Outer Devils
The BAU began to relax when it became obvious that no more demons were going to appear. The danger seemingly past, the three holstered their weapons and worked on trying to free the girls.
Their enemies gone, Dante, Nero, and the two women also put away their weapons and headed to the altar. The two men brushed sand off of their clothes, having been practically buried in the dusty grains during the battle.
"Why is it always in my hair?" Nero complained, shaking his head to try to dislodge the sand.
"I don't suppose any of you managed to find a key for these," Prentiss asked, tugging futility once more at the chains binding the girls to the altar.
"No, and we don't have time to look," Dante answered. "Nobody can control that many Hells without a Hell Vanguard to command them, and the host of this party still hasn't shown his face." Demonic hearing caught the sound of approaching sirens. "Your friends are almost here. They can help you get the girls to safety while we finish taking out the trash here."
Drawing Rebellion once more, Dante brought it down on the chains that bound Patty, shattering them with a single stroke. Nero also began freeing the other girls, claws tearing through iron links like paper. In a minute, all eight girls were free, only the cuffs of the shackles that had bound them left on their wrists and ankles.
Leaning Rebellion against the stone altar, Dante shrugged off his coat and draped it over Party's bare shoulders, covering her nakedness. The others followed suit, Rossi and Prentiss removing their suit jackets, Nero shedding both his long coat and hoodie, Lady and Trish taking off their motorcycle jackets, and Reid shucking off the light jacket he had worn to ward off the sudden chill of a desert summer's night. Soon, all eight girls were at least partially clothed against the cool night air.
By now, the approaching sirens were close enough to be heard by human ears. They were heading straight to the warehouse, following the GPS signal of Rossi's phone.
The BAU urged the girls toward the hole where the warehouse doors used to be, intending to get them out before another round of battle could start. Through the open doorway, they could see the flashing lights of the approaching police cars. Before they reached the doorway, however, a haunting laugh started up, seeming to come from every direction at once.
"My, my. You aren't thinking of leaving so soon, now, are you?" a voice called out, echoing throughout the building.
Suddenly, a red light appeared at the bottom of the walls. The light moved up the walls, covering the open doorway and merging at the ceiling, trapping them in a box of shifting red light.
"Shit," Dante muttered. "A barrier spell."
"Nobody's getting in or out until the caster is dead or dispels it, or certain conditions are met," Trish explained to the FBI.
At the other side of the warehouse, glowing blue dust swirled and spun before coalescing into two figures. One was a pale, gaunt figure clad in a tattered black cloak and wielding a truly massive scythe with a glowing purple blade. The other seemed a normal, ordinary man of average height, slight of build, with brown hair and eyes, and dressed in a slightly worn suit. The look of hate on his face, however, was anything but ordinary.
"The Dark Knight Dante," the man sneered, bowing mockingly. "It's an honor."
"It seems you have me at a disadvantage," Dante stated, voice deceptively light. "You know my name, but I have no clue who you are."
"How rude of me. My name is Jarrod Delere," the man said, "and I, son of Sparda, will be your death!"
"If Mundus, Abigail, and Sanctus couldn't put me down, what makes you think that a human like you could finish the job," the hunter replied.
"This pathetic mortal body that you see before you is merely a shell," Delere asserted. "I shed my humanity long ago in my pursuit of power. You may have shattered my plans to bring a greater devil into this world, but you're still no match for me!"
With a burst of demonic power, Jarrod changed, his body shifting, flesh flowing like wax. In seconds, what stood in his place was no longer a man, but a monster.
A dog-like head, maw filled with teeth like knives, sat atop a thick, heavily muscled neck. Powerful arms ended in crab-like pincers. Broad shoulders and a barrel chest tapered down to a narrow waist. Strong legs were hooved and a scaled tail eeled behind Jarrod's body. Scales randomly interspersed the coarse brown fur that covered his body.
"Lady, Trish, help the feds get the girls into a corner and keep them safe. Nero, you take the Hell Vanguard and I'll take the big boss." Dante's grin was frighteningly bloodthirsty. "Let's party!"
Simultaneously, Dante and Nero rushed their respective targets. As the two part-devils engaged the enemy once more, Rossi, Reid, Prentiss, and the two female hunters backed the girls into the nearest corner. When they passed the broken door, the agents saw lizard-like demons swarming just beyond the red barrier and heard the sound of gunshots. The CCPD had arrived.
Outside the warehouse, the seven squad cars filled with the men Sergeant Molina had gathered were joined by two ambulances and the BAU's second SUV containing Hotchner, Morgan, JJ, and Agent Lopez.
The cops and the federal agents exited their vehicles, weapons trained on the warehouse's open doorway. Suddenly, two dozen monsters burst out of the ground between the cars and the warehouse. They looked like giant armored lizards, with long, deadly looking claws on their left hands and small metal shields strapped to their right forearms. The creatures howled and charged the cops.
The officers and agents opened fire. The leading monsters paused, raised shields deflecting bullets, and Morgan cursed. "What the hell are they?" he demanded, shooting at the creatures from around the side of the SUV's door.
"Demons!" Lopez shouted back from the other side of the SUV. "Blades and Assaults! Their backs are armored, but their undersides are vulnerable. If you manage to shatter their masks, you have a clear shot to the head. But stay behind cover; some of them can shoot their claws like missiles!"
They continued to lay down fire, even as the demons resumed their attack. A leaping Assault caught a stomach full of lead, courtesy of a few well-timed shots by Hotch, and dropped. "What should we do?" Hotch asked Agent Lopez, pausing to reload.
"Just keep doing what you're doing. If we're lucky, Dante and your team are distracting their master enough that he can't summon reinforcements." Lopez replied.
"And if we're not lucky?"
"Then most of us aren't coming out of this alive." The conversation ended there, the agents too busy fighting off the Blades and Assaults to talk.
Sergeant Molina and his men had apparently come prepared for demons. Most of them had switched out their service pieces for shotguns and assault rifles, nearly every other shot shattering a mask or bringing down a lizard demon.
In less than ten minutes, it was over. Overwhelming firepower had quickly decimated the demons' numbers before most had gotten close enough to bring their claws into play. The few that had gotten close had inflicted only minor injuries. The most badly wounded was a cop who has gotten hit in the side by the claws that one of the demons had shot off. He and the rest of the injured were being treated by the paramedics as the more able-bodied officers took up their positions once more.
"Why aren't we going in?" JJ asked, wiping away blood from a shallow cut on her forehead.
"See that red light?" Lopez replied, pointing at the open warehouse door. "That's a barrier. Nothing's getting in or out until it goes down."
"So, what, we're just supposed to sit here and wait?" Morgan said, agitated.
"Unless more demons show up? Yes." The PID agent stated.
As the battle outside the warehouse was going on, things inside were heating up. The girls were huddled in a corner of the building, the BAU standing guard once more. With a curt, "Here," Lady handed over extra ammunition to the agents, having taken note of the types and calibers of each of their guns. Thanking her, the BAU quickly reloaded their weapons and waited, watching the battle.
Nero was taking on the Hell Vanguard blade to blade; Red Queen striking sparks off of the Vanguard's giant scythe. Moving in a flurry of blocks and parries, almost too fast for the human eye to follow, the two moved back and forth, each gaining and losing ground in turn.
The tiniest of openings in the Vanguard's defense appeared for the shortest of moments, and Nero took advantage, trapping the scythe in a downward block. He squeezed Red Queen's gear shift, coating the blade in fuel. With a twist of his wrist, he revved the Exceed system, engulfing the sword in flames as he swung it back up at the Hell Vanguard, triggering at the same time.
The Devil Trigger powered EX-High Roller launched the Vanguard into the air. Not wasting a single moment, Nero followed it up, striking at it with Red Queen and his Trigger's spectral Yamato. He followed the flurry of blows with a powerful, Exceed-enhanced overhead strike. The red-hot blade split the demon in half, black cloak fluttering apart in ragged strips. The two halves of the Hell Vanguard dissolved into blue sand, drifting down around Nero as he landed back on the concrete, his Devil Trigger fading.
Dante had been just as quick in taking the fight to the monster Delere had become. A slash from Rebellion was blocked by one pincer claw, and Dante briefly broke away to avoid a return strike from its brother. He reversed direction suddenly, dashing back towards Delere. A claw swung at him again as he closed, and with split-second timing he jumped and landed on it, using it as a platform to leap even higher, sword over his head with the intent of cleaving Delere in two.
Once again a pincer blocked his strike, the force of the blow cracking the hard exoskeleton so that black ichor oozed from the fissure. Dante let gravity reclaim him, switching to Ebony and Ivory mid-air to fire continuously at the weakness in Delere's armor.
Landing, Dante rolled across the ground to dodge another swipe, keeping up his rate of fire. The damage was finally too much for the broken limb and it shattered, spraying black ichor in a rain of goo.
The demon beast roared in pain, flailing about in agony. Dante dodged a stomping hoof, then ducked a lashing tail before rushing back into melee range, absently noting the flash of blue light that heralded Nero's Devil Trigger.
Another stomp of a hooved foot was accompanied by a shockwave of demonic power, knocking Dante back. The shockwave also kicked up a cloud of sand, obscuring Dante's vision. Experience and instinct had him running out of the dust cloud just before a beam of light slammed into where he had been standing.
The air clearing, Dante took in the sight of his enemy. Delere had grown bigger, his shattered limb regrown, and spikes now protruded from all over his body. Delere actually seemed to be absorbing the sandy remains of the Hell demons, using the demonically charged dust to increase his own demonic power.
Blue sand joined the stream of dust that Delere was absorbing and Dante knew that Nero had finished off his own opponent. In Delere's open mouth, a pinpoint of white energy quickly grew, and Dante was forced to dodge the powerful beam attack.
Normally, Dante's devil blood urged him to drag out his fights, to allow his enemies to pull out every stop so that he could experience new and interesting techniques and tactics before he crushed his opponents once they were no longer interesting. In any other fight, he would have taunted his enemy, enraging them until they had unleashed all they had and everything they knew in their frenzied attempts to kill the annoying half-devil. Once they were done, Dante would cut them down with a quip and a smile.
This time, however, Dante had been eerily silent, not a single joke or taunt falling from his lips since the battle had begun. Nero had followed his lead, the kid uncharacteristically quiet in his own fight with the Hell Vanguard.
Dante was furious, both at Delere for daring to lay a hand on someone Dante considered under his protection, and at himself for letting Patty out of his sight to be taken. Dante wanted Delere dead, good fight be damned, and he wanted it now.
The hunter tapped into the power that ran through his veins, feeling his Trigger come over him in a burst of energy. Body overflowing with demonic power, Dante resumed the fight.
The rest of the battle was short and brutal. Every blow of Rebellion rent flesh, shattered bone, and cracked exoskeleton. Every futile attempt at defense was utterly destroyed. The battle was over in seconds, and what little remained of Jarrod Delere was in bloody chunks strewn throughout the warehouse, with the demonic form of Dante standing untouched in the middle of the gore.
The agents of the BAU had watched the battles with growing fear and disbelief. Nero had taken out his opponent with little effort, utilizing that terrifying blue specter. Dante…Dante had become a monster, tearing into his enemy with a brutality better suited to a mindless beast.
The monster that had once been Dante turned toward the group in the corner. Looking like a cross between a lizard and an insect, the red and black-hided creature that strode their way set off a primal fear in the most primitive part of their brains. Its chest glowed with a golden light, pouring from cracks in the red scales as if Dante's body held so much power that it was straining to contain it. Face emotionless, glowing eyes glanced over them with indifference, and the unprepared humans quailed beneath the devil's gaze.
All of them, but one.
With a joyful cry of, "Dante!" Patty, still wrapped in Dante's red coat, tried to run to the devil before them. Prentiss grabbed at her, trying to keep the young girl from racing to her death, but it was a futile endeavor. Squirming free of restraining hands, Patty ran to Dante's devil-form, tears in her eyes.
Patty didn't slow down before she hit Dante, the force of her small body slamming into him not even swaying the red devil, and little hands clutched at scaly hide. Black, clawed hands rested gently on thin shoulders, carefully holding Patty as she cried into his stomach.
As the onlookers watched, the terrifying form of the devil faded away. Claws retracted, scaled hide softened, spikes melted away, leaving behind a more human-looking Dante. Murmuring softly to the girl he treated like a little sister, Dante knelt and took Patty into his arms. He picked her up as he stood, holding her like she was the most precious thing in the world.
Only once he was certain that Patty was safe did Dante turn to Trish, Lady, and the BAU.
"Think you ladies can help the feds get the rest of the girls to the proper authorities?" he asked. "Me and Nero are gonna take Patty back to the shop to get dressed before we take her to her mom's place."
Lady nodded. "I think we can handle things from here." She turned to Nero. "I'll make sure you get your clothes back, kid."
"Ah, thanks, Lady," Nero said, rubbing the back of his neck with his human hand.
"Wait!" Rossi called as the two hunters turned to leave. "Thank you, Dante," Rossi continued when they turned back. "We couldn't have saved these girls without you and your partners' help."
"Just doing our jobs, Agent Rossi," Dante replied.
Rossi shook his head. "You did more than that. You could have let us walk in here alone, without any clue about what we were up against, and then mopped up after we were dead. But you didn't."
"You didn't deserve that fate." Dante shifted the sleepy Patty in his arms, moving her so she slept with her head against his chest. "Oh, and, uh, Dr. Reid, right?" Reid nodded. "Think about what I said earlier. Bad guys never expect someone who can literally see what they are about to do next."
This time, Dante and Nero did leave, going out through the warehouse's far doors.
"How are they planning on getting back to the car without the police noticing?" Prentiss questioned Trish and Lady.
"The rooftops, probably," Trish answered.
"Speaking from experience there?" Lady quipped. Trish only smirked in response.
"Are we going home?" one of the girls asked in a small voice, pulling Lady's motorcycle jacket tighter around her.
"Not yet, sweetie," Rossi replied, his voice low and soothing. "First we have to get you girls somewhere safe and have a doctor take a look at you."
"But…our parents…our families…" another girl spoke up, her voice trailing off.
"I'm sorry," Reid began. "Your relatives have been contacted, and some of them are already in the city, waiting for you."
Prentiss walked over to the ruins of the warehouse doors. "Come on; let's get you out of here."
They led the girls out of the warehouse to the sight of half a dozen squad cars, lights flashing, and armed officers with their weapons trained on the warehouse doorway.
At the sight of the girls, the officers lowered their guns. The next hour was a blur of activity. Armed police stormed the empty warehouse, searching for any sign of the perpetrators. The remaining seven girls were rushed to the waiting ambulances, where they were wrapped up in shock blankets and looked over by paramedics. Anxious relatives exited cop cars to tearfully reunite with nieces, cousins, and granddaughters.
Off to the side, watching the controlled chaos of the crime scene, were Agent Lopez and the reunited BAU.
"So, what happened to you?" Prentiss asked, pointing to the bandage on JJ's head.
JJ lightly touched the bandage. "Demons, according to Lopez. I didn't quite duck fast enough and got clipped by a claw."
"You fought demons, too?" Reid was surprised.
"Yeah," Morgan confirmed. "There was a whole swarm of giant lizards. The bodies dissolved and disappeared a few minutes before you came out, though."
"Dave, what happened in there?" Hotch asked. "Where are the Unsubs?"
"Unsub," Rossi corrected. "He said his name was Jarrod Delere."
"Where is he, man," Morgan demanded. "Don't tell me he got away!"
"I almost wish he did," said Rossi. "All they'll find in there are scattered chunks of flesh."
"Rossi, what happened?" JJ asked.
"Delere turned into a monster. And then Dante turned into something worse." Rossi shook his head. "Dante really is his father's son. Thankfully for us, he also seems to share his father's love of humans."
"That sounds about right," Lopez finally spoke up. "We'd be in a lot of trouble if Dante didn't take after Sparda so much."
"And you are?" asked Reid.
"Agent Rick Lopez, from the FBI's Paranormal Investigative Division." He waved his hand at the crime scene. "This case was supposed to be ours, but it ended up in the BAU's hands by mistake."
"What would have happened if the PID had gotten the case?" Prentiss asked.
"Truth be told, it wouldn't have been much different than this," Lopez admitted. "We would have gotten in contact with Dante or one of his partners and hired them to find the girls and kill the demons. Stuff like this is too big for our usual teams to handle."
"Dante might have even done it for free," a voice said from behind them. The agents turned to see Lady and Trish, back in their jackets, walking towards them, Lady carrying Nero's coat and hoodie. "Dante tries to hide it, but he has a ridiculously big heart," Lady continued. "He has a tendency to waive his fee if he believes the cause is worth it."
"Thank you for your help, ladies," Rossi said. "I don't think Dante ever introduced us, though."
"Lady."
"Trish. And there's really no need to thank us," Trish assured. "Like Dante said, we were just doing our jobs."
"We should probably get going," Lady stated, eyeing the cops on the scene. "It'll save us from the inevitable questions. Good luck, agents."
The two women turned away and walked into the darkness, leaving Lopez, the BAU, and unanswered questions behind.