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Puppet Strings - Chapter 1
By Kudara
Disclaimer: All
the characters appearing in Gargoyles are copyright Buena Vista
Television/The Walt Disney Company. No infringement of these
copyrights is intended, and is not authorized by the copyright
holder. All original characters are the property of the author.
Warning: Mild violence.
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: Always welcome, feedback is what encourages me to keep
writing. Please let me know what you like and what you dislike
about the story.
Revision History: 9/5/04; 02/01/08
Summary: Kendra Canmore, a woman with an
unusual past, finds out that the owner of Nightstone Unlimited,
Dominique Destine, is also the gargoyle Demona. Though her
family refused to join the hunt, she is curious about this
revelation.
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She crouched motionless against the frozen
ground, patiently waiting for her prey to step close enough for
the quick kill. The night was still, not even the faintest hint
of wind stirred the dead leaves still clinging to their
branches. Her breath and that of her prey steamed white in the
chill air with every breath. The light from the full moon had
turned the glade into a sharply contrasting scene of silver
light and blackness. The deer standing in the shadows stood
almost immobile except for the nervous twitching of its tail and
the flaring of its nostrils as it tried to determine what
creature had invaded its normally safe existence.
Usually she considered deer elegant,
graceful creatures, and she enjoyed watching them play in the
mornings as they grazed on the lawn of her estate in upper New
York. On the night of the full moon, however the animal nature
inside her held sway over her human side and they were her
prey. She had picked out one of the weaker, older deer that
would probably not last the entire winter, as this moon’s
quarry. Stalking it, she had easily cut it off from the rest of
the herd. Now it stood, terrified and indecisive, uncertain of
where to run, then suddenly tried to leap past her. She sprang
from her crouch and slapped its head with her paw, crushing the
animal’s skull with the blow. Ripping open the hind flank of
the animal, she settled down to consume her meal, keeping a
careful watch on her surroundings as she fed.
She enjoyed these nights of the full moon.
She knew that she perhaps shouldn’t enjoy them as much as she
did, but all her human cares and worries were set aside on this
night and only her prey and the exhilaration of the hunt
concerned her. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t change any time she
desired, but the nights of the full moon were different, on
these nights she felt closest to the cat spirit that lived
inside her. On these nights, it did not pain her to change her
form; instead, it was a pure, sensual pleasure to slide into the
jaguar shape.
She finished eating what she wanted off the
deer carcass, and sauntered through the forest toward the river
for a swim. She loved swimming, it one of the better things
about being a were-jaguar instead of another type of cat, and it
had the useful side effect of cleaning her coat of any blood
from her prey. She moved through the water powerfully enjoying
the feel of the cold water and occasionally ducking her head
playfully under the water.
Finally tiring of her play, she decided to
head towards the shore. Once there she shook herself dry and
headed back to her estate house. The housekeeper and grounds
keeper that cared for the house were gone for the evening and
she sauntered through the open patio doors on the west side of
the house and into her room. She barely spared a glance at the
room’s carefully designed elegance. Antique cherry furnishings
and a monstrously huge four-poster bed sat against antique ivory
colored walls. The room itself was spacious, even with the
presence of the bed, with plenty of space for her to move about
in her cat form.
She glanced at herself in the hanging
mirror, admiring for a moment her blocky strong jawed head and
muzzle, muscular deep chest, stocky body, deep black coat and
thick tail. She was larger and heavier than a natural jaguar by
over one hundred pounds and was taller as well at thirty-six
inches instead of twenty-seven inches tall.
She concentrated on changing back to her
human form, shrinking in mass as she did so and focusing on not
crying out from the pain this caused her. Once she had
recovered from the process, she stood up and looked in the
mirror to see that everything was where it should be. She was
slightly taller than average for a woman at five foot ten
inches, with light olive skin, black hair and sapphire blue
eyes. She was very muscular, both from her jaguar nature and
from the hours of martial arts and athletics she enjoyed.
Reassured that everything about her body
was in its proper place, she studied her face with a quick
intent gaze. Her features attracted many admiring looks from
both men and women. Her eyes were her most admired feature,
their gemlike clarity of color garnering her many complements.
Her strength and determination were revealed in the strong lines
of her face, a square angular jaw line and chin, and straight
nose. Full lips and a graceful long neck completed the picture,
adding a feminine and sensual touch to her face. She was Kendra
Canmore, daughter of Robert Canmore and Maria De Santos.
She had not always been a were-jaguar, when
she was fifteen she and her parents had gone exploring Mayan
ruins in Brazil after visiting her mother’s parents. Separated
from her parents in the ruins, the young girl had come across a
hurt jaguar trapped in one of the rooms. The animal was unable
to stand on its own, and watched her intently and without any
apparent fear or hostility as she examined it. She looked
around the room the jaguar had fallen into for a way to free the
animal, and decided that if she could move some of the fallen
masonry sections she could free the beautiful animal.
She climbed carefully down into the room,
staying away from the hurt animal, and began to work on clearing
the fallen rubble. She had not been paying attention to the
trapped cat as she worked, and was surprised when the animal
rubbed up against her side, apparently having freed itself. She
turned slowly and looked unblinkingly into the animal’s eyes,
telling herself to betray no fear, though she was not really
afraid of the animal for some unknown reason. It was one of the
largest black jaguars she had seen, she found the animal’s
strength and presence impressive and its green eyes compelling,
as she slipped into unconsciousness.
When she came to her clothing was bloody,
but she could find no wounds on herself. Puzzled, she looked
around for the handsome animal but could not find any trace of
it. She had climbed back out of the room and found her family
afterwards, telling them the blood was from a hurt deer she had
found and freed. Her parents would panic and start yelling at
her if she told them the animal had actually been a jaguar.
That was something the teenager was not eager to experience, so
she kept that particular detail to herself.
One year after the incident with the
trapped jaguar, Kendra’s father was killed and her mother
severely injured in a car accident. Maria Canmore left the
hospital after several weeks, but the accident left Kendra’s
mother with permanent spinal injuries and she would never walk
again.
A few months after the accident Kendra
began dreaming of being a jaguar, of her body changing,
stretching, fitting into the shape of the cat she had believed
she was rescuing. On the night of the full moon, exactly year
later from when the dreams began, she transformed into a jaguar
for real. The first time the transformation happened was very
frightening and confusing for the young woman despite the dreams
that had prepared her for the process. The following full moon
was as exhilarating as frightening, and by the third full moon
the transformation had barely frightened her at all. Even with
her fears about what was happening to her and the questions she
had about why and how she transformed, Kendra kept silent. She
told no one, not even her mother, and due to her mother’s
injuries, it had not been difficult for her to hide the fact
that she was changing into a jaguar every full moon.
Five years ago, her mother had followed her
husband into death, leaving their only daughter significant
shares in several businesses, a considerable fortune and an
estate in upper New York as well as a large loft condo in
Manhattan.
All in all, she enjoyed her life more now
than before meeting the jaguar. She was much stronger and
quicker after the transformations began than before, and had
learned, after a few startled looks from her class mates and
teachers in high school, to be careful to not bring undue
attention to herself by displaying her higher than normal
strength and quickness. Her body now healed at an increased
rate. Fortunately, nothing had happened to her to bring it to
anyone’s attention exactly how fast she healed. She didn’t know
what she would do if she were ever injured badly enough to
require hospitalization. The doctors would notice immediately
that something was very different about her, no normal human
healed as fast as she did.
She had been dealing with the changes for
ten years, and was twenty-seven now; over the years, she had
learned how to control the changes so that she changed only when
she chose to do so. Now it didn’t matter if it were day or
night, or whether or not the moon was full. It was fortunate
for her that she had learned how to do so for seven years ago,
while she was visiting the loft in Manhattan, four men had
attacked her in Central Park. Finding herself unable to fight
them all off in human form, she had changed into her jaguar form
and killed them.
Because of that night Kendra started
martial arts classes, determined to be able to protect herself
no matter what form she was in. Now, seven years later, she was
an accomplished martial artist, having taken too unarmed
fighting like a duck to water. Her martial arts teacher had
commented more than once about how easily she seemed to learn
the skills.
Her visual double-check that she did every
time she changed shape complete, Kendra dressed and pulled out a
suitcase to pack for her trip to Manhattan. While there, she
planned to visit her cousin Jason who had been paralyzed in a
mysterious accident over a year ago. He was very reticent about
the cause of his condition during their phone call, and she
suspected it had something to do with his family’s obsession
with gargoyles.
Kendra’s father had always said that his
brother Charles’ choice to continue the Canmore obsession with
hunting gargoyles would result in nothing but grief and it had
not surprised her father that one had taken exception to being
hunted one night and had tossed his brother off the side of a
very tall building. Compound the tragedy was the fact that
Charles had taken his children to watch and they witnessed their
father’s death.
Her uncle’s children, Jason, Jon, and Robyn
Canmore, had all vowed to hunt down and kill the gargoyle that
had killed their father. They asked Robert for his help, but
her father had refused. He was sorry about what had happened to
his brother, but he would not kill a creature for defending
itself. Kendra’s cousin’s had been shocked and angered by the
refusal and all conversation between the two families had
ceased, at least until last week when Jason had called and asked
her to come and visit him at his new apartment in the city.
Kendra left for Manhattan the next morning,
the moon was just beginning to wane and she knew she would not
feel the overwhelming urge to change for another three weeks.
Besides, she was curious about all the gargoyle stories she had
been hearing on the news from Manhattan. Kendra doubted the
gargoyles were the demons the Canmore’s made them out to be, but
other than that, she felt she really knew very little about
them.
Oh, she knew the history behind, and the
reason’s the Canmore’s claimed for their brutal vendetta against
the gargoyles. She had read a few of the journals written by
Canmore hunters, journals where they kept their tally of the
number gargoyles they had found and killed. She had been
horrified at how the hunters boastingly wrote about how many
hatchlings and eggs they had destroyed. As a young teenager,
she had wondered if the hunters had committed murder and
infanticide, but in the end, the young Kendra decided it didn’t
really matter to her if the gargoyles were intelligent or not.
The fact that the hunters had killed helpless babies was enough
to convince her that the hunters were demons not the gargoyles
they boasted about killing, and she was all the more proud of
her father for rejecting his father and brother’s beliefs.
The family histories included surprisingly
little about what the gargoyles were other than calling them
demons. They included lots of information about how to find and
kill them, but little to nothing about basic things like what
they ate, what their social structure was, or even how long they
lived. She knew that they could speak and turned to stone
during the day but that was about the extent of her actual
knowledge of gargoyles. She had no idea exactly how intelligent
the gargoyles were, the fact that they could speak indicated a
high level of intelligence. Perhaps she would get the chance to
see one in the city and look into his or her eyes and find the
answers to some of her questions.
She enjoyed the ride down to Manhattan in
her black Jaguar convertible; really, she couldn’t possibly have
bought any other type of automobile, and she always smirked just
a little bit in amusement every time she slid behind the wheel.
She stopped by the loft condo and dropped off her suitcase
before continuing to Jason’s apartment.
Her cousin answered her knock in a
wheelchair and invited her inside exclaiming, “Kendra, you did
decide to come!”
To Kendra’s surprise, there was another
person in Jason’s apartment. Staring out the barred patio door
was a woman with long dark hair. Kendra had a brief moment to
admire the woman’s trim feminine figure before the woman turned
around to stare at her curiously. Kendra smiled thinking that
the woman was a nice to look at from the front as the rear.
Jason definitely had good taste.
Jason introduced them, “Elisa Maza, meet my
first cousin Kendra Canmore. Kendra, Elisa is a detective with
the 23rd Precinct in Manhattan.”
Kendra nodded politely to the detective in
response to the woman’s greeting, “Nice to meet you.” She
raised a curious eyebrow at her cousin, wondering how he knew a
police detective.
“I met her while pretending to be a newly
transferred detective. She was assigned as my partner. She’s
been nice enough to come by and visit every week,” Jason
answered the silent question.
Kendra glanced over at the detective, she
wanted to ask if her cousin had gotten hurt hunting gargoyles,
but she didn’t want to bring up the subject with the detective
there. “How are you doing?” she asked instead. As fine as the
woman looked, right now Kendra really wished she wasn’t present.
Jason stared at her for a second, “Fine,”
he answered slowly following her gaze. “She knows,” he sighed,
“she knows about the gargoyles and about our family’s history
with them.”
“Your families,” Kendra corrected
immediately, and then regretted it when her cousin flinched.
Jason grimaced, “Right, my families,” he
agreed and she thought she detected an overtone of regret in his
voice.
She sighed, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have
brought it up. So how did you get hurt, a gargoyle?”
“No, actually I saved ones life by stepping
between Jon and it. Jon shot me by accident,” he answered.
Kendra straightened up surprised, “Ok, now
I’m really curious. I never thought I’d hear you say that you
saved a gargoyle in my wildest imagings.”
Kendra listened intently to Jason’s story
interrupting him to clarify some points. As he continued, she
became more and more puzzled over the Demona that he spoke about
so frequently, and what connection a gargoyle could possibly
have with Nightstone Unlimited, which she knew was owned by
Dominique Destine. Finally, feeling that she was missing a
vital piece of information, she asked, “How did a gargoyle
manage to direct such a research effort? What connection does
this Demona have with Nightstone?”
Jason paused, hesitant. She waited as
still and patiently as she had waited last night for her prey to
approach knowing that he would eventually decide answer her
questions. Finally he began speaking again, nervously revealing
that this particular gargoyle used sorcery to turn herself into
Dominique Destine during the day. Kendra was fairly certain
that only a slight widening of her eyes possibly betrayed her
surprise at this information, she knew about the woman from
business dealings with Nightstone in the past.
“Let’s say for now that I believe that
sorcery can change and woman into a gargoyle and vice versa,”
Kendra smirked, letting Jason assume that she didn’t really
believe that such a thing was possible, when, of course, given
her own reality, she did believe him. “It at least explains how
she was able to get the resources to develop such a virus.
So…go on,” she prompted him to continue.
Detective Maza had sat down in a chair
earlier and was listening intently to Jason’s tale; at this
comment, she glanced sharply in Kendra’s direction and regarded
her suspiciously. Kendra returned the stare with a smirk, and
then followed it with a slow, appreciative sweep of the
detective’s body. A flush of color in the woman’s cheeks and a
narrow eyed glare rewarded her, she smoothly turned her
attention back to her cousin as if her appreciative examination
had never happened knowing that was likely to provoke the
detective even more.
Jason, who had evidently not noticed a
thing, was busy describing how he had saved the leader of the
Manhattan gargoyle clan, Goliath, from being shot by Jason, and
how Goliath had ruined Demona’s enchantment that would have
spared the gargoyles from a general plague to wipe out all
intelligent life. Demona had tossed the canister containing the
plague virus in the air and had gotten away as Goliath had
scrambled to catch it before it broke on the floor.
Kendra noticed how tense Elisa became every
time Jason spoke of the other gargoyles besides Demona. It was
not something Jason noticed, and Kendra doubted most humans
would notice but her predator senses had alerted on the small
signs of nervousness. She filed it away for further
consideration along with Elisa’s silence during the story and
merely nodded. She asked Jason, “So you and Robyn are done with
this nonsense?”
Elisa looked surprised at her statement,
but Jason simply nodded, “I am at least; Robyn is in jail
serving a ten year sentence for various charges her first chance
at parole comes up in two years. I would be in jail as well but
they aren’t going to press charges given my injury.”
Kendra asked, “And Jon? What’s he up to?”
Jason grimaced, “Jon blames the gargoyles
for this instead of himself and has started a group called the
Quarrymen to destroy the gargoyles.”
Kendra rolled her eyes in annoyance; she
had begun to hope that Jason would say they had all given up
their continuation of the Canmore’s vendetta against the
gargoyles. From what her father had told her, and from her own
brief chance to read Duncan’s own journal, she knew that Duncan
the First’s had been a ruthless and unprincipled king. Duncan
had only begun hunting gargoyles because a clan of them were
allied with Macbeth and he wanted them killed before beginning
his attack. Duncan had died to the gargoyle clan’s female
leader while attacking Macbeth’s castle, and later when Canmore
became king after defeating Macbeth, he had begun hunting that
particular gargoyle along with any other seeking revenge for his
father’s death.
Her thoughts reminded her of something she
had just heard Jason say. She frowned confused, “You really
believe this Demona is the same gargoyle that first Duncan, and
then Canmore, fought? But that would make her around a thousand
years old.” She stared incredulous at Jason wondering how he
was going to explain that.
Jason winced, “Goliath said that she was
probably the same person, she’s immortal.”
Kendra stared at him silently, absorbing
the implications, and then nodded. Jason looked tired and she
noticed that Elisa was looking at her watch. Kendra commented,
“Well I need to go get something to eat, and Elisa looks like
she needs to be going somewhere. I will come back and see you
tomorrow Jason.”
With that, she gave him a light hug, gave
the detective a purposefully friendly non-sexual smile to
confuse the woman even more, and exited Jason’s apartment
building with a light step. Walking over to her Jaguar, she
noticed the dark-haired detective watching her and saw the
envious look at her car. Smiling, she chuckled and pulled out
of the parking lot, she had passed by a steak house on her way
here. A huge porterhouse sounded real good right now, her
stomach had been growling at her for the past hour.
Red wine and steak what a wonderful
combination, Kendra sighed in contentment finally full.
Pondering everything Jason had told her, the entire tale made
less and less sense to Kendra.
Dominique Destine, sole owner of Nightstone
Unlimited, was well known to Kendra, she had business dealings
with the woman’s company in the past. The woman was a shrewd
businesswoman. She was not the type to make a mistake like
making permanent record of your plan to exterminate the human
race, and then leave it in plain sight in the company safe.
Moreover, it wasn’t as if the plan Jason had described was
complicated, go here at this time, do this spell, then release
the virus, hardly any need for the disk at all. Who took a
newly hired personal assistant down to show off their plan to
exterminate the human race, or at least part of that plan, on
the first week at work anyway? Kendra thought with a smirk.
Then there was the fact that Robyn and Jon
had been lucky that the gargoyle hadn’t actually killed them the
night before. Kendra certainly would have never walked off
without making sure that ‘dead’ enemies were definitely dead.
Something like snapping their necks or crushing their skulls
would have been her preferred method of ensuring dead was dead.
She would have thought that Demona at least would have checked
to make sure of the same, that she hadn’t spoke of a sloppiness
that just didn’t fit with what she knew of Dominique Destine.
Then there was the simple fact that
Demona’s virus, in the manner that the gargoyle planned to
release it, would never have succeeded in infecting many people
at all. One container of a biological agent released within a
building where the people infected were all aware of the
infection had no hope of achieving the stated goal of a
world-wide plague, no hope at all. As soon as the city knew a
biological agent had been released, and there was no doubt in
her mind that Detective Maza would have immediately informed
them, Hazmat units would have sealed the immediate area around
the building. The CDC would have quarantined everyone within
the building, and the so-called plague would have ended rather
quickly, though perhaps unfortunately, for those quarantined.
It certainly would have never even been given the chance to
spread to the general city population.
Nothing that Jason had told her fit with
the Dominique Destine that she knew, that woman was a
perfectionist. A year ago, Dominique had tried to take over one
of the businesses Kendra was a shareholder of, she and the other
shareholders had been forced to fight off a carefully
orchestrated take-over. Even while Kendra had been combating
Dominique’s well laid plans to drop the company’s stock
valuation in preparation for a buy out offer, she had admired
the elegance of those plans. Only equal parts skill and luck
allowed Kendra and the other stockholders to keep the companies
share valuation from dropping. Dominique Destine had never even
made the buy out offer once she saw her plans fail.
Maybe she wasn’t as intelligent in gargoyle
form as she was in human form? Kendra thought back to what she
had heard from her business partners of negotiations that Ms.
Destine had conducted late at night over the phone. Mulling
over the gossip she had heard Kendra quickly discarded the idea
that Demona wasn’t as intelligent as Dominique, though it
certainly would explain why the woman absolutely refused to hold
any nighttime meetings.
Which left some burning questions, why
would the gargoyle have made that incriminating disk in the
first place, why let Robyn, the new hire, see any part of her
plans, and why the quite frankly, stupid, method of releasing
the virus? Kendra needed to find out more information about
Demona to formulate a sound idea. Now if only she could figure
out how to go about finding the information she wanted.
Kendra had been interested in meeting the
canny Dominique Destine ever since that take over attempt. The
woman’s voice had been intriguing during various business
conference calls she had participated in as a board member.
Though Kendra had never meet the woman in person, she had
managed to obtain several pictures of Dominique and had been
pleased to find that she was as beautiful as Kendra had thought
she would be. Maybe this puzzle solving would lead to meeting
the intriguing Ms. Destine. Kendra’s curiosity was roused now
and there was nothing like a good puzzle to keep the attention
of a cat.
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