Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry: the Animated Series, sure wish I did though…

Long Live the Queen

When Patty started seeing spider-webs appearing along the edges of the hallway she knew that something was up, because unlike the cobwebs in the mansion and basement rooms, these webs looked recent. And that definitely set off alarm bells in the back of her mind, for no other reason than the fact that regular spiders definitely shouldn't have been able to survive down there for as long as the sub-basement had been sealed…Yeah, those webs weren't a good sign.

It wasn't like she could just turn around and go back though, so she took a deep breath, steeled her nerves, and continued walking, grateful for the illuminating glow of the lantern hanging from her belt. The light from the strange-looking thing meant that she didn't have to squint to try and see through shadows around her, which meant that she was able to react faster when a demon appeared out of the dust on the floor. The ones that did were quickly sent back from whence they came courtesy of a bullet to the head.

One of the things that really worried her though was the fact that the kid (she really needed to think up a name for him at some point) hadn't made a peep the entire time she had been carrying him around, and though she was no expert on kids she knew that that wasn't normal. Silently fretting about whether she had somehow missed something wrong with the kid, she was more determined than ever to finish up this job quickly and go find someone who would be able to tell her what the heck was up with the baby she was carrying around. Swiftly raising a gun and absently killing a Hell Pride who materialized at her side, her train of thought continued on, as firing her gun brought up another question: weren't babies supposed to cry or something at sudden noises?

The shots from her guns weren't exactly quiet, but the kid still hadn't made a single sound, and that really raised some red flags.

Still, there wasn't anything she could do about it, she told herself yet again, so concentrate on the job at hand and worry about everything else after she killed the remaining demons and blew the place up. She checked her guns, reloaded them, and looked back towards where she was going just as she felt the toe of her right boot hit something and heard a clattering noise. Stopping and looking down, she wished she hadn't as she saw the white bone a foot away from her feet, obviously where it had stopped after she had accidentally kicked it.

Glancing around, she saw that the hallway around her was practically decked in glistening webs, the stone the passageway was made of barely visible beneath the thick strands. And looking down at the floor again, she saw that the bone she had kicked wasn't the only one there, and she had the sinking feeling that she had found what had happened to the rest of the missing people…

Swallowing back the bile that threatened to rise into her throat, she narrowed her eyes as she carefully looked around at the walls and even up at the ceiling, making sure that there were no demons clinging to any of them. There weren't, but she wasn't about to let her guard down this late into the mission, especially not now that she had a newborn baby to look out for. She had a bad feeling that something bad was waiting at the end of the corridor she was walking down, but that was about par for the course on this job, she mentally noted. She was also more certain than ever that there was a stronger demon controlling the foot soldiers she had fought so far, and she hoped that she was getting closer to the big boss so that she could wrap up this twisted job as quick as possible.

The blonde was also itching to use the explosives she had been lugging around, but that would come later after she'd killed the remaining demons, she told herself firmly. Eyeing the web-covered walls apprehensively, she was pretty sure she knew what kind of demon she would be up against next. She remembered Dante's stories about the different kinds of demons he'd faced when he was younger, and she was pretty sure that the large webs belonged to one kind in particular…

With the lantern on her belt providing amble light to see by and her firmly ignoring the various bones she just knew were scattered beneath the threads, she noticed that the passageway ahead was beginning to get lighter with no help from the lantern she carried. Her muscles tensing in preparation for a fight, even more than they already were that is, she was suspicious of the fact that no more Hell Prides or Hell Lusts had attempted to ambush her. That was both a good and a bad thing: a good thing because it meant she could conserve what ammunition she had left, and a bad thing because it meant that something ahead of her had scared the weaker demons off.

Checking the clips in her guns one more time, reassured that they were indeed fully loaded, she passed through to the source of the light, blinking quickly to avoid being blinded by the sudden change in illumination. A quick scan of this newest chamber made her think that maybe she would have preferred being blinded.

If she had thought the passageway had been covered in spider-webs, it had nothing on the chamber she had stepped into. The first word that came to mind was 'large' and she now knew why she had had to go down so many stairs to get to where she was now. She was standing at the entrance to a circular chamber, with a high ceiling, the top of which disappeared into shadows before she could see it, and around the chamber were pillars carved into the walls themselves. The carvings, however, were almost completely concealed beneath layers of thick white webbing, though she could see a skeletal hand or leg sticking out between gaps in the threads. The chamber looked like a giant spider's paradise, she thought as she eyed the webbing holding the bones off the floor and disappearing towards the darkened ceiling.

The bones in this chamber, she concluded, were a lot older than the few weeks that people had been disappearing from the house – and there were a lot more of them than the drifters and teenagers that had vanished would account for. The source of the light she had seen came from the carvings of demonic faces on the various pillars, the mouths of which gaped open to form an alcove and emitted a glowing light. She didn't take the time to count how many of the light sources there were, since all that mattered was that they illuminated the chamber and let her see what was around her clearly. Turning slightly to look at either side, she saw that the demon-faced carving on the pillar to her right, right next to the entrance to the chamber, wasn't glowing. The alcove was a foot and a half tall and almost a foot deep, she estimated, an idea niggling at the back of her mind as she looked around carefully for any demons.

Patty really, really hoped that the unlit demon carving wasn't booby-trapped or anything like that as, acting quickly as she shrugged off her backpack of explosives and drew the baby into the crook of one arm. Setting the backpack down below the empty carving, she gently set the kid inside the demon-carvings unlit mouth, waiting tensely for several minutes after letting go of him to see if anything would happen. Nothing did, and she sighed in relief as she leaned back to look at the baby's rather unnerving violet eyes – the kid actually seemed pretty comfortable and didn't seem inclined to make a fuss now that she'd set him down.

Her guns in her hands, the heir to the Lowell legacy was just straightening up and preparing to turn around when a mocking, grating voice spoke up behind her, coming from the opposite side of the room.

"Well now, since you've got your little kiddy settled, how about we get down to the real fun?"

A shrieking laugh sounded – in triplicate – and the seventeen year-old demon hunter slowly turned to face the open chamber.

Author's Note: And there you go, chapter 10. Sorry it took me so long, got besieged by plot bunnies for two separate series and got distracted by some pretty good ideas. This chapter goes out to LittleBounce, my chat-buddy and fantastic writer in her own right; I highly recommend you read her stories over in the Grimm fandom over in the TV Show section.