Snake Bite
Summary: A series of brutal murders of young women plague the city; and when a mysterious customer shows up in Devil May Cry, Dante finds himself trapped inside surreal dreams . . . unable to break free.
Disclaimer: Devil May Cry and all its characters are Capcom's and its respective creators' legal property. I'm not making any money off this story; however, all the Original Characters, Original Plot-lines, and Original Themes are my own.
Rating: Written for Mature Readers due to sexual, violent, and disturbing situations.
Main Themes and Genres: Horror, Drama, Mystery, Family, and Angst.
Supporting Themes and Genres: Tragedy, Suspense, and Erotica.
Prominent Characters (in order of importance): Dante and Trish.
AN: Treat this story as if it occurs in the canon universe as Dante will take this case on like he does in canon Anime/Manga and Videogames. I've toned down Dante's demonic powers to make him more approachable and human as a character.
Chapter One: Dead, Naked Chicks
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"Dead naked women . . . this isn't what I usually got in mind," said the white-haired man, soaking under the heavy downpour in the alleyway.
The wind was picking up speed, and his long, dark coat was flying in the wind. It had been raining for the past couple of weeks. Sometimes, it was just a light spit easing off the building humidity; but these days it had been coming down hard.
"Dante," said the tall woman with long blonde hair standing behind him. She was wearing light blue jeans and a black shirt underneath a small, brown coloured leather jacket. Her jacket was glazed with wet and so was her hair.
"Well—" Dante, leaning on his knees, looked back at the woman who was the spitting image of his mother and frowned. "What am I supposed to do here?" he asked, pointing the thin and long barrel of his gun at the bare body of a young woman dumped just next to a dumpster.
The woman sighed and rubbed her shoulders. "Enzo got us a good case. The families think—"
"Think what, Trish?" Dante said harshly, cutting her off.
He quickly got to his feet and shoved the gun back into his dirty brown pants. His face was running with rain water. He wiped his face on his coat's sleeve and looked at Trish again.
"How did that fat-bellied moron pull this detective crap on me?" Dante asked, pointing his hands at himself.
Trish gave him a hard look and leant against the rough wall of the apartment just behind them. She looked up at the full moon shining through a tiny little hole in the clouds gathering into a soft pile in the sky.
The small alleyway was between two shabby looking apartment buildings that below the overcast sky. The squalor of the slums meant little to the rich that lived far away in the safety of suburbs. Many suffered, cried, and even died in these unpleasant conditions.
Dante folded his arms across his chest, looking at two hookers flicking their wide-open coats' collars up at the two passersby's just across the street. It was past 12 a.m., and usually the streets were filed with prostitutes and pimps; but in the wake of recent murders, police had started patrolling the town and no one was allowed to roam around this late at night.
A police tape was stretched across the entrance of the alleyway, and a short and pudgy detective was standing with a couple of police officers close to the police car. So far, this second murder was a hush-hush affair.
He brought his gaze back to the body: she was a young woman around her late twenties. Her body was rock hard from the chill in the air and the rigor-mortis that had already settled in.
Her golden hair was spread over her right cheek, and her whole body was pale, glistering with the rain drops trailing down to the floor. Her green eyes, glazed with rain water, were wide-open and shone at the bulb's light.
Dante tore his eyes away and leant against the back door of the pub, making his eyes follow the thin trails of rainwater on the muddied street.
"Look, Dante," Trish said, trying to meet Dante's elusive grayish eyes, "you were going to end up on the streets if Enzo hadn't done something."
Dante snorted and palmed his wet face.
"What more do you want then?" Trish said curtly, raising her hands.
Dante brought his gaze back to hers and unfolded his arms. "What more do I want? If anyone started paying attention to our amazing detective abilities, we're screwed, a'right?"
Thunder flashed like a blue flame in the sky, and, suddenly, the heavy rain mellowed down to a steady drizzle. A thin plume of smoke was steadily billowing into night sky from the roof of a twenty-four hour restaurant just a block away.
Trish's face cracked into a sarcastic smile. "Are you afraid of that you're not good detective, my son?" Trish teased, maintaining her meaningful smile.
"Don't be so cheeky, mom, or your son might spank you for being impolite," Dante, putting full stress on mom, threw an askew smile at Trish.
"You have fake papers, a genuine letter requesting investigation from both the families," Trish said, holding up all five fingers of her right hand, "so what's the problem?"
Dante hunched under his coat and looked at his warm smoke-like breath in the air. "I'm not a fucking detective," he said calmly, breathing out the warm air in his lungs.
Trish clapped her hands together. "Is that all?"
"I think you're taking this a little too lightly," Dante said and pulled up his coat's collar, "I've got no experience with this sort of work, so I won't be able to do anything for these families. And besides, we don't even know if this is the work of a demon," he added and ran his hand through his jaw-length white hair that framed his pale face.
Getting angry at Dante's persistence to drop this case, Trish turned her head at the round detective slowly making his way to them. He sloshed through the muddy alley, stopping for a few seconds at each and every window.
Dante cocked his brow at him and then turned his eyes slightly at the angry sounds from the two hookers being dragged into the police car. The man was almost round with three tires around his huge belly. The ham-fisted detective hitched himself further up to the window pane and then peered inside.
"Ah—" he sighed out, and then clumsily made his way to Dante and Trish. He stopped at the last window. "So have you found anything interesting, private-eye?"
Dante pushed himself off the hard door. "I was waiting for you, sir," he said in an artificially unconvincing voice, managing a smile that was somewhat polite: the smile seemed to crack his stone-cold-sober face just a little.
"Call me Blake," the oddly oversized officer said, inching around the dumpster to get close to the body.
"From what I've heard, this looks the same as before," Dante said slowly, bending his legs to kneel close to the body.
"Hm, yes," Blake said and passed his hand over his few frizzled hair. Most of them had probably been taken by age. Now he was left with just a small round patch at the top of his thinning head.
Trish zipped up her jacket. It was strangely cold. Even a demon like her could sense something strange lingering in the air. Dante, keeping up his stubborn attitude, had yet to notice it.
"This is the second murder in the city, and it looks like we won't be getting anything from here, as well," Blake said lowly, easing to his feet.
Dante raised his head to look up at Blake. "What do you mean?"
Blake fished out a handkerchief from his pocket. "You haven't seen the first murder site, then?" he asked, giving a light dab to a small cut on his left wrist.
"No—" Dante stole a furious look at Trish. "I was hired recently," he said, returning his gaze to the body.
"I see," Blake sighed out and shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket. "The first body was dumped in an alleyway about seven blocks away." He pointed his hand outwards.
"At the back of a dance club—I think," Dante said, pulling his leather glove on his right hand.
Blake nodded in response. "Yes, and she looked very similar."
Dante gently brushed a few golden bangs aside and turned her head slightly to look at small wispy marks on her neck. "She looks very white. I don't think there is a single drop of blood in her entire body," he said, sounding serious at the sight of small black veins appearing dead and web-like on her entire body.
"This is what the last postmortem report told us," Blake agreed and looked back at the police car and the ambulance that had just stopped in front of the alleyway.
Dante pulled his hand back and ran his eyes over the mud around the body. "Does it say how this could've happened?"
"Sadly no," Blake said in reply, rubbing his hands together.
"What are these?" Dante asked, pressing his fingers slightly over two puncture wounds where the girl's neck and jaw ran together. "Is that a—" he stopped for a second, "—a snake bite?"
"Yes, the girl before her had them, too," Blake answered, stooping his back to take a good look at the two perfectly round black holes in the girl's neck.
"These fangs are huge," Dante said in a voice that had a great note of surprise, "but they're very close to each other."
"What are you suggesting?" Blake asked, pulling himself to a slightly straight position with just a little droop to his back.
"Was the first girl poisoned?" Dante asked quickly, looking at Blake from the corner of his eyes.
"No, but it would seem that some blood might have been lost this way," Blake said, looking curiously at Dante.
Dante took in some fresh air. "The marks are too close," he said thoughtfully, "the snake couldn't have been that large, but the holes are pretty big . . . "
"The pathologists have yet to determine what kind of snake it is," Blake explained and looked over to Trish who stood quietly close to the dumpster. "Sometimes, I really hate this job for its dubious reasoning methods," he added lost in thought.
"It couldn't have been a large snake," Dante said and got to his feet.
"Really?" Blake asked and wiped his eyes clean—rain was making it hard for him to see the street clearly.
"Large snakes aren't poisonous, so they don't have fangs," Dante said, stooping a bit to flick mud off his pants. "If that was the case, then there should've been a whole lot of teeth marks around her neck."
"You watch animal planet—nice hobby. Me? I can't get over beer and late night television," Blake said, softly laughing afterwards.
"I have my interests," Dante said awkwardly and stepped away from the body. "By the way, you said the first girl lost some blood this way. It could be possible that she lost all of it through these wounds."
"That isn't possible," Blake said, shaking his hand. "The report suggests the wounds were made very quickly."
"What?" Dante asked, wearing a grim look on his face.
"Well, according to the doctor, whatever bit her pulled out the teeth very quickly," Blake said to Dante and pulled out a cigarette pack from his coat, "so it isn't even possible that it managed to suck her dry in mere 15 to 20 seconds."
"Odd—" Dante said, cupping his chin.
"Okay, boys, take her away," Blake said to the men slowly making their way through the alleyway, carrying the body bag.
The men stuffed the body into the bag and carried it out of the alley.
"Want some smoke?" Blake asked, holding out the pack in his hand.
"Thanks, I don't smoke," Dante said with a wave of his hand.
"A non-smoking detective? You must be the first of your kind," Blake said and drew on the cigarette clamped between his lips.
Dante smiled in reply and felt a strange chill steal itself slowly over his entire body: the air around him was menacing and cold.
"See you around, young man," Blake said, stretching out his hand. "If you want to see the post-mortem report, then you can drop by my office in the morning."
"Sure, thanks," Dante said and shook Blake's hand.
Trish's eyes followed Blake till he stepped into his car and left.
"Still not interested?" Trish said, eyeing the hard look on Dante's face.
Dante remained quiet for a few seconds. "Let's go and see the report tomorrow, then we can decide," he said and took quick steps out of the quiet alley.
It was past 1 a.m. The streets were quiet and the clouds were rolling out, leaving a clear sky, studded with countless stars, behind . . .
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