery and arousing in a non-sexual way she didn't quite understand.

She shivered until the water from the old pipes got warm, then it was too hot, but she said nothing. It hurt when the hard jet of water hit her skin, which was covered in bruises and wounds from whips and belts. Brentwood had pulled a loofah sponge over his hand, which was far too soft but rough enough to remove all the encrustations. Brentwood took over her cleaning as he did other housekeeping tasks like cleaning the oven or scrubbing the toilets in the house. No one liked doing it but it was necessary and his expression remained unaffected by what he saw and smelled. Just because he didn't hurt her himself didn't mean that he valued or wanted to protect her body in any way. He didn't care if others hurt her. He had realized that she needed it.

Then he frowned, his eyes fixed on her pussy. He reached between her legs and Enya shuddered as his claws scraped over her sore labia, but not to satisfy her because he simply didn't do that. But to pull out the broken condom that had remained inside her without her even realizing it. Enya grumbled an unhappy gargoyle hum. That, as mentioned, she didn't like at all. She would take some emergency contraceptive pills later, just to be on the safe side.

Brentwood grunted, dissatisfied and annoyed. "Better watch out next time, Enya," he said. "Me no take care of human baby. And cutting you open and making it away would suck."

"I'm not in that part of my cycle. But yeah, I better watch out."

"Humans are disgusting," Brentwood commented.

"Yes. They are," Enya replied before leaning forward so Brent could rinse her out.

Is it unhealthy to write characters that cause me nightmares? ... Meh, better not to think about it too much. But at least there's no Pfefferkuchenhaus here yet. Maybe in the next chapter (also a bit disturbing).

Thanks for reading Q.T.

YEAH ( ) - Glockenbach, Joel Corry, Tenchi, ClockClock

Lyrics:

Glad you made it
Baby, the dress code for tonight is naked
I'm catching feelings, let me throw 'em back now
Just promise you ain't gonna back down, back out

Under pressure
Under pressure, you're the one
Now or never
Like tomorrow never comes

Do you feel what I feel?
Say yeah
Get that bag, blow a check
Don't care
Oh my God, it's going down
Hold my cup, I'm blacking out
Do you feel what I feel?
Say yeah

Pull you closer
You see the devil sitting on my shoulder
I need an angel when the night gets colder
Oh baby, I just wanna hold ya, hold ya

Under pressure
Under pressure, you're the one
Now or never
Like tomorrow never comes

Do you feel what I feel?
Say yeah
Get that bag, blow a check
Don't care
Oh my God, it's going down
Hold my cup, I'm blacking out
Do you feel what I feel?
Say yeah

I don't wanna jinx what we got
Ready for a bombshell to drop
I would trade my heart
I would trade my heart
I would trade my heart for your touch

Do you feel what I feel?
Say yeah
Get that bag, blow a check
Don't care
Oh my God, it's going down
Hold my cup, I'm blacking out
Do you feel what I feel?
Say yeah