The faint fear that Dante might die had drained from my mind when Vergil had left the room. I succumbed to the sudden burning urge to distance myself from him – from everyone and everything - and shook him off as gently as I could.
"Where are you going now?" Dante asked, dismayed.
"I'll be with you in a second," I muttered.
"Cora, listen to me..." Dante started, reaching for me again.
I dodged his hand with a sharp, "I'll be right back already!"
His jaw clenched, and the glint in his eye was one of fiery determination. "If I have to chase after you again..."
I darted for the arching doorway that led out into the front parlour before he could finish his threat, and I heard him swear at me as I made my way down the wide hallway to the kitchen.
Eva would have it in for me big time if I left the house after what happened today. You didn't just run out on your family when a traumatic event took place. It wasn't right. But I needed to close myself off from it all, I needed space to breathe – I needed to think. It wasn't that hard to find a secluded place in the house since the Sparda fortress sprawled across acres of land; there were nearly a hundred rooms spread out across the two floors the mansion was composed of.
I picked my way through the backroom off the side of the kitchen, and pushed away the neatly stacked boxes against the cherry wood door on the other side of the room. I opened the door, gritting my teeth at the hinges squealing desperately for oil, and looked down a hallway that seemed to have no end. I sent a glance over my shoulder when I heard someone in the kitchen, and closed the door behind me quietly. I headed into the east wing, which Dante and I had aptly named the Nether Regions, since none of us ever used that part of the house.
The corridor stretched on and curved at a sharp angle to the left up ahead. One side of the corridor was a wall of tall arching windows, looking out over the grassy field of a yard. The other side was lined with door upon door. All of them were locked when I tried the brass handles. The air was stifling here, and an eerie silence saturated the atmosphere.
The lengthy grand hallway ended quite unexpectedly with a pair of tall drawn drapes. When I pulled them apart to peek at what was behind it, I came face to face with a bland solid wall. I dropped the drapes back in place and tried the knob of the last door. Locked, as I expected. I sank down to the floor with my back against the door, and stared blindly out the window across from me.
What was I going to do? I needed to get away from here. Away from Dante. Maybe not right now, but soon I would have to leave this familiar haven and get very, very far away. That was not debatable. What did pose as a potential problem was what I was going to do once I did get away from here.
Jump off a bridge? I had a deep fear of heights. Eat something lethal? I could barely stand the smell of broccoli, much less eat something that smelled and tasted poisonous. Hang myself? Where? How? With what? Overdose on pills? I could barely swallow one painkiller without choking on it. Drown myself in the ocean? How could I do that without my survival instincts kicking in? I didn't know what I was going to do exactly, but one thing was certain – I was going to have to kill myself. There was no choice in the matter. I didn't want to give Vergil the satisfaction of finishing me off. Dante wouldn't hurt me, because if he had any intention of killing me, he would have done it the second he knew I was going to turn. That left me with the very last resort – suicide.
But I'm a coward when it comes to pain. I'd chicken out. I had to find a foolproof method. Something fast and deliberate that will get the job done, whether I changed my mind at the last second or not. I felt my throat swell at the thought, and buried my face against my knees. It was funny how death would be on my mind with my sweet sixteen just around the corner. Visions of me dying in a thousand different ways – jumping in front of a speeding train, shooting myself in the head, injecting myself with some deadly substance to stop my heart beating, each visual with disturbing gore and cruel detail attached – kept me chained from the present so intensely that I didn't realize I was no longer alone until I caught movement from the corner of my eye. I jolted away instinctively and stared at Eva with wide eyes before my heart resumed its beat.
"You looked miles away," Eva said, and gave me a mild smile. "Where'd you go?"
"Uh..." I tried to lick my lips, but my mouth went dry at her question and I could barely squeeze a breath of air past my thick throat. I finally tore my gaze from hers and straightened my legs out in front of me, tracing a pattern with my fingertip on the dusty dark carpet. "Never mind," I finally mumbled.
"Got quite a scare today, didn't we?"
"Yeah," I said, and chanced a quick glance at her. She was gazing out the window across from us, and had pulled her knees up to her chest.
"I understand it must have upset you. Dante will be fine, don't worry."
"Okay," I shrugged.
We sat in silence for a few more moments before Eva spoke again. "You couldn't have known he'd get hurt. Don't blame yourself, Cora."
"Okay," I repeated flatly, lifting my eyebrows sceptically. I fidgeted with my nails, and sighed.
When Eva spoke again, it was in a slightly clipped voice. "I remember the first time Dante got hold of a gun. Sparda had a similar set to the one Dante now has. He was five years old, and he'd been after the plate of cookies in the kitchen." I looked at her, and watched her shake her head slightly. Her hair fell over her shoulder and curtained the side of her face like glowing corn silk. There was a distant and somewhat mournful look on her delicate features. "Sparda always was careless when it came to the boys. He didn't quite grasp the concept of how children's minds work. He left his guns on the counter, and Dante thought it was a toy."
"He hurt himself?" I asked when she didn't go on.
Her eyes were glimmering with derision when she looked at me. "Yes. Yes, he did," she said hesitantly. She let out a quiet sigh. "That's when we discovered the boys inherited a lot more from Sparda than just his looks."
"They don't look anything like Sparda. I always thought they looked like you," I said.
"No. No, Sparda was constantly boasting about how the boys took after him. Handsome little devils. I'm digressing. You shouldn't worry about Dante getting hurt. He's a lot more durable than the fittest human."
"I'm not worried about Dante getting hurt," I said honestly.
Eva shifted onto her knees to face me directly, and her voice was gently prodding. "Vergil came to me recently. He told me what you were trying to hide," she said carefully, and I felt my nerves stiffen. I had to force myself not to look away from her. "I want you to know that it is not your fault. It was an error on my part. I was confident that I got all the venom out of your injuries, but I was wrong. I was too late."
I swallowed hard, and glared at a dark stain on the thick drapes beside me. "Serves me right for stupidly running into an army of demons. I should have died with my family that day, you know."
"Now don't..." Eva said helplessly.
"I'm an abomination. I'm going to turn into a monster and I'm going to hurt people. I'm going to kill innocent people, Eva. Vergil said that Sparda raised him and Dante to kill demons, to protect humans at all costs. So why haven't they killed..." I said heatedly.
"Cora," Eva snapped, grabbing hold of my hands and locking her piercing eyes with mine. Her words were as heated as mine, her voice as intense as the flare of a spark. "I'll find a way to help you. I will go to the ends of the world to find a cure. I won't let you become a monster. Believe me, Cora, I will save you."
Her words evoked an inferno of hope inside of me; a fiery flash that ended in a pile of ash a second later when another voice piped up.
"We will save you," Dante said, stepping away from the wall a few feet from us. How long had he been standing there? I could feel the colour drain from my face, and I dislodged my hands from Eva's.
"If Sparda had still been around, he would have taken me out a long time ago. He would have chopped off my head as soon as he knew I was going to become a demon," I said, scrambling to my feet. "Efficient. Simple. Easy. So if you're so much better than your dad, then why can't you do it?"
"My father wasn't that heartless," Dante said matter-of-factly, and his eyes sent chills down through my core. "He would have ditched you in the demon realm to keep you away from the humans. He believed everyone deserved a chance to redeem themselves, including demons."
"All the more reason for you to just end it now!" I scowled back at him. "You didn't share his views when he was here, and you haven't changed your mind about it – so why don't you put me down already and save us all the agony of waiting until I kill somebody before..."
My voice disappeared on my tongue. Dante had drawn out Ivory and was aiming her straight at my head. Even though it was exactly what I thought I wanted, the best thing to do, seeing down the black barrel of a gun for the second time that day proved too much for my mind to cope with. Everything inside of me froze with blind terror.
"Do you really want it that bad?" Dante asked.
"Put that away, son," Eva said softly, and Dante obeyed, twirling the gun expertly before holstering her once more.
I could move again once the gun was out of my face, but my body had gone numb with fright, and I had to lean against the wall to hold myself standing. I closed my eyes, taking deep steady breaths to overcome the dizziness that followed my spurt of panic, and flinched when arms enveloped me into a secure embrace. Feeling his warmth seemed to chase the cold numbness from my veins, made me able to breathe again, and I allowed myself to relax against him. Sometimes it was good enough just to be held. Sometimes, it was all that was needed to keep things in perspective, to slow life down for a moment. I was at ease in his arms, could savour the steady rhythm of his heart and find comfort in every beat against my cheek. I was warm, safe, untouchable – and it felt damn good. Too good.
Too good to be real. I was letting my emotions reign over my logic, that's the problem. I could feel safe with him, but I could never really be safe with him. If something came over me right that moment, if some demonic force within me decided to rear its ugly head and I attacked Eva, I'd be dead on the floor before I'd be able to stop myself. I stepped away from Dante grudgingly, and halted in my tracks when I saw Eva's compassionate expression. She was so frail and small, so placid and trusting – what could she do to defend herself against a demon? I felt ice scrape me raw on the inside when the paranoid fear that I would lose my mind and actually try to kill her right there surfaced in my head. It's what drove me to quickly distance myself from them both, and with every step I put between us, I felt my anger return with interest.
"This can't go on. I'll kill you. I'll kill all of you, if you don't do something about it right now," I said.
The warmth that was in Dante's eyes caved into deep, icy crevasses at my words. Surprised concern flickered across Eva's face and she held her arms out to me in a calming gesture.
"I will find a cure for you..." Eva began.
"There is no cure!" I exploded. "How many cases have you heard of people being saved from turning into demons?"
Eva dropped her hands to her sides and scowled at me in frustration. "Just because we've never heard of this happening to anyone else it does not mean that it hasn't."
"So what do you expect me to do? Hope for salvation?" I said scathingly and pointed at Dante. "The only cure there is for this is strapped to his back!"
"You have to trust me, Cora," Eva said pleadingly.
"Just do it!" I said when I saw Dante's hand disappear behind his back.
He paused, and levelled his gaze with my own. "Don't tempt me."
"Coward!" I hollered back.
"I'm not going to kill you," Dante said, letting his hands hang loose on his sides.
I stared at him for a long moment, and finally took a step toward him. "Vergil would. If I asked him, he would."
"Don't go there, Cora," Dante growled.
"Why? Are you afraid of the truth? Scared you'll realize that Vergil has a lot more experience and a lot more intellect than you do?"
"Please," Dante said and turned his eyes heavenward. "Are you done yet?"
"He cut off my hand, Dante. This one!" I said and waved my hand at him furiously. "He chopped it off clean with Yamato. Remember that night before he came back when you found me in the alley?"
Dante gave me an impatient look.
"I was in that alley because of him! He left me there... he wanted to drag me off into the demon lands to become his slave without having to deal with you. He was going to make me disappear, Dante!"
"Whatever," Dante said with a smirk, but there was a sharp glint in his eyes.
"He wants me dead. And I can bet your ass that he'll kill me if I got him pissed off enough! Unlike you. You've got no backbone."
"Listen, babe. You can't compare me with my brother..." Dante started nonchalantly.
"Why not? Sparda did. All the time! And you always drew up short. You were never fast enough, never smart enough, never strong enough..." I could see my words bulldozing down the walls he held up around the beast inside of him. The look in his eye changed, and his demeanour went deceivingly relaxed. The devil hunter was clawing its way out. "Because Vergil was always better, he was the son Sparda always wanted... he was the son you never were and never will have the chance to be..."
I didn't shut up until Eva actually darted forward and plastered her hand over my lips. "Quiet," she hissed at me, and then she wrenched me behind her with a violent movement and steered me back toward the main building, toward the backroom. Her hands were like steel wrapped in delicate silk, her grip was so tight around my wrists that I actually cried out.
When I finally got over the initial confusion of being roughly handled by Eva – Eva of all people – I looked over her shoulder and saw why. She was shielding me, walking backward, and steering me at the same time. Protecting me from a livid devil marching toward me with his enormous sword drawn. His lips were drawn back tight, his breath hissing through his teeth, and his eyes were as black and hard as obsidian. Demon eyes – I freaked out.
Eva no longer needed to prod me. I ran for the door with every ounce of energy I had. I burst into the backroom and bolted through the kitchen so suddenly that Vergil dropped the bottle of coke he'd just taken out of the fridge. I shot out the front door and mounted my bike so quick that my momentum nearly sent me jumping over the bike instead of onto it. I revved it to life, contemplated sabotaging the other bikes to keep him from coming after me, decided it would be signing my death certificate, and sped out of the driveway with a shriek of wheels.
In my panic to get away from the house, I swerved the bike in the direction of the country side. It was done on a whim, without thinking through the consequence – all I knew was that I'd rather have an army of demons swamp me than suffer in Dante's grasp.
I knew how he killed, how he liked to play before blowing his prey into the underworld. Maybe, if I was lucky, the demons would slow him down when he came after me.
Because he was coming after me. I could hear his bike roar to life far behind me, and I opened my own bike full throttle. 70. 100. 120. 160. The lever trembled on the verge of 180, and still I could hear him catching up to me. Meadows flashed past me in ghostly greens, the wind pricked my face and numbed my lips – oh, stupid, I forgot my helmet in all the rush. Dante was screaming something at me – insane that I could hear him at all over the raging wind and thunderous roar of the bike beneath me, it wasn't normal, wasn't human – and my mind deciphered the words as 'gonna kill you!'
The tar road turned into gravel, sending pebbles and dust flying, and finally disappeared altogether into thick yellow shrubbery and slippery grass. I was forced to slow the bike down to prevent another crash, and once I did, my mind was able to focus on exactly where I was.
Demons were scattered in the open flat fields around me like cattle, and they were well aware of my uninvited presence. Their heads were turned toward me, beady eyes glowering. The bike slid and the tyres lost traction for a second, sending my already racing heart pounding up into my head. I wrenched the bike to a standstill and toppled off the seat, taking the vehicle down with me.
I hurried to my feet clumsily, running away from Dante's fast approaching figure. Cold sweat broke out across my forehead and itched down my temples. My breath choked in and out with petrified sobs. He was going to catch me... there was no point in running... I was only delaying the inevitable... stop... stop running. This is what I wanted. He had to do it. My legs brought me to a stumbling halt, and I twirled around to face my pending doom head-on.
Dante was coming closer insanely fast. He was going to ram into me. The bike's engine rattled my eardrums. I saw him point a gun at me, aiming. A series of gunshots punched through the air, and I heard an inhumane squeal behind me. I whirled around in shock – realizing that I'd completely forgotten the other danger out there, apart from Dante – just in time to have a Chimera knock me right off my feet. I looked up, dazed, and found myself staring at a masquerade mask with black holes for eyes, a sharp nose, and a stitched together leather bag for a head behind it. A gloved hand with long sharp talons that sliced through the material came down and hooked into my gut, and I was flung into the air like a ragdoll, spinning helplessly with manic laughter filling my ears.
There was a loud buzzing pop off to my left, or it might have been to my right, or above me – and then it was around me. Yellow electricity made the fine hairs on my arms stand on end, poking into me from all sides like sharp spikes and doing something unpleasantly weird to my blood. The next second an enormous demon dropped onto me from out of nowhere and I was crushed back down onto solid ground. I barely felt the blow when I hit it, because my body was too numb and preoccupied with the electric current pulsing through it to take heed of any other injuries.
Little pops that reminded me of Rice Crispies' Snap, Crackle and Pop exploded through my head. I lifted my head when my body could finally fight off the physical shock enough to adhere to my brain's commands, and sucked in a deep breath of air and dust – and that's when I realized something was pinning me to the ground and tearing at my back. Like a dog scratching out its buried bone; something was trying to dig right through me.
Then the pressure relieved and the crackling stopped, and I managed to lift myself with my hands and glanced over my shoulder. A demon was standing there, all crackly yellow electricity, leaning back with a thick ugly tongue hanging from its open mouth.
It reminded me a lot of those fat drunk idiots Enzo used to kick out of the Love Planet – belching out their disgusting charm, flirting with the girls by flouncing their rolls. The demon suddenly disappeared with a buzz, reappeared in another spot, and another, and another, teleporting all over the place. It reappeared crouching on the ground inches away from me, and my skin tingled at its close proximity. It streaked forward abruptly with jet fire speed, and I saw Dante leap out of its way easily and land behind it on both his feet. He had his guns in his hands, and he was sending a legion of bullets right into the back of the demon's skull. The demon teleported in random space again to escape the retaliation Dante was unleashing on it.
I watched Dante put away his guns. I opened my mouth to shout at him not to, but my voice was completely gone, and I was powerless to do anything but watch when he came marching toward me. He crouched down in front of me when I finally managed to get onto my knees.
"Can you move?" He asked. His voice was too calm and casual, it sounded like he was asking me if I wanted an ice cream.
I reached out and gripped the leather of his sleeve with literally trembling fingers the same instant the demon reappeared right behind him. I could feel my eyes widen. My mouth had barely had chance to drop open in quiet warning when a loud shot jolted the atmosphere. The demon exploded in a fiery red puff and Dante lowered Coyote-A from his shoulder to holster it to his side. He rose to his feet, towering above me, intimidating, and hauled me up into his arms like I was a puppet. He slid me onto his bike with him in one fluent motion. He kicked the bike to life, steering with one hand and holding me securely with his other.
I didn't know whether he actually said the words or whether I imagined it.
"You'll be okay, just hang on."
~...~