For The Sword

Dante sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly. He’d been pouring over old documents for what seemed like forever; Trish had brought them over for him, god knows where she’d found them, in relation to a job he was working on. He’d been approached by a man two months previous who had offered him an impossible sum of money if he could catch and kill whatever was kidnapping, raping and killing anyone in the area who happened to turn eighteen. It was always on their eighteenth birthday, at midnight, and the bodies were always returned exactly one week later, at midnight. It was a strange profile, even for Dante, but he took the case anyway. It was the money more than anything, though the fact that he’d slept with more than a couple of the deceased might have helped his decision a little.

So that was what he was supposed to be doing. Supposed, because it didn’t seem to matter what he did, he just couldn’t kill the damn thing. He’d tracked it down, shot at it, slashed at it, cut it in to tiny little pieces…and it just put itself back together and disappeared. It wasn’t difficult to find, far from it; the hideous thing seemed to enjoy being cut to ribbons more than Dante liked to think about.

The previous night, another victim had been taken. A pretty thing, all blonde hair and blue eyes, a smile that wouldn’t look out of place on an angel. It was a shame, he mused, that she had taken to prostitution at such a young age. It was also a shame that she had died so young. Frowning, Dante went over in his mind what went wrong. He had isolated the girl to keep casualties to a minimum, which had helped somewhat, and the creature arrived as planned. It hadn’t been difficult to draw the thing into a fight; the damn thing practically threw itself at his blade until it was nothing but slivers of flesh and dust.

He’d assumed that would be it, that it would retreat then as it usually did. He hadn’t been banking on it lurching across the room to the girl, faster than the blink of an eye, and vanishing with her. He hadn’t even had chance to move, to think, before they were gone.

He had made his way to the nearest bar and gotten as drunk as the cash in his pocket would allow. He needed to kill that thing, needed the money badly, the cash jar in his desk was getting worryingly empty and his rent was due at the end of the month.

None of that had mattered, though, by the time he staggered out of the dingy bar into the putrid city air, just about making it home to bed before collapsing in a drunken stupor. The strangest thing, though, was that he was sure there was someone with him, someone familiar, as he slipped into blissful unconsciousness. He’d awoken to find a cover pulled haphazardly over him late the following morning, and could have sworn he could smell Vergil’s shampoo on his pillow, but it was gone by the time he was awake enough to check so he put it down to his overactive imagination.

That, and the fact that he couldn’t get his brother out of his head. It was unhealthy, he couldn’t do anything about it, Vergil was dead. Dead by HIS hand no less! He wasn’t going to be coming back.

Dante scrubbed at his eyes again; thoughts like that wouldn’t get him anywhere. Pushing back from his desk, he decided to call it a night. He wasn’t used to this studying crap, it would do him good to get an early night, particularly after having to concentrate so hard for so long.

He had barely started drifting off to sleep before a thought hit him; that was it! He slapped his palm into his forehead, before pushing his unruly white bangs out of his eyes. How could he have been so stupid? It didn’t matter what the thing was, or how it could be killed. What mattered was finding where it was taking its victims. A tracker on the next one due to be taken should do it, particularly if he was the only one who knew that it was there. Dante grinned to himself before flopping back down onto his pillows. Oh yeah, that thing was going to get the ass kicking of its life.

-----

Unfortunately for Dante, the next potential victim wouldn’t be turning eighteen for another month. Fortunately, though, another job had come up in the meantime. It was a typical job; puppet demons terrorising a family for no apparent reason. He’d quickly dispatched the dolls and gone after their creator. Turns out, it was a distant relative, annoyed at being left out of a will or some such garbage, so he’d made a pact with a demon. Neither he nor the demon survived for very long, and Dante had been paid handsomely for his efforts.

So now he was sitting, waiting, bored out of his mind. Neither Trish nor Lady had been by recently, and business was painfully slow. He passed the time by getting drunk and looking for sex. He didn’t care whether it was the company of a whore or just some random person from a bar, as long as they were willing and easy on the eyes he was happy.

Well, as happy as he could be. Each time he awoke, after that last kidnapping, he could smell his brother. Sometimes he could sense him too, that familiar warmth that seemed to seep from his very being, despite his cold exterior. It should have made him happy, to think that his brother was watching over him. In reality though, it just made him miss his brother more.

More disturbingly, though, he’d started having dreams about Vergil. Dreams that one really shouldn’t be having about their twin brother. It didn’t really bother him, though, the mornings where he would awake crying out his brother’s name and staining the sheets with his night-time passion. It just made him seek out sex partners more often that he usually would.

The days drifted lazily by, far too slowly for his liking. He paid his bills, did his laundry, took his coat to the drycleaners and prepared for the day his plan would come to fruition. One week before the next victim, another girl, was due to have her birthday, Dante made sure to send her a necklace he’d made specially. It contained a special transmitter, so he’d know exactly where she was at all times.

The creature arrived, on time as expected, throwing itself at Dante as usual. He fought back with as much gusto as ever, smug in the knowledge that no matter what the thing did he’d be able to follow it. It took the girl, disappearing with a gurgle, making the little beeping dot on the tracker disappear for a moment and reappear further up the screen. Dante grinned from ear to ear, his white teeth practically lighting up the gloom around him as he made his way out of the warehouse. Glancing up at the moon, a look of smug satisfaction crossed his face, before he leapt gracefully up onto a nearby rooftop. He was off like a shot, following the little bleeping dot that was his quarry.

It wasn’t long before he found what he was looking for in the form of a large metal dome set into the ground. At the top, there was what looked suspiciously like a door, rounded and set on its side into the rounded shape. It was quite possibly the strangest structure Dante had seen, but that didn’t stop him from pulling open the downward-facing door and dropping into the structure.

He hadn’t expected to drop for as long as he did; it seemed to go on forever before he saw the floor rushing up to meet him. Tucking his legs into his body, Dante prepared for impact, making sure to roll as he hit the floor so he didn’t break anything. A human would have shattered every bone in their body after a fall like that. Demon blood did have its uses, after all.

Dante did a quick double check as he stood to full height; Ebony and Ivory were still in place, Rebellion hadn’t even shifted around on his back with the impact, nothing was broken. Patting himself down, Dante had to look again as his finger caught on something just below his hip; his coat, his beautiful leather coat, had a large rip down one of the panels where it had caught on the rough ground. He swore, the sound echoing off the walls in the cave-like structure he’d found himself in. Looking around, trying to ignore the gaping hole that was going to prove very expensive to fix, Dante took note of how vast the area he had landed in actually was; he could barely see the walls, never mind anything else, and it was close to pitch black. He once again thanked his demon blood for being able to see anything at all.

It took almost an hour to find the door. Stepping through it, Dante found himself in a long corridor, lit by candle sconces set along each wall. Pictures hung between each one, portraits of men long forgotten, but Dante paid them no heed. He noted with some annoyance that his tracking device had fallen silent, presuming that the demon had destroyed the amulet he had given to the girl.

The walk along the corridor took less time than Dante had expected. He soon arrived at another door, large and imposing. It was strange, he thought, to have such a long corridor with only one door at either end. Dante was never one to dwell on such things, so he merely shrugged the thought away and pushed the door open.

Stepping through into the bright light on the other side, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. He had emerged into what appeared to be a laboratory, full of tables with test tubes and Bunsen burners, shelves with bottles and jars containing all manner of strange objects, it was an awe inspiring sight on such a large scale.

Dante, though, didn’t notice any of this. His eyes were glued to a large glass canister in the centre of the room, filled with a slightly bubbling green liquid. Had he been fully aware, he’d have laughed at the cliché appearance of it. He might have noticed the bleeping machinery attached to the pod, or the sword suspended in a miniature version of the larger canister, connected via a large pipe.

As it was, his entire consciousness was focused on the ethereal being suspended within the fluid, the most beautiful creature to have ever walked the earth. Dante didn’t move, couldn’t think, didn’t want to think. He didn’t even hear himself speak.

“Vergil…”