So, sorry for the wait. I meant to have this up over a week ago but I got super sick. So, Merry Christmas, here's a minor Christmas miracle!

Also, this chapter comes with warnings! Yay!

Warnings: implied and referenced child abuse, child neglect and abandonment, descriptions of injuries done to a child, and so on.

The café Emily directed her to was called Stardust Café & Bar. Its main door was hidden in an alleyway in one of the Labyrinth's above-ground sections. It was hard to get to, which seemed counter-intuitive.

But there were more outcasts in Manhattan than simply gargoyles. There were plenty of people made unwelcome in cafés that a hidden café open to anyone could make a ton of money just by allowing them through the doors.

The bigger problem with the café's location was actually just how hidden it was. Maybe actual Labyrinth inhabitants would have been able to find it but Dominique had been searching for near five minutes now and she couldn't find the door.

Geoffrey had dropped her off at the alley entrance and then he'd tried to come with her.

Dominique had sent him back to the car with a simple glance. Even human, she was a better fighter than the man, burly though he was. She did allow him to press a can of mace into her hand, if only for his own peace of mind.

Besides, a warrior refused no advantages. Now, that didn't mean she wasn't honorable. But she was a warrior, not a knight. She had a warrior's honour, not a knight's honour.

And warrior's honour was a thing, damnit, Macbeth!

Dominique's body turned to the side to growl at someone, blinking when she realized there was no one there.

She sighed.

It had been centuries since she and Macbeth had been . . . friends. Actual friends. The kind that growled and joked and fought.

He used to tease her about her 'warrior's honour', insisting there was no such thing.

Sometimes, she still found herself turning to argue that point with him.

Except he wasn't there anymore.

And yes, he'd been the one to betray her! Just like the captain of the guard at Castle Wyvern!

. . .

But she still missed him. And she missed the captain of the guard too. She missed Goliath and Brooklyn, Broadway and Lexington. Oh, Bronx. She remembered when the garbeast had been tiny, blue all over with massive, floppy paws.

She remembered tiny little Brooklyn, brightest red, struggling with his beak and horns even at an early age. Broadway was called 'glutton' for years, until a raider got between him and a human he was protecting. Soft though Broadway might be, he could be fearsome when the situation called for it.

Lexington. The smallest of the clan even back then and one of only a few webwings. Webwings always had it tough. They thrived in places with high cliffs or lots of water. Or both. Castle Wyvern wasn't tall enough to make life easy for Lex and the only other webwings were all his age or younger, meaning he had no teacher to polish his gliding, to make it easier for him.

This modern world seemed to suit him better. The buildings were massive, certainly tall enough to make life good for a webwing. But she'd heard stories of Lex experimenting with technology, something he never would have gotten the chance to do otherwise.

Good for him. Someone ought to benefit from this human world.

Dominique shook herself. She drew a deep breath and drew herself tall, shoulders back, chin high, eyes dark and flat. She pushed her memories down, buried them, chained them down.

She couldn't lose herself like this.

The past was dead. She'd kill it before she'd lose herself to it.

Macbeth, the clan, they were enemies now. They would always be enemies.

Angela . . .

Angela . . . was lost to her.

Forever.

But forever was all she had left. She had forever to do whatever she wanted.

And right now, she wanted a coffee.

So why couldn't she find that dratted café?!

She snarled, low and loud, wishing for fangs to bare.

And then she paused, head shooting up. She turned this way and that, ears pricked for a faint, faint sound.

There!

It was . . . small. Quiet. The faintest of whimpers.

But she could hear it. Barely, but still.

She slowly padded forward, keeping her ears primed.

And not a moment later, she found herself staring at the most horrendous sight since the Black Plague and the Holocaust.

A babe. A human babe, crawling age. Wisps of hair pressed against a tiny head, matted and oily, crusty with long-dry blood.

A diaper so full it was a miracle Dominique hadn't noticed the stench first.

A filthy kitchen rag clinging to the filth, covering the infant's legs but nothing else.

Flesh mottled with bruises and cuts, some fresh, some almost gone, and many in-between. A back covered in lashes and hand-shaped prints set deep within the skin of the child's arms.

Well, arm. One was . . . functional. But the other. Oh, it was horrible to look at. Swollen twice, near thrice the other's size, and sitting at an odd angle, limp, twisted.

Obviously broken.

Dominique fished her pocket knife from a hidden inside pocket, kneeled down, and cut the diaper free. The filthy flesh underneath was raw and red, painful and inflamed.

She shrugged off her jacket and lay it over the child, prompting a pained whine. "Don't you worry none, little one," she crooned gently. "You're safe with me."

She carefully lifted the child, mindful of the arm and the head especially, shifting the child until it was cradled against her chest.

The child's front provided new nightmare fuel. The flesh of the child's legs, stomach, and functional arm had been near shredded. Peering close, she could see glass in the wounds.

Looking back at the ground, she could see, now that she wasn't so focused on the child, a bloody path leading from a filthy trash can lid to end at her feet.

It wasn't a long path but this child . . . this infant had started atop a trash can lid, fallen down, and then crawled on broken glass over six feet.

Or at least, that's what the evidence at hand was telling her.

"You're a stubborn little one, aren't you?" she cooed, gently rocking back and forth. "Stubborn little future monster."

Even at the height of her vendetta against humanity, Demona had always avoided going after children. She'd raised her claws against a human child but once over the course of a thousand years and that was due to extenuating circumstances.

But just because she wouldn't harm a human child didn't mean she liked them. Or was blind to what they would become. She'd spared human children just to see them become killers a decade down the line.

Gargoyle killers, often enough.

She'd spared the children of Hunters, for them to become Hunters in turn. Of farmers who'd crushed her eggs, whose children would one day grow up to shatter her stone form. How many of the children had she spared only for them to meet their ends upon her claws as adults?

Too many.

But though this child would likely become just another monster of a human in time, she could never bring herself to kill it.

Maybe some part of her still hoped her mercy would pay off someday, that someday a child she'd spared who spare a gargoyle child in turn.

Of course, that never happened.

"Stubborn little beast," she crooned again. "What am I going to do with you?"

She stared down at the child and the child stared right back up at her. She felt a shrivelled part deep inside her soften and melt slightly.

Demona had never told anyone this but Angela was not her only egg, nor her only daughter. She'd had Delilah, of course, but there had been eight eggs between Angela and Delilah, not that Delilah had hatched from an egg.

Eight eggs. None made it to hatching, though one came close.

But she could still remember lying curled around her eggs, watching them, cradling them once they'd hardened sufficiently, imagining holding her child one day, years down the line.

Of course, she never got that chance.

Would it have been similar to this?

The baby cooed in her arms, snapping Dominique back to the present. She sighed and turned, striding purposefully back to the car. She could dro-

So-

Something was - touching her.

Touching her face.

Soft. Small. Gentle.

A teeny

tiny

hand.

It was so small.

She looked down.

There, cradled in her arms, wrapped in her jacket, hurt and abandoned and filthy, giving her a big, toothless grin, was a tiny little miracle, gently stroking her cheek a clumsy, bloody fist.

TLDR: Demona finds an abandoned baby in need of help and helps.

Next chapter's coming in January and so is the one after that.