The corner of his lip twitched and he brought the glass up to take a swig of the ruby red liquid. He put his drink down carefully, in the precise spot it had been before, and dropped his fist on the counter beside it. The angry breath he let out made me quickly withdraw my hand from his shoulder. Clearly, he wasn't happy to see me.

"I thought you were dead," I said, and dropped my voice to a whisper, glancing at the other customers wearily. "So did Eva. When did you come back from the demon world?"

Vergil straightened up and rolled his shoulders, scanning the club with grimly narrowed eyes.

"Why haven't you come home?" I persisted. "Do you know how happy Eva will be when she sees you? And Dante would be just as happy. He's missed you a lot."

At the last, Vergil finally looked at me. There was something savagely callous behind his gaze, something that I don't recall ever seeing so obvious and extreme. I instinctively cringed away from him, but I wasn't about to let him scare me off.

"What are you doing in the club any way?" I asked. "You put the people here on edge."

A cruel smile curled his lips at that. He tilted his head to the side and scrutinized me from head to toe. I fidgeted when his gaze seemed to stick on my arms.
"Does Dante know where you are?"

His voice had broken into a deeper baritone than Dante's, and the refined drawl in his speech was hypnotic. Like a different kind of music, a very pleasant sound. It left me staring at him like an idiot before his words registered in my head, and then every muscle in my body was screaming at me to run like hell.

"Uh... well, yeah, of course he does," I stammered, and jolted off my stool when he reached for me.

"Everything okay here?" one of the indoor bouncers appeared to melt out of the shadows, eyeing Vergil with dislike.

"I was just about to walk Cora home," Vergil said, and the little smile on his lips snapped off. "Right?"

My ears were ringing. The bouncer couldn't see the discreet motion, but I glimpsed Vergil's hand on the sheath of his sword. His thumb had already loosened Yamato from its hold, and the hilt was gleaming to be seized. One full-armed swing and he'd split everyone around us in half without effort. I knew it, and he knew I knew it from the smirking light in his eyes.

Still, I hesitated before finally muttering, 'right'.
His hand moved and took hold of mine. The only reason I didn't swat it away was because it was no longer hovering over Yamato. I didn't need prompting to keep up when he led the way from the club. I wanted to run and put as much distance between us as the world would allow, but something inside of me was shrieking in sheer terror at the idea of resisting him.
Because he'd kill me. It was that simple, and it was petrifying.

When we stepped into the quiet night the cold dragged its icy fingers past my face and through my hair almost mockingly. The unseen hands of the midnight breeze embraced me with the clear thought in my head that I probably wasn't going to make it back home. I'd never felt fear this severe before. It was insane, because Vergil wasn't even doing anything to scare me. His fingers were entwined with mine, his grip light and airy – intimate but distant at the same time.

He was steering me away from civilisation toward the open countryside and all the evil it housed in its shadow. Pull away and run. I could run fast. I could scream for help, while I was still close enough to people who would hear and come to my aid. I could try. But it was far easier to think it than actually put it into action.

I was tired, and even if I did run at my optimum speed, Vergil was by far quicker than I. Getting other people involved was out of the question, knowing what he was capable of. Their blood would be on my hands, because no one was efficient enough to fight him off. Not even I was good enough, and he was the one who trained me.

I really wish Dante were here.

Maybe he'd followed me after all. Maybe he was on his way right now. Maybe he'd catch us before we even reach the end of the street. Too many maybes. The reality was that my saviour was back in the safety of home, probably devouring his second plate of food, and enraptured with the late night T.V. shows not meant for youthful eyes.

Don't cry, don't cry. I swallowed down the lump in my throat and lifted my chin, drawing in deep steady breaths to try still the tremor of fear racing through my veins.

It's true when they say you're never more alive than when you're faced with death. Adrenaline rushing, heart pumping, your mind unnaturally clear and focused. Your senses at their peak; the wind tickling through the fine hairs on your arms when you walk, the smell of dead leaves scattered in the gutters, the sound of people laughing and clinking glasses merrily behind closed doors, your eyes taking in irrelevant details with insane precision.

A different kind of high. This was the feeling Dante was talking about when he tried to explain to me exactly why he loved kicking demon ass all over the place. It's not something you could describe; it had to be felt.

"Where are we going?" I asked curtly. The words were choked. I'd never been good at hiding my emotions.

"Somewhere he won't find us." The brusque reply came.

I blinked, watched my feet cross the tarry road, and drew an involuntary sharp breath when I realized who he was talking about. I spun on my heel, hope flaring up like a fire obliterating my common sense. I opened my mouth to scream for him, and let out a strangled cry instead when the bones in my hand shattered. Pain blinded me while I was roughly yanked into the darkness of a backstreet, and then I collapsed to my knees, holding my hand and crying.

"Don't be a fool. I don't want to hurt you," Vergil chided and crouched down in front of me. "I want your help."

"You just broke my hand, you dick," I sobbed through gritted teeth. "I'm not..."

"Listen," Vergil said. "Before you shoot your mouth off. Sparda is dead. His sword holds his powers, and that sword is in the demon world. I need to get it before anyone else does. Something that powerful cannot be left out in the dark like that."

My hand was tingling and burning like ice. It was nearly maddening, but somehow his words cut through the wave of pain encompassing me.

"So go get it," I said and winced when he picked up my broken hand.

I stared at it in horror. The skin was deteriorating into a bruised dark purple, turning dry and flaky.

Vergil inspected my hand closely. His voice dripped venom when he spoke. "That's just it. I can't. There are seven seals that need to be broken if I'm to enter the demon world."

"What do you want from me?" I said.

"I want you to draft up an army of demons, and unleash them on this town," he said.

"What?"

"It's the only way I'll convince Dante to join me. I need him to break the seals."

"I'm not doing that," I said weakly. "I can't. What makes you think I can control demons any way?"

Vergil sighed impatiently, and I let out a startled shriek when he whipped Yamato out. He moved faster than my eyes were able to comprehend. The blade came down, a sharp sweet clink as metal hit tar, and I watched my injured hand drop to the ground.
It twitched there for another few seconds and went still. Shockingly, that didn't hurt. There was a clean cut stump at the end of my arm, and something was protruding from it. I stared in a mix of revulsion and denial as bone and muscle and flesh sprouted from it, spiralling together to shape a new human hand.

"Foolish, girl. You know the truth. You've got demon abilities," Vergil was saying.

I spread my new fingers and turned my hand over to study it closely.

"I've heard of you. Everyone who is a demon knows about you, Cora. And that's not a good thing," Vergil continued, and I stared at him. "Demons don't like to be controlled. It makes them wild and ruthless."

"I'm not going to do what you want. People will get hurt..."

"People will get worse if you don't," Vergil said.

"I don't trust you," I finally said. Pure madness to say something like that in the face of a pissed off devil. "I think I'd like Sparda's sword to stay wherever it is. He had to have put it there for a reason."

"Don't play with me, Cora," Vergil said quietly.

Every nerve in my body turned to ice.

He added with an edge to his words, "Either you do as I say, or I kill you."

I couldn't help it. I laughed. "And here I was thinking I had no choice in the matter."

Vergil wore a mask of indulgence until my hysteric little fit passed.

"Disobey me, Cora, and I will make good on my word. If you still haven't picked up on the reaction your presence has on my brother, you're a lot dumber than I thought. Tell him, and I'll kill you in ways your pathetic human mind could never conjure up. Tell Eva, and I will kill you both. " Vergil thrust his face in mine.

"How dare you..." I said.

"And I will break him, if you disobey me. I'll make him watch you suffer."

"You're sick," I said.

"Test me. Go on, Cora. Test me." The challenge was laid out on the table, clear in his shadowed eyes.

I backed down and swallowed hard.
"Dante will know it's me. He knows I can control them. He'll be onto you."

"No, he'll be onto you," Vergil said.

I pursed my lips, my mind streaking in a million different directions to find a way out of this. It found none.

"I'll see you around," Vergil said and smiled when the fight in me succumbed to defeat.

I sat against the wall, watching him through blurry tears as he walked toward the main road and disappeared into the night.