Chapter VI: Ice and Darkness
Around midnight, the building always grew quiet and Dante usually respected that. Most lights were turned off but there was always a faint glow coming from the lobby where a lamp on Roy's desk shed a soft yellow light. Dante edged towards the top of the stairs and peeked down into the lobby. Roy was true to his feline nature; the cat was curled next to one of the heating shafts along the wall and seemed sound asleep. Dante was pretty sure that he wasn't about to let them go gallivanting like this but he assumed Tess had some plan.
He had closed his door very slowly and gently, making sure his keys were securely in his pocket. He now stood in the dark hallway, with his sword secured to his back (no point in the guitar case at this late hour, he assumed) and waited impatiently for Tess. He crept along the hallway to her door as quietly as he could, praying that Roy would either not hear or dismiss his footsteps as a bathroom trip or something. He tapped his fingertips lightly on her door and glanced at the stairway in trepidation. He had a half-hearted thought of leaving without her but he still needed her guidance… and he didn't want to deal with her wrath if he left her behind.
Besides, things seemed to get more interesting with her around.
Tess opened her door quietly and slipped out. She was thickly dressed in jeans and a hoodie under a jacket with a tightly wound scarf. She seemed to be expecting cold weather.
"Come on," she whispered. "Let's get out before they catch us."
They tiptoed to the hallway window facing the side of the building and, after Tess hurriedly muttered some incantation and made a few signs with her hand to avert the wards from giving them away, they got it open quietly. They navigated the fire-escape carefully, trying to avoid making too much noise. Instead of lowering the ladder, they climbed down into the alley using some strategically worn bricks in the façade – Tess confessed to making them as a means to sneak out undetected.
The weather had taken a turn to the worse; it was very cold and windy and in fact, it had begun snowing gently, the snow settling in a thin layer on the ground. The flakes drifted to the ground in clusters without melting and the wind made them dance about. Dante looked up, amused, and cheekily opened his mouth, catching several flakes on his tongue, which made Tess snort quietly.
Dante found the cold refreshing from the somewhat stifling heat of the building but he knew he might become uncomfortable if it got colder. Tess unlocked the back fence door for them; they slipped out and she locked it once more.
"This is getting ridiculous," she muttered. "When Grams got home, I tried to talk her out of this dumb turtling she has us doing. But she wouldn't listen to a thing I said, stubborn old bag. All she'll repeat is how I should stay out of it. She thinks that after her deal with you, I need to sit tight. I don't care if she thinks I'm crazy," she muttered and then her angry gaze turned to him. "Unless you think I'm crazy too."
"Of course I do. I like it," Dante said cheekily. "Now let's book it before we're caught, I can't deal with this bullshit."
She snorted at his attitude but just shook her head. They hurried away from the building and Dante kept his ears and eyes open for any trouble along the way. The streets were empty and the street lights did little to alleviate the oppressive darkness settling in through the town. When they reached the main street, no longer protected as much from the wind by the buildings, a cold gust of wind hit them straight on. Dante didn't mind it much but Tess blurted a little yelp and tried to shrug into her jacket and scarf further.
"Cold?" Dante asked almost dismissively.
"Shut up," she snapped a bit. "It's the downside of the fire thing I do. Cold hits me hard. Nevermind, let's go—"
Dante feigned a sigh that was, perhaps, a little over the top. "Hang on," he said and caught her by the shoulder.
She stopped, puzzled and stared as he pulled the sword off his back and stuck the tip into the ground. He removed his coat, already warm from wearing it, and draped it over her shoulders. His snug and thick sweater with the turtle neck would do him just as well.
"What are—" she tried to protest.
"Too late," he said, securing his sword to his back again. "This is shit you need to tell me, Twig. You're not gonna do much if things go wrong if you're turning into a popsicle."
She just stared at him in bewilderment and her face started to get red – from the cold, from her confusion, it didn't matter.
"Um… I—" she stammered, pulling the coat on and finding, to her amazement, that it fit her even over her jacket.
She held out her arms and the sleeves hung beyond the ends of her hands comically and she stared at them, perplexed. The bottom of the coat nearly reached her ankles.
Dante grinned. "Wow, you really are fun-sized. Don't read too much into it, Twig," he chuckled. "Just don't want you freezing before we get to the bottom of this."
He bent slightly and with a flourish, gestured towards the road ahead. "After you!"
She squinted at him irritably then swept past him, muttering a few words of thanks. He followed her with a wide grin; it was truly hilarious to watch her. His coat looked so big on her that you thought it would begin to drag on the ground any moment now and her hair blended almost entirely against the red duster. She tried to walk angrily but she just ended up looking… cute.
In the kind of way that cats killing songbirds are cute, probably.
He tried not to laugh audibly. "Zips up too, if you're still cold," he managed and chortled at her little growl.
"You can't make fun of my size forever," she muttered. "I could still kick your ass if I wanted!"
Dante couldn't help his smug smirk. A challenge was it? He was pretty sure she wasn't really going to try but he welcomed the vitriol. "Feel free to try someday, Twig, just don't cry when it doesn't work," he said. "So where exactly did you find Bloodgoyle traces?"
"Just a few blocks ahead," she replied.
Tess said nothing for a while as they walk, then seemed to hesitate a few times. "Tell me something," she finally said. "What's… what's the worst demon you've encountered so far? I… I don't actually know what I should be ready for, here. I'm sort of new to this."
Dante found himself startled. He hadn't expected that kind of question. Before he could come up with some witty rejoinder and dismiss the entire issue, a flood of memories assaulted his composure. He tried to bury them, tried to push them away but the cold and the howling of the wind and the faint smell of moisture made them barrel forth unrestrained. They were still far too raw in his mind, despite his best efforts and he once again cursed his gifted memory for retaining them so vividly.
His mother's panicked, trembling voice as she hid him in a secret panel in the wall and hurried off with his brother.
The loud crashes, the whine of snapping wood and the crumbling of concrete, the shattering glass and the blinding light coming through a crack in the wall.
The three floating red orbs of fire. The hate and the callous, impotent rage.
His mother's defiance, the long, agonizing defiance and the prolonged screaming at the end.
The blinding flash and all that red, that horrible, horrible red.
He closed his eyes and resisted the urge to scream. The paralyzing claw of fear around his young heart.
His panicked breathing.
The silence in the end, it seemed everlasting; the endless wait.
The terrible sight that awaited him when he finally had the courage to emerge, half-delirious with exhaustion, starvation and thirst: Scattered strands of his mother's beautiful hair and blood sprayed across the wall in a delicate pattern of droplets. The house was unrecognizable.
Nothing was ever the same again.
He blinked.
And just like that, he was back in the present. The cold nipped at his skin and he shook his head to loosen the cobwebs. His expression was carefully blank and his throat was dry and silent. He'd actually stopped walking. Tess stood a few paces ahead of him, having turned back, looking at him. He was torn between anger and grief and… and something he couldn't quite describe. She looked upset and remorseful together.
As he blinked again, clearing his head, she stepped closer and he realized: he knew that look on her face. Yes, she seemed upset but also… Dante had the curious feeling that she recognized his struggles to keep it all bottled up. She knew. Her hand reached out and her fingers hesitated, searching for his hand, like she wanted to make sure he was there.
Her hand was surprisingly delicate and warm.
"Dante…?" she asked quietly. "Are you—"
"I'm fine."
He sailed past her, whipping his hand away and the moment shattered. His face felt hot and his eyes stung. He was angry at her and yet… not. He shut his eyes and walked on blindly. When he was sure the distance was enough he hurriedly raised a hand and wiped his eyes before she could catch up to him.
"Wait—"
She actually had to jog to keep up with him, he was walking that angrily.
"You sound less and less like you should be here," he said coldly. "Guts and fire tricks are only gonna get you that far."
"What, you want me to leave?!" she snapped. "You don't know what to look for."
He scowled. "And you do?"
"I've been thinking… about the Bloodgoyles," she said. "I mean, they need blood to even function, right? It's just possible… that they have some bond with whoever's blood they're using—"
"I don't have time for theories," he said sharply. "I'll grant you that they like showing up where there's a lot of bloodshed and violence and from the look of things, they might be finding the city to their liking. Something's going on and they've shown up like vultures."
"But you've never seen anything like the lunatic we saw, right?" she pressed.
He grumbled quietly. "No," he finally admitted. "I've seen people possessed. He wasn't. He was turning into a demon, inside out."
"He can't have done it to himself," she added. "You can't…. you can't make that precise a mistake. Not even complete amateurs."
"It's gonna happen again too," he told her flatly. "Heck, it might've already happened. Had any luck with the shit that guy drew, by the way?"
She shook her head. "I consulted whatever I could without asking Grams but… if they really were some kind of ritual is none that I recognize. But it just felt…"
"…wrong," he completed for her.
"Yes. Wrong," she echoed.
"I bet you anything it's some hotshot with a book of demon bullshit and a big bad demon he pulled out of his ass," Dante grunted. "The loon we saw was just a puppet. Which is fine by me. I'll just have to put 'em all down."
He smiled suddenly and he noticed with some satisfaction that Tess seemed to grow tense at his gleeful anticipation of a fight. He always felt good when he put a bullet through a demon's skull or stuck his sword in their gullet – and he wasn't afraid to make it plainly obvious. His anger started to evaporate under the newly perked up motivation.
"Still…" Tess said hesitantly. "I can't help but be concerned. Grams says the city's always been… weird but I don't think she's ever actually dealt with anything."
Dante scoffed. "Figures. No wonder she wants me to stick around even if I rub her the wrong way. Insurance." He feigned a sigh. "I guess I'll take the job but you better let Roy know I ain't gonna pay rent if I'm being the muscle."
"Put a sock in it," she snapped. "You're acting like we're entirely defenseless. You're not the only one who can put up a fight—"
"You can always duck for cover if we run into some action," he interrupted her. "I won't judge. Right now all that matters is finding out that the park's got for us, don't you think?"
She said nothing and they just walked on. He put his head down to guard his face from a particularly nasty gust of icy wind and Tess shrugged even deeper into his coat, looking grateful to have it. The snowfall seemed to be getting more intense and the layer of snow on the ground getting thicker, crunching softly under their footfalls.
The fence around the park was old, the kind of Victorian sandstone and steel construction that could last forever, at once ornamental and forbidding. Beyond the shut gates, the darkness cloaked what looked like a large open space with trees now bare and laden only with snow. Weak street lights punctuated the darkness with their feeble glow.
"This is it," Tess said quietly. "I was here earlier and I felt something strange. And I think… I still feel it now."
"Good," Dante said casually. "Means I didn't come all the way here for nothing."
He sniffled a bit and rubbed his nose. There was something about the place… but in his somewhat hyped state, he might have wanted there to be something.
"Lose your temper and lose your head," he heard Roy say in his head.
Dante blinked. The presence of demons here, in the middle of a city, was a bad thing. And he really was looking forward to just that. He glanced at Tess and saw her staring at him, brows furrowed. He constantly forgot she could see his aura and what it did. He probably was not giving out very good signs. He felt a twinge of guilt bubble up from his chest.
"Do you ever hate it when Roy's right?" he muttered suddenly, taking a moment to compose himself.
"All the time," she replied knowingly, turning away to examine the shut gates. "Can't be helped, he's ancient. What did Yoda tell you?"
Dante grimaced and chose to ignore the question. "Nevermind. Let's get inside and look around," he said, very easily jumping almost to the top of the fence and vaulting over it.
Perhaps a little smugly, he turned to see what Tess would do. "Got any ideas where to start?"
Tess frowned but pulled back the sleeves of Dante's coat a bit and climbed the brick wall. "From the gates here, let's just wander in towards the lake and see what's around," she said, carefully getting herself over the pointed barbs of the fence.
Dante cocked his head a bit as she jumped down. "Lake? The place has a lake?"
"Bit glorified but it's pretty deep and the ducks like it. I think people go rowing on it in the summer," she sighed. "It's close to the middle of the park so it should help us orient ourselves."
Dante groaned. "It'll take ages. Can't you use your freaky radar thing to save us some time?"
"Sure and while I'm at it, would you like me to predict the next grand lottery numbers?" she snapped irritably. "If I had any such control over it, don't you think I would've done so already?"
Dante squinted and saw a bit of moonlight reflecting off a white sheen in the gloom and the flicker of tremulous street-lights. The lake, he presumed and further back…
"What's that?" he asked Tess, pointing a strange structure rising nearby from the trees.
It looked spindly, like the skeletal remains of a large beast and just barely enough walls left to pass for a structure.
"That's the old manor that the park was attached to. Burned down in a fire just after the Civil War, they kept it as is as a kinda monument," Tess said. "The park land belonged to the family and they donated it to the city. They keep saying they'll renovate or something but as you see, it ain't happened."
They stood there, staring at the structure in the distance.
"Something is off," she said and shivered. "This cold—"
Dante narrowed his eyes. He felt something too, a chilling sensation trying to creep up his spine and the cold wind cutting just a little more deeply. Dante glanced at her. He thought that she was getting tense, looking like she wanted to bolt.
"Hey, you've got my coat, Twig," he jested. "I'm not stripping any more for you. "We're here for demons, not a date!" he added cheekily and set off towards the lake.
Tess groaned loudly and glared at him. "Oh my shit, really? Really?!" she snapped, following after him. "You think I want to see you naked? Keep dreaming! And don't tell me you can't fucking feel something is weird here. The cold isn't normal. It hurts in ways cold doesn't and you know what that means?"
"Yep! Demons!" Dante replied cheerfully. "But keep denying your love for me if it helps you sleep better, Twig."
While she was absolutely right and he could, indeed, feel a presence in the air, he still smirked a bit because picking on her was funny. Besides her occasional blushing and eye-rolls and the indignant snapping, he didn't quite understand how she really felt about him. Riling her up gave him an excuse to get a better feel for her.
And then the wind died down suddenly and they were left in the quiet stillness of the night with very little light. The fine hairs on the back of Dante's neck pricked up as a light tingle of excitement and anticipation climbed up his spine. In the pit of his stomach something uncoiled and his whole body responded with a growing tension. He felt like a dog that smells another canine in his stomping grounds.
Or was he, in this case, the invading dog?
"We're being watched," Tess said suddenly.
Dante's eyes narrowed. "I know."
They walked together now, Dante having slowed to a leisurely pace and keeping himself aware of where she was, just in case. Tess glanced around with a sharp, hard sort of gaze and all her previous indignation and anger were quite forgotten. When they got close enough, they found that the lake was frozen over and both stared at it.
"It got colder the closer we got," Dante observed flatly.
"When we left the house it wasn't cold enough to freeze a puddle, let alone a lake," Tess concurred meaningfully.
Just beyond it, the pathetic shell of the old building stood dark and quiet, fenced off haphazardly. It looked so… incredibly obvious to Dante. Something had moved in. Something—
"Listen!" Tess gasped, grabbing his arm.
Dante did just that and heard it; a distant, rhythmic thrum, over and over like a far-off heartbeat. It sounded like…
"Birds?" he quipped. "No…"
The flapping got closer and louder, like a huge flock of birds flying overhead. They both looked up. Lithe figures of red zipped about above them, diving down and flying over their heads. A rising din of shrieks, flaps and hurling wind drew closer. The flock that descended upon them was massive. The flying creatures were so many and so dense that they looked like one huge creature, with hundreds of mouths and claws, all flying in an eerie, perfect choreography like one being. They were coming in hard and fast and as Dante studied the flock, he saw them rising from the ruined manor. As the swarm drew closer, its true size became evident.
There were hundreds of them, more than any Dante had ever seen in his life – more demons that he had ever seen gathered in one place at once, in fact. And yet all he felt was… excitement. Excitement at the prospect of fighting these little blighters and excitement at the idea of taking them down, all of them.
"Bloodgoyles," he chuckled and popped his knuckles. "Looks like we hit the motherlode, Twig!"
He slipped out of her hold and drew both his guns as the flock swarmed around them, circling round and round and catching them in a great circle with no escape. He heard Tess curse but she sounded more determined than scared. His furious, rapid shots cracked the din of the swarming Bloodgoyles, sending showers of spattering blood to streak the snow underneath. Weakened and losing their agility as their exposed bodies turned to stone, a few of the hellish birds spiraled downwards erratically, only to find themselves cleaved in two as Dante's sword flashed in his hands. The stone forms crumbled to pieces with every blow and every shot.
"Dante, no! We can't—there's too many of them!" Tess protested from just beyond his kill-zone.
He ignored her, only sparing a glance to see that she was standing ready, anxiously looking for the first assault towards her. His initial attack infuriated the swarm and it flew tighter around them, the cacophony of shrieks and snapping beaks rising to a crescendo of anger. Yellow, beady eyes flashed with unnatural malice and finally, a few birds detached from the flock and headed straight at her.
They were greeted by a wall of flame that roared into life as she swept her arm at them. They flew right into it and the air filled with the stink of burning blood and the sounds of sizzling liquid on a hot surface. A few of the creatures pulled away from the wall with steam rising off them. The rest lost so much of their bloody cover that they reverted to stiff stone, trying in vain to move with gritty grinding noises and screams of indignation.
Dante was happy to take advantage of their state and smashed them to pieces with a few swings of the sword. He grinned at her and the heat coming off the mobile sheet fire she swung around to deal with the hellish birds.
"Aw, and you're so cold to me, Twig!" he chuckled.
She hissed a quiet curse at him. Three Bloodgoyles swept right at him. As the first came within reach, Dante pointed Ebony at it and shot it square in the head, knocking it back into one of its brethren and both were forced to retreat for a second sally while the third simply swept beside him, as though investigating rather than attacking. He opened fire at it, knocking it into stone, then broke it to pieces.
"Keep the fire up, Twig, you're doing good! See if you can't blow their heads up or something!"
"Stop distracting me, then!" she snapped back.
To underline her point, she was forced to create a new wall at her back after a Bloodgoyle very nearly took her by surprise. The scent of burning blood got stronger and the sound of sizzling liquid was a constant companion to the din of combat. Her walls of fire seemed hard to control as they lacked a fuel source of their own, merely maintained out of sheer will. The snow beneath them melted, turning into slippery and muddy slush with the dirt beneath it.
"There's too many of them!" she said, causing a petrified Bloodgoyle to erupt into pieces with an explosive burst of fire.
A bunch of Bloodgoyles swerved out of the bigger flock and headed right for her, so she swung her arm as though throwing something, and two arches of flame collided with the demons, knocking them apart and stripped a lot of their bloody armor. To Dante's rising concern, he found that the flock seemed angrier and closed in more densely to attack… and observe them.
He started to feel uneasy. He felt pinpricks along his spine, much like a twitching animal that senses danger. For all the huge number of eyes that were observing him, Dante's demonic instincts screamed as though there was only one great presence just looming over him, staring down at him like a specimen in a Petrie dish. The large number of Bloodgoyles was confusing his senses a bit but he was certain that the cold was getting more intense and it was unnatural.
He spun out of the way of a swooping demon and dropped to a knee to avoid another, shooting a Bloodgoyle until it fell with a loud crash of stone. He twirled his sword and decapitated the stone creature in one swing. He darted to another one, freshly felled by Tess' fire and smashed it apart. Shards of stone littered the ground now, along with puddles of runny water mixed with blood and mud.
The smell of it, the fire and the heat of combat, along with the tingling sensation every time he passed by Tess put a savage smile on his face. He shot down any he saw and every one that had the misfortune of reverting to stone was summarily destroyed by his sword. Some didn't even need to be broken; deprived of their lifeblood in mid-air, the impact with the ground was enough to destroy them.
Dante dove at Tess' direction; she was surrounded by erratically twitching stone creatures and crumbled chunks of stone and he had the awful feeling it was because so many more attacked her rather than him. They sensed she was weaker – they may even have known she was a witch and it stoked their persistence. Her fire kept them at bay and stripped them of their blood coating well enough but there so many continually assaulting her that she did not have time to properly destroy the immobilized ones before she had to turn around and fend more of them off. Even worse, he saw her panting and fairly stumbling in an effort to keep up with the pace of everything. Her fire faltered a few times, sputtering away before reigniting.
She put up a good fight but it was exhausting her.
"Tess?" he blurted, getting close and smashing another stone demon apart.
"There's too many of them!" she panted. "I don't even know if we're making a dent in them!"
Dante cringed. He almost heard a strange whisper in the back of his head snarling in contempt at her feebleness – of course she couldn't keep up, she was just a puny human. He shook his head briefly to beat that thought down. She was there, wasn't she? She wasn't cowering, she wasn't complaining; she fought and seemed ready to fight until she fell over from exhaustion.
Again, the ugly feeling of something – something ancient and unfathomable and wrong, training its eye directly at them sent another chill down his spine. These Bloodgoyles were playing with them, like a cat playing with a cornered rat. They kept him from focusing his senses enough to find the real threat here.
"Just hang in there, Twig," he muttered as he dashed past her to catch a Bloodgoyle that was going for her back.
It crashed into the flat of his sword, sizzling from Tess' flames and shrieking right as his face. Dante grunted and swung the sword to shove it off, just to see the creature split in two and reform as two more birds. Distracted by the mistake, he failed to notice a few more swooping in between him and Tess.
Before he could swing around he felt a hard collision with his back and talons gouging deep into his skin, tearing muscle and shattering bone. The force of the impact made him drop Rebellion. Then his feet left the ground. He blurted a surprised yelp that got Tess' attention and made her look up. It felt like a cruel damn joke, being hoisted into the air by the large flying demon. He felt it try to peck at his neck and he quickly drew Ivory, bending his arm back as far as he could and opened fire at the demon's head. A few deafening reports and an ear-piercing shriek, Dante felt it turn to stone… which resulted in both of them plummeting towards the ground. Dante tried to shove the stone creature off him but its talons were still jammed in his back.
From the ground, Tess watched the whole thing with wide eyes. She panicked and she did the only thing that occurred to her: Sent a bolt of fire towards the demon. The arcing bolt had already started its course when she realized the danger of it hurting Dante. She practically started to scream internally, pleading with it not to hurt him although she was uncertain if she could control its course now.
"Dante!" she screamed.
The bolt hit the side of the groaning stone, shattering it to pieces with a loud din. A chunk flew straight into the face of a Bloodgoyle diving for Dante and knocked it away.
Her distraction was enough for other Bloodgoyles to attack her viciously. She ducked to avoid a dive-bombing demon, its talons just barely passing over her back and tried to drive another one off with a blast of fire, but it just altered its course. It struck her raised arm with the sharp edges of its wings and knocked her to the ground with a shout of pain. A streak of blood from her arm painted the snow red.
The smell of it seemed to drive the Bloodgoyles into an even greater frenzy, a unified screech rising from the mass as they circled in tighter.
Dante was battered by the impact of the fire bolt to the Bloodgoyle but it had freed him to confront a more pressing problem: the rapidly approaching ground. He didn't even have time to right himself and collided with the ground back-first and hard. The impact sent a flurry of powder snow up into the air and Tess let a small scream when she saw him hit the ground like a stone. He'd fallen just a few feet away from her but the swarming Bloodgoyles were circling her tighter and tighter and to her horror she realized they were trying to herd her further away from him.
"Is he dead? No! Please don't be dead!" she thought, finding her throat too dry to speak.
As the Bloodgoyles swarmed closer she forced herself to shout and fight back. "Get away from me, you flying freaks!"
A wave of fire bursting from around her in a circle swept them aside, screaming and sizzling and gave her a precious few seconds to run.
Dante groaned quietly and managed to heave himself onto his elbow, then fired a few rounds into the face of a Bloodgoyle that ventured too close to investigate. It was knocked backwards, petrified and a few further shots blew its head clean off. He grunted painfully; it had been a long time since he'd last been this hurt and even longer since he'd taken such a nasty fall. Blood streamed from his nose for a few moments and as he tried to push himself up, some awful cracking noises came from his limbs. His ribs were also killing him and he pressed his arm over them as he stood.
He saw her making a mad dash for him and limped towards her, watching her dodge some very persistent Bloodgoyles with lashes of fire. He shot down a couple, before holstering his gun and painfully bending to pick up his sword. With a sudden swing he brought it down on a petrified demon and smashed it to pieces.
"Tess…!" he managed to croak, feeling his jaw slowly mending itself.
She reached him and grabbed his arm just as he seemed ready to try and get into the fray again. She looked entirely relieved to see him alive. She was panting and seemed almost as badly off as he was; her arm was still bleeding but she managed to give them some space to breathe with a wall of flame. The ferric smell of blood tickled his nostrils. There was a sweet undertone to it.
"Can you move?!" she asked him.
Dante grunted and realized that his breathing was short and shallow and he was essentially aspirating blood in fine droplets that oozed out of his mouth. He spat and left an ugly red spot on the snow. Every breath he took sounded like grinding rocks almost and Tess looked at him with worry. He pushed her aside and pointed one of his guns ahead, shooting down another Bloodgoyle that made it through her weakening walls. It hit the ground hard, a piece of it breaking of and despite being in pain, Dante heaved Rebellion and smashed it to pieces. Tess almost bumped into his back as she fended off more of the Bloodgoyles coming at them from the other side.
"Just… too many!" she panted. "Dante, we can't keep this up, we need to get out!"
She sounded scared and it added to his already mounting frustration. His demonic instincts were protesting; how could he allow these measly little scavengers to overpower him?! Their number was not important! He wanted to crush all of them and show her, show her just how outmatched she really was, this little human witch—
The piercing wind chilled them to the bone and the Bloodgoyles pulled back suddenly, shrieking and circled back towards the old ruin. Something rose out of it, a great big shadow enveloped in cold and darkness. It flew up and out of the ruin, its very presence and shadow seeming to dim the already weak light from the moon and the surviving street lamps. It landed heavily just beyond the crumbling walls of the ruin, standing upright and giving Dante a very good look at the sheer scale of this beast.
It was tall and lean, like a lizard on two legs with a stretched physique and massive leathery wings that stretched all the way to the base of a long, whip like tail. It looked like it was made of ancient rock and ice. Its head was small and held low as if weighed down by the massive horns that swept back from its skull towards its back and curved up. It unfurled its wings and a haze of frost precipitated from them; the ground beneath it iced over instantly and nearby trees rapidly grew large ice crystals. It stretched its neck to look ahead and Dante saw solid white, glowing eyes meeting his.
Suddenly it moved like a coiled spring and took to the air with a powerful beat of the wings, leaving a burst of sharp ice shards growing out of the earth in its wake. The remaining Bloodgoyles flocked around it, screeching and moving as one. The two teenagers looked on in awe – and mounting fright. Dante was conflicted more than ever. A small part of him wanted to rush forward, meet head to head with this glorious demon and throw himself at it, to prove he was the better fighter, the better survivor. The better demon.
But a louder part of him was reeling, eyes peeled wide and his determination cracking. Tess could not speak, just breathed rapidly and shakily in a panic. He hadn't quite fought something this large and intimidating before – and not in the state he was in. He was injured pretty badly, getting worn out and to make things worse, Tess was also hurt and looked even more exhausted than him. He'd be too distracted trying to protect her to fight effectively. His heart pounded against his chest but he made his decision and said something he never thought he'd say when confronted with a demon:
"And now we have to run."
Tess didn't even argue, both just turned and bolted as fast as they could, Dante still holding his ribs in pain while securing his sword to his back in a hurry. He pushed her ahead of him as he looked back and made a run for it, following her. They darted through the trees and when a large, spear-like icicle slammed into a tree-trunk beside them, they started to zigzag frantically. More of the large ice spears rained around them – Tess had to leap over one that landed ahead of her and she actually outpaced him.
Just as Dante began to wonder how far they could run with that thing on their tail, an ice shard went through his calf. He blurted a shout and stumbled to a knee but recovered quickly; Tess skidded to a stop, turned back and grabbed his hand to help him up. She kept holding his hand even as he limped after her, with the piece of ice lodged in his leg, the ends breaking off as he moved. He gritted his teeth against the pain and shouted at her to keep moving. Bloodgoyle shrieks filled the air as they rushed through a mass of evergreens, partly hidden by their snow-laden branches.
"This way!" she said suddenly and pulled him through a mass of tangled, snow-capped shrubs and onto a path strewn with snow.
Dante frowned. He could breathe easier now and his chest hurt less, but he was dazed from the pain of the ice shard still lodged in his leg and all he could do was follow.
"What am I gonna do to object, anyway? Bleed on her?" he thought bitterly.
The Bloodgoyles flew after them frantically, getting ahead of the greater demon which started to snarl distantly. The thick branches of the evergreens proved a challenge for the demons, some even getting stuck as they tried to navigate the thicket. Shards of ice from the great demon tore through the trees and even struck down a few of the Bloodgoyles unfortunate enough to be in the way, freezing them solid upon impact.
When they broke through the trees, Dante saw a small structure ahead of them – a church. A couple of crooked gravestones were fenced off beside it with old, bent fencing. The structure was gritty, old masonry-work cobbled together from dark stone carved roughly. The short, squat belfry seemed to be almost an afterthought. They were headed straight for it.
Dante eyed the building with despair; she was crazy to think they'd be safe there.
"Won't do us any good," he groaned. "House of god or whatever, it's still a man-made building and if that thing wants to it'll just plow right through it!"
"Will you shut up!?" she snapped, glancing over her shoulder at him. "I know what I'm doing!"
As they covered the last few yards with the Bloodgoyles hot on their tail, Tess stretched her arm, hand spread open in a commanding gesture. She gestured at the doors frantically.
"Open! Open!"
Dante sensed a flicker of magic in this chaos of demonic power and it felt like the melodious toll of a distant bell among a cacophony. The heavy wooden doors of the church thudded open just as they bound up the short flight of stairs. Dante felt weird suddenly, like the noise of the Bloodgoyles grew distant and faded. At the same time, another set of cries filled the air, deeper, throatier, as if rising from the bottom of a well. They filled the air, drowning out the cries of the demons from above.
Dante looked up and in the gloom he could discern the outline of stone gargoyles perched on the ledges and columns of the church. They seemed to be moving in a slow, dreamlike manner, their mouths curling in screams and snarls and their hands clutching on the edges of the stone they crouched upon. There were many of the stone creatures, hunched reptilians, grotesque little imps, snub-headed goblins and craggy-faced men with gaping mouths.
They were alive and yet not.
He looked back and saw that, against all odds, the Bloodgoyles' reaction to the cries was to shriek in confusion and stop abruptly, swerving away from the immediate vicinity of the church. They seemed unable to tolerate the gargoyles' cries and even the greater demon's progress was halted. The ice spears stopped coming and it seemed to hesitate. It roared in rage and made an attempt to approach but was herded off as a crescendo of the gargoyles' screams rose to meet its approach. It roared again and retreated, trying to circle around the small clearing the church stood in.
The church's bell tolled suddenly, a loud, somber din that felt palpable and seemed to push the demons away even further.
The moment Dante crossed the threshold of the church, a horrible sensation of confusion overtook him. He could barely breathe suddenly and a chill ran down his spine. He felt… nauseous, almost, the ground under his feet swaying like the deck of a boat caught in a storm. Terror rose from the pit of his stomach and he wanted to turn around and run right back outside. Every effort he made to compose himself backfired as he felt even more confused. He knew this place quite literally screamed safety but it also didn't want him there. His demonic instincts howled in protest and outrage and fright. He looked up into the vaulted ceiling of the old church and saw more gargoyles and had the uncomfortable feeling they were glaring at him. He felt potent, ancient magic permeating the place and it was bearing down on him like the scorching midday sun.
He dropped to a knee just as Tess let go of his hand to whip around and hurriedly slam shut the heavy doors behind them.
"Wha… what the hell?" he muttered. "Tess, what the fuck—"
"Quiet, I have to do something!" she said in a panic. "These guardians will wreak havoc on you – this place is a church now but once it was the hallowed grounds of a coven."
The screaming of the gargoyles rose to an insufferable pitch and Dante felt like he would throw up. He was panting and stumbled back against the doors. He had half a mind to break them open and run away. Tess ran forward to the middle of the small church, bushing pews aside and uncovering a pattern on the tiled floor.
"The building's dormant protections are still here, I have to just… adjust them…" Tess was panting, trying to uncover more of the pattern under old, moldy carpets.
Dante could hear the grinding of stone as the gargoyles moved above him and it filled him with dread. Tess was trying to do something; Dante could feel the sputters of magic over the pattern on the floor. Like an engine that coughed and coughed but wouldn't start. Dante noticed that red droplets dripped from her arm – his coat's sleeve was torn where she'd been injured. The smell of pennies and sweetness hit his nostrils again but he couldn't pay attention to it.
"Come on!" Tess said in frustration.
"Twig…" her groaned, sliding to a crouch and actually had to clutch his head. He was feeling dizzy and disoriented.
Tess shouted in indignation and kicked a pew. She tried again and this time whatever she did seemed to unfurl painfully slow and spread, then she whipped around and shook her fist upwards.
"Stop it! Stop it, you damn pipsqueaks!" she screamed. "What sorta half-baked guardians are you!?"
There was a sudden lull in the screaming that was almost… surprised.
"Leave him alone, you idiots!" the girl shrieked. She pointed at Dante, still glaring at the forms overhead. "I brought him here; I'm taking responsibility for him being here. I don't care if he smells funny to you little shits, you'll leave him alone! Your old masters are dead, get it?! But you're here, you're doing your job and protecting witches and you'll damn well protect my allies so SHUT! UP!"
She stamped her foot in her indignation and the weakly unfolding magic shot outward invisibly like a wave, the resistance it encountered gone. Dante might've doubled over laughing if he didn't feel so damn awful. Her glaring, her hair turned wild from the running and the wind and even bits of snow and twigs caught in it, his oversized coat – she honestly looked like a mad witch in red that had stepped out of a folk story.
But the gargoyles responded and fell silent – or at least their cries inside the church ceased. The building's protective abilities still kept the demons at bay but inside, Dante felt the pressure on him slacking. He took a deep breath and recovered his composure and his dignity, getting to his admittedly rather wobbly feet and brushing his hair off his face. His breathing evened out and his chest didn't hurt any more. He ran his hands over his face before looking up. The ice shard still left in his leg hurt and still wasn't healing. He no longer felt the gaze of these now silent guardians and wondered whether they'd been so startled by the young witch's rant that they just obeyed.
Tess was panting and had to reach out and steady herself against a pew, palming her forehead and trying to control her breathing. She looked up and they stared at each other awkwardly.
"What?" she blurted defensively.
"You have a fun approach to magic, Twig," he said.
"What the fuck was I supposed to do? Witchcraft can't be an elegant flick of the wrist every time. Sometimes a lot of screaming is all that works."
Dante blurted a bemused laugh and limped further into the church at last, casting a quick look around and listening to his footsteps echo around the vaulted hall. The narrow windows let him catch glimpses of Bloodgoyles circling the structure from a distance and once in a while, he saw a bigger, darker shadow sweep past further back. A nasty snowstorm was battering the building, no doubt caused by the demon and he could hear the shingles on the roof rattling and pieces of ice shattering on the windows. Sometimes, an angry growling would punctuate the howling of the wind.
It sounded angry.
Tess followed him further into the church, lighting some of the half-melted candles left in altars around the church with tired flicks of her hand. She finally collapsed on the steps leading to the altar, managing to catch herself before she hit the ground and just sat down, exhausted. She rested her elbows on her knees and tucked her face in her hands.
"That thing outside…" she muttered. "Just… it's so powerful. What is it doing here? Do you think it's what caused that madman to change?"
Dante didn't answer immediately, staring out the window at the circling foes. He was trying to think of how they could get out of this predicament. "I told ya we'd run into the big cheese tonight, didn't I?" he said at last. "Just didn't think he'd be this big."
He slowly paced back and forth, thinking. Outside the snowstorm was still raging. The cries of the Bloodgoyles grew more distant but he knew it in his gut that the bigger demon was still lurking around.
"I don't get how it got here, either. Demons that big can't just… pop up out of nowhere," he mused, raking his brains to think of how they could flee. "They can't travel to the human realm as they please. Someone… brought it here."
He didn't think he could take this thing on right now. He felt drained and his leg was not cooperating.
"If that's the case… that person might be dead," Tess said, pulling twigs out of her hair. "I mean… this thing… it's so big. I've never seen a demon like this and… and—"
Dante turned and looked her because her voice trailed off and she stared ahead of her blankly. Her jaw started to tremble. Her hand, midway in the motion of pulling another twig out of her hair, dropped to her lap slowly. Her shoulders hunched together and she seemed to draw into herself. Her brows creased with worry.
He knew that look. He'd seen it in his face in the mirror sometimes.
She leaned forward and pressed the balls of her clenched hands against her forehead, hyperventilating and hunching forward.
"No… no… no… don't go there…" she whispered shakily.
Dante found himself limping over to her and sat down beside her, grunting as he slouched. He breathed in and tried to take the chunk of ice shard out of his leg. Most had broken off and the rest had frozen in place and it hurt to tug it, but Dante glanced at her. She looked so scared and in fact, when she started trembling he knew it wasn't just because the church was growing colder.
He scooched closer to her and put his arm around her, to which she reacted by growing tense. Most people would elect to be gentle in this situation. They'd try to coax it out of her slowly.
Dante was not most people.
"You have seen something like this before," he said flatly.
He wanted to know just what she had seen that made her shut down so quickly. He actually caught himself feeling worried about her. The church provided a kind of safety that nearly lulled him into letting his guard down but he still listened. The snowstorm raged on and the slow, ponderous movement of the great demon outside hadn't stopped. It was lurking now, waiting them out.
"Yes," she said lifelessly. She seemed to just shrink against him even more. "They… they came when I was little. I don't remember a lot. I try not to."
He prevented his hand from clutching at her shoulder too tightly but his jaw set. That familiar tone, that familiar emptiness.
She tugged at some of her hair and her hand was shaking. "I remember the rain. It rained the night they came."
"What happened?"
He felt her stiffen up again and she needed a few moments to answer. She spoke quietly.
"The screams woke me up. Mom burst into my room – I remember her hair being such a mess," she whispered. "She carried me out of bed, saying I had to hide."
He watched her hand go at her neck and tug a small silver necklace hanging by a black cord from inside her shirt. Nothing but a small, flat disk with a pattern of three moons. She nervously pawed at it and it seemed to calm her.
Dante bit his lip. Knowing her father's history, this wasn't surprising. The demons had come back for him. He wondered how she was telling him this so easily; he could picture her barely ever opening up to anyone – he bet that even Roy had to bully or coax it out of her in turns. Maybe he caught her off guard, or maybe suspecting that he understood the experience intimately was comforting to her. He gave her shoulder a light squeeze.
"I heard… dad shout. They're coming. He had a workshop attached to the house – he made things. With metal. Jewelry, sculptures—"
Her voice cracked. "There was a hatch in the floor, where he stored materials. Mom sent me into the storage nook. I hated it down there. It was dark and dusty. But she told me to run. To get out from there and run – I'd… I'd done it before, I think."
She wasn't crying, but Tess' eyes were wide and scared and she stared ahead of her blankly.
"You have to run, she said. Whatever happens, run," she echoed the words of a woman long dead.
She almost began to rock back and forth slowly. "I tried… I crawled under the floorboards to reach the back yard. I was so small that I… I fit through. But I panicked."
Her voice grew weaker. "I couldn't move. I heard… I heard—they told dad to go back to them, that he could save me because – because I could be like him," she quavered. "But dad knew they were going to kill mom and lie. He refused. He said he'd rather we all die than… than-"
She tucked her face in her hands and breathed hard. "I couldn't run away. I heard them kill him. He fought so hard but they… they killed him. I saw his blood seeping between the boards…"
Dante fought back a shiver and swallowed hard. The visceral way she described it threatened to bring up his own awful recollections. Part of him screamed to have her stop, to silence this wave of grief but he felt compelled to listen. It would be hard to stop her now, at any rate.
"Mom screamed for a long time," she said, staring at the floor. "I couldn't move, I was so scared. I just… I heard her screaming and there was… nothing I could do. I don't… I don't know what they did to her. I just know she… she…"
She shuddered violently. "I felt them walking around. They were… they were looking for me and—and—"
She took a shaky breath. "They found me," she whimpered. "They pulled me out of the floor like a rat. And I don't… I can't remember what happened then. Just…just—"
Her voice became laced with panic. "I can't remember a thing after that…"
Dante let go of a breath he didn't realize he was holding and stared at the floor. He found nothing to really say. He could only think about the irony of how alike they were. His arm was still wrapped around her shoulders and he drew her closer softly.
"Hey, it's alright. Calm down," he said and actually sounded soothing. "Deep breaths."
She didn't resist, just stared at the floor blankly, trying to stop her anxious breathing.
"You know… I kinda suspected this when your grandma and Roy told me about your dad," he admitted. "I just… I guess I'm not used to hearing these kinda stories from survivors. You made it out, that's what matters. You're stronger than Magda thinks you are."
Tess looked up at him. She looked a bit surprised and her face was still fixed in a mix of fear and worry.
"You gotta pull yourself together, now, though," he added, looking at her. "We're still stuck in this mess – that thing's outside and it'll either wait us out or find a way to blow through the walls to get to us."
"R-right…"
"Plus, the scared little girl look doesn't suit ya," he said cheekily. "It's better when you're a hissy little wildcat."
All the while, Dante had been fiddling with the ice shard in his leg, working it free little by little. He finally managed to pull it out with a nasty sucking and crunching noise and blood poured from the wound onto the floor. It seemed to shake Tess out of her panic attack and she flinched.
"Ugh! Don't—don't do that where I can see it! You know that's gross, right?!" she protested. She then stood up and pulled his coat off and held it out to him. "Put it back on, you'll need it more than me."
Dante smirked up at her and took it back. "Getting' squeamish on me. Twig?"
Tess frowned at her and bent down to have a look at his leg but seemed unable to do much. The wound wasn't healing and that started to worry Dante. It didn't hurt as much as he thought it might but that might have to do with the fact that the skin around it was frozen over.
"Sometimes I can't decide whether I like you, or whether I want you to eat shit and die," she muttered.
He grinned at her frustration, stood up and swept the coat over his shoulders after taking his sword off. "Anyway, we need a plan to get outta here, or we're boned."
"You're right. We're trapped rats in here, and—"
A tremor shook the church and the two of them backed up against each other from surprise. The screams of the gargoyles rose to an angry pitch and Dante had the impression something had rushed in, pressing itself against whatever protected them, trying to smother it. Then a loud sound came from beyond the walls, like a gritty rush of wind, a crack of thunder and an animal's roar rolled together; the ground shook again for a moment and the howling of wind died out, as did the pattering of snow on the windows. The gargoyles silenced themselves all together at once. Both teens stared at each other for a moment, then looked around anxiously during the eerie, long silence. Dante reached for his guns.
A loud, inhuman scream cracked the silence, indignant and drawn, followed by the noise of heavy wings flapping away in a hurry before silence descended upon them. The teenagers remained silent, only their hard breathing and the blood pounding in their ears echoing around them. Dante could feel the tightness in the air slacking.
The next moment, the doors of the church unbolted themselves and one of them creaked open. Dante frantically pointed both his guns towards it but then lowered them immediately when Roy's figure appeared there, panting and looking like he'd run a mile. His wrinkled face was twisted in anxiety and his hair, usually well-groomed, was a mess.
"Why are you two out here? Come on, we're going back. Now!" he said sharply. He didn't shout, but had a very commanding tone to his voice that warned the two not to dare raise any objections.
Dante put his guns away and smiled broadly despite Roy's tone. He was downright glad to see him. He limped towards him with Tess in tow, ignoring the fact that blood was seeping from his still open wound.
"Damn, am I glad to see you, Roy," he blurted.
Roy's gaze travelled from Dante's leg wound to the gash on Tess' arm and he looked quite unhappy, favoring the kids with a hard scowl.
"Yes, I can see that. Come on, move it; we shouldn't stay here for long," he said gruffly.
But he breathed out hard and the way he took Dante's arm to help him walk showed how relieved he was to find them both safe.
Tess looked up at him guiltily as she followed. "Roy…"
"Not a word Tess," he interrupted her sharply. "Be glad Magda's busy and I won't tell her a thing about this. She'd have you both hanged. For all intents and purposes, Dante was here alone. Home, now."
Tess looked too tired to retort and both kids allowed Roy to usher them out of the park. Dante looked around as Roy broomed them towards the park gates; the snow lay thick on the ground but the unnatural weight in the air and cold had subsided. There was no trace of the great demon to be found. He blinked a bit at the state of the ground around the church; it looked like a bulldozer had rampaged through it, earth and snow turned over in large gashes. The gate of the park they had climbed earlier now lay smashed open.
He gulped awkwardly and narrowed his eyes at Roy. What was the old man really hiding?
Dante felt his leg loosen a little bit as they moved away from the church but the wound hadn't healed yet and that worried him. He'd never seen an injury of his that refused to heal. He glanced back at the park. Regardless of what Roy said, he had to come back and search it properly. That demon couldn't be allowed to run around freely – not to mention that massive flock of Bloodgoyles.
For now, though, it seemed he and Tess would have to deal with Roy first.