Prime Evil

Her fingers tapped quickly on the keyboard of the laptop, Lady damning herself for not having taken advantage of the Keyboarding classes once offered at her private high school, what felt now like a lifetime ago. A cigarette was pinched between her right-hand fingers, a nasty, occasional habit that Dante would have openly hated yet was all but more ammo for her arsenal and she stuffed the butt into her mouth angrily, inhaling deeply at the thought.

Dante.

It had been months since her phone had rung with his voice approaching on the other side. And since gaudy red fashion was of the utmost importance these days, she supposed that his wardrobe did not come complete with a cell phone holster.

It was a welcome sign though, the world of Lady and Dante having been a mass hysteria after the fall of Mallet Island which sent the once proud Devil Hunter crumpling home with a whole new BREED of baggage.

Lady knew Dante sometimes better than he’d known himself, knowing why her phone didn’t ring with his number on the end. She’d known, as he came back a ghost in the body of a God, that loss had eventually wrecked the unwreckable. She’d known, as those silvery eyes that had once danced, had turned foggy as though becoming blind with grief.

Old wounds once healed had been busted open and in his victory over the demon Nelo Angelo, Dante had been wracked with the undeniable truth that he’d not only destroyed his own brother once, but now twice.

Scar tissue didn’t heal as well the second time and, as he’d stared at her during battles, lost in his thoughts he’d never reveal, she’d known he was seeing her now as she truly was; temporary. Even though her age revealed her to look nothing more than early twenties, she couldn’t deny the fact that she was human. She wouldn’t live forever.

As she began to understand that he was pulling away, emotions within herself gave way to insecurity and in that, she began to yank closer to him.

The end was an inevitability. Dante pulled away from her because of her needing to be close when he couldn’t reconcile the fact of her humanity. Lady pulled even farther because she couldn’t accept the fact that above being human, she was indeed, a woman.

Emotions were odd to her. They always had been. She’d flip through magazines casually and sometimes even disgustedly, skimming through articles where it seemed that the picture perfect life could be written, described and created by an author no one had ever met.

The picture perfect dream world with love, life, children and long lived happiness. It had been a long time since Lady had EVER dreamt of a long life, instead deciding that a short, quick and dispensable existence was far more to her liking.

Perhaps farther from Lady’s thoughts was the fact that selflessly, her life was bent on providing for others that which she’d accepted she would never have: a future.

The day she’d seen it in Dante had been a hard day though, seeing those beautiful silvery eyes which once danced when they came her direction, haunted and gleamed over as though Dante were a blind man. He’d smiled at her, the saddest smile she’d ever seen.

“You can’t love me, huh?” He’d spoken. It hadn’t been a question.

It hadn’t needed an answer.

Honestly, Lady couldn’t tell you exactly why she couldn’t love Dante, why she couldn’t return his stares of appreciation, why she couldn’t kiss him back the multiple times he’d drunkenly staggered into her room, hands in her hair as he’d tried to force all the woe of the world onto her.

The only thing she could tell you (yet never would) was that towards the end, every time she looked at him, she saw his brother. Silver hair swept back, eyes looking through her, mouth set in the coldest fucking smiles she’d ever seen, it wasn’t Dante that kept her tossing in her bed at night, but his long lost brother whom she hadn’t seen in years.

What was the impact of that awkward encounter that kept her up, even this night, smoke burning before her eyes yet her lashes refusing to blink it away?

So chance. So quick.

She could recall being in the library of Teminigru, face soggy as her cheeks felt fatter beneath the tears, bawling like a school girl (and rightly so deeming her outfit) right into her dirty palms. She’d heard the approach well before she’d seen him, figuring a low level demon was on its way to demolish her, her thoughts so morbid that she’d actually welcomed the sound, sighing away her depression at the possibility of a release.

Instead though, she’d focused on the strangest of sounds, hearing the clacking of his boots on the fine flooring, the speed and determination behind an ABSOLUTE motivation. He never waived or slowed or sped. He merely walked with intention, head lowered as he’d carelessly moved passed her, speaking words that she’d never forget.

“Giving up so easily?”

There was something in that strange moment that had caught her. It was a fleeting, silly idea but it gave her whatever strength was necessary to bend her scathed knees and crawl to her feet. The feeling was simply this: She was not alone.

United in vengeance, united in hate but wracked with motivation BEHIND that hate, she’d followed him thoughtlessly through the tower, another exchange never needed.

Dante had come home from Mallet Island just an angry ghost, the wounds of his encounter seen through yellowish, blackened rings around his eyes, his face pale and gaunt from exhaustion and booze. Strangely though, it was a wordless understanding between them, as she’d cradle his fallen head in her lap, that Vergil deserved to be mourned.

She would never have faulted him for it, still occasionally blinking tears down her face in a rain storm when she’d catch herself looking through glass as she’d thought of her father.

He’d been a bastard too. But she still loved him.

It was like loving a drug addict though. You excused them. All the faults in the world later and they still caught your breath but with one thought. Demonism was like a drug, she’d decided, one taste, one high and the rest seemed history.

Her father, her REAL father, had been a good man. How could she have ever hated him so truly without having loving him fervently before? One taste though, one good drug dealer, and the dad she’d loved so much turned into a raging addict, like so many addicts, doing anything for just one more hit.

She’d felt that way about Dante one night, pinched between him and the couch as he’d torn down her skirt, drunk on agony and cheap whiskey, the salt of his tears in her mouth as he feverishly kissed her throat and chest, begging for her.

A quick, clean, hateful life drowning in one another’s sorrow.

It might have been perfect. It might have been sane. But it was a drug, a high she couldn’t keep and so when the first week passed without his sighing voice on the other end, she’d closed her eyes in relief, fingers still absentmindedly touching the places he’d kissed almost painfully.

Now though, she realized it was painfully irritating to be unable to reach him, her eyes scanning the computer monitor as though she was angry at it.

Words were scrawled all over the pages and Lady seriously cursed herself for resorting to smoking and AOL Online News in order to obtain leads.

One story, though, had caught her attention, the possible existence of a serial rapist and murderer in Ireland, casually tossing female bodies off of the cliffs.

The story might have escaped her attention if it hadn’t been for the fact that several SEVERAL of the victim’s family and friends and even just witnesses in pubs had seen the women leave with a white haired man. Important as well were the oh-so-often rumors gallivanting throughout the Devil Hunter brigades that demon activity in Ireland was at an all time high and that something had to be done about it.

Though she knew in her heart of hearts that Dante would never be behind such brutal slayings, it went without saying that it was an interesting lead, even if he was only involved for the sheer attempts on his part to track the killer down.

Smashing her cigarette out, Lady checked the expiration on her passport before booking a ticket to Ireland.