"Dante."
Vergil's appearance in the shop was so sudden that Dante was worried for a moment that he had dozed off again. One minute he was looking at the phone receiver he still held in his hand, the next his brother stood towering over his desk, glaring down at him with an expression of pure rage.
"Hey!" Dante said cheerfully as an arc of glowing swords appeared above his head.
"This had better be important."
"But of course," Dante said, casually throwing the handset back into place. He reached for the folder on his desk and slid it towards Vergil. "Check out what Trish managed to get hold of."
Vergil crouched down slightly and started to silently flick through the paperwork in front of him, still maintaining the spectral swords in the air. "And?" he said at last, straightening up again.
"What do you mean, 'and'?" Dante asked in disbelief. "This is more information than we've managed to get in days! Did you even read it?"
"This file appears to relate to a completely different person than the one we're looking for."
Dante stood up quickly, causing his chair to clatter to the floor. "Hey, we're doing what we can here!" he said angrily, slamming his hands on the desk. "Trish managed to get more information in a couple of hours that both of us combined over several days."
"And yet we still don't seem to be any closer to finding this so called 'landlord'," Vergil said calmly.
"Damn it Vergil," Dante huffed, flipping his chair back up with the heel of his boot. "This is why I avoid talking to you when you're angry; you're hopeless."
"Is that why you guys hardly ever talk?" a sultry sounding voice asked as a shadow appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Dante's eyes widened slightly, while Vergil's only narrowed further as Trish started to walk towards them, flaunting her new look. Dante let out a low whistle as he took in her slightly bronzed skin and platinum coloured hair.
"Damn, I should get you to steal classified documents more often," he grinned, nodding in approval.
"What madness is this?" Vergil asked as Trish approached him, only stopping once she was far too close for comfort.
"See something you like?" she asked teasingly, placing her hands on her hips.
"Another harlot of yours?" Vergil asked Dante, his eyebrow twitching slightly as he kept his eyes trained on the woman in front of him.
"I wish," Dante said, walking around his desk so that he could look Trish up and down fully. "I thought you said you weren't gonna use this look again?"
"What can I say, I'm not very creative," Trish said, brushing past Dante and perching herself on the edge of his desk. She reached behind her and grabbed one of the swords that still hung in the air, startling Vergil into dissolving them last. "So, care to explain this ungrateful attitude of yours?" she asked him, shifting slightly further along the desk as Dante tried to sit next to her.
"I am merely being practical," Vergil stated. "At the very least we should act on the data we do have, instead of sitting around exchanging pleasantries."
"And what exactly do you propose we do this late into the evening?" Trish asked, crossing her arms.
"We have an address," Vergil pointed out. "Granted it's not for our target, but it's something. Why has no one demanded answers from its residents?"
"Trish went there earlier and it was empty," Dante butted in. "It's not like we've just sat here doing nothing."
Trish glanced at Dante and raised an eyebrow. "Well, I haven't at least."
"Who is this woman, exactly?" Vergil asked tensely. He was so sure that he'd met all of Dante's associates at this point, and this newcomer seemed uncomfortably close with his brother. It bothered him to consider the possibility that he had missed one.
Trish sighed and ran a hand through her recoloured hair. Vergil watched in disbelief as the disguise seemed to melt away with a slight shimmer, leaving a much more familiar face in its place. "Surprise," she said giving Vergil a mischievous wink.
"How curious…" he said with genuine interest, tilting his head slightly.
"Impressive right?" Dante said proudly, earning a playful shove from Trish.
Vergil was tempted to ask further questions, but shook his head, bringing his train of thought back to the topic at hand. "Did you enter the property?" he asked.
"Not all of us have fancy portal powers," Trish said dryly.
"In that case, allow me," Vergil said, lifting his sword.
"Hey, wait a sec!" Dante protested, stepping forward and pushing Vergil's hand back down. "You can't just break into some random person's house; we don't even know if this guy's family still lives there. Besides, what if it's a trap?"
"What if it is?" Vergil asked calmly.
"Look, I want to solve this just as much as you do, but something stinks about this whole situation. We gotta be careful," Dante replied.
"Dante, how many adversaries have we overcome? Do you really mean to tell me that you fear a mere human?"
"Of course not," Dante said, punching Vergil's arm as he started to unsheathe Yamato again. "But we don't know for certain that this guy is a mere human, do we?"
"You detected no demonic presence from him, and the trinket he gave you was mere tat," Vergil pointed out. "Unless you wish to tell me that you were deceived?"
"Vergil's got a point," Trish said, taking both brothers by surprise. "From what we know about this guy I doubt he'd be a match for the two of you. Might as well get the ball rolling."
"Your support is appreciated as always," Dante said sarcastically, shaking his head at Trish.
"Then it's decided," Vergil nodded. "Will you be joining us?"
"Nah, one of us has to stay behind in case the worst happens," Trish said, giving Dante a sly grin as he looked at her in disbelief.
"...Let's at least bother to make sure we're equipped for this," Dante said, walking behind the desk to retrieve his weapons.
"I am more than happy to deal with this on my own if need be," Vergil said, watching as his brother holstered his guns and picked up his own sword.
"Yeah, 'cause that's been working out real well for you so far," Dante said dryly. He paused his movements briefly and raised an eyebrow as he finally noticed Vergil's current attire. "Also, what's with the get-up? That dinner with Lady back then give you a preference for fighting in dress-shirts?"
"Your call surprised me; I didn't have time to change."
"That's the most uncomfortable set of pyjamas I've ever seen," Dante said, patting himself down and nodding to himself, satisfied that he was now fully equipped.
"I don't recall ever stating that I was asleep," Vergil said, catching Trish's eye and trying to suppress the slight warmth creeping up the back of his neck as she gave him a knowing smile.
"Well gosh, what were you doing, Vergil?" Trish asked coyly.
"I don't see that my activities in my free time are any of your business," Vergil said sternly.
"Wait, I think I got it," Dante said, snapping his fingers. "You dressed up to go visit Nero, right? There's no need to be embarrassed-"
"Let's go," Vergil said dismissively, a portal opening in the middle of the office before anyone could even register the Yamato's movements. "After you," he said to Dante, nodding towards the shimmering tear in the air.
"Okay, but if I end up getting lost again you're coming to find me," Dante said, stepping through.
Vergil started to follow, but not before turning to Trish and clearing his throat. "Nothing happened," he stated matter-of-factly.
"That's a real shame," Trish said, leaning back on the desk and crossing her legs. "We'll have to work on fixing that."
Vergil glared at her in silence for a moment before turning back towards the portal and following Dante.
It was a good twenty minutes or so before Lady finally felt that she had enough strength to push herself back to her feet. She used the kitchen counter for support as she wobbled in place briefly, before taking a deep breath and shaking her head to clear her thoughts. Nothing happened, she told herself. It was all just a misunderstanding. She walked over to the sink and splashed her face with cold water. She chanced a glance at the clock as she buried her face in a towel and sighed. It was late. Very late. She would go to bed, get some rest, and when she woke up, she would just carry on as normal. Nothing had changed.
She took a few minutes to finish off some lukewarm cup noodles and started to tidy up. Her hand hovered briefly over Vergil's half-eaten pot as she reached for it, and she cursed internally before angrily picking it up and throwing it in the bin. She decided that next time she saw him, she would shoot him right in the middle of his smug face. That'll show him, she thought, yelling in frustration as she felt her cheeks warming up again at the memory of him standing over her, touching his forehead against hers. "Damn bastard!" she yelled to no one in particular.
The small hallway at the entrance of the house was dark, as expected. What Vergil was not expecting was to step through and immediately trip over his incompetent twin, who was lying on the floor hissing in pain. "What-"
"Damn side tables," Dante growled. "I walked right into it, tripped over, and pulled an entire coat rack on top of me."
Vergil, who had fortunately managed to maintain his footing, looked down at Dante and sighed. "Pathetic," he said quietly. "Let's just hope your stupidity hasn't woken up the entire household."
"It's okay, I managed to keep it all fairly quiet," Dante whispered, standing up and immediately reaching out to steady a vase he had knocked into in the process.
"This is why I dislike working with you," Vergil tutted, lifting the coat rack with ease and placing it back in the corner. "Let's just get this over with."
"So, what exactly is your plan again?" Dante asked, looking around the small lobby.
"We look through their posessions for clues," Vergil said, opening a door to their left. "Failing that, we question the occupants directly."
"Yeah, I can see that going well…" Dante sighed, starting to follow Vergil as he entered what appeared to be a living room of some sort.
"What are you doing?" Vergil asked, stopping in his tracks and turning to face his brother.
"Helping you search?"
"We'll be quicker if we split up," Vergil said, nodding towards the staircase opposite the front door. "I'll take the downstairs."
"I still don't think I'm entirely comfortable with this," Dante said hesitantly. "This house probably belongs to the guy's widow or something, the last thing I want to do it give the lady a heart attack."
"Then make sure you stay quiet," Vergil said bluntly, walking into the living room and softly closing the door behind him. Dante muttered a few quiet curses under his breath before sighing and sneaking upstairs.
The living room was simply decorated and very tidy. It was obvious at a glance that no children lived at the address. The curtains were open, and the moonlight shining through the window provided enough illumination for Vergil to be able to avoid having to turn on the light. He immediately made his way over to a desk in the corner of the room and started to search through the drawers. Empty. He let out an annoyed grunt and cast his eye around the room more closely.
There appeared to be pictures hanging on the walls, and he noticed that a few framed photos were also neatly placed on top of the desk he had been rifling through. He picked one up and looked at it in more detail. It depicted a smiling couple standing in front of a waterfall somewhere. They looked young. He picked up another one which showed a somewhat handsome looking man dressed in a graduation gown. On closer inspection, it appeared that this male was different to the one in the previous photo, but there was no denying that they looked similar. A sudden thought struck Vergil and he quickly undid the back of the frame, carefully sliding the photo out until he could read its back. Scrawled on its rear in neat, fading strokes was 'Christian Jr. - Graduation, 2008.' Vergil turned the photo back over and stared at it for a few moments, his mind recalling Dante's description of the man that had attended his apartment. He walked over to the window so he could see the image more clearly, repeating his brother's words in his mind. Short and skinny, slick dark brown hair, green eyes and glasses. Certainly not blond haired, blue-eyed and slightly chubby like the man in the photo.
The upstairs appeared to consist of two bedrooms and a bathroom. After listening outside the doors for a few minutes, Dante quickly concluded that only one of the rooms was occupied, and by a single person at that. With this in mind, he headed towards what he presumed to be the smaller of the bedrooms, which was to the right of the staircase next to the bathroom. Dante held his breath for a few seconds more just to be sure, before cracking the door open and slipping inside.
A strange sensation immediately swept over Dante as he entered, and he found himself feeling as though his whole body was suddenly very heavy. He fumbled around for a light switch and immediately regretted his actions when he managed to turn the overhead light on. The walls and ceiling all appeared to have been painted black, while the overhead light cast a blood tinged glow over everything. "Never thought a red light in a bedroom could be a bad thing…" Dante mumbled.
Even at a quick glance, it was clear that whoever this room belonged to - or used to belong to, based on the thin layer of dust that covered everything - was not exactly of sound mind. A giant pentagram covered the wall to the right, with what seemed to be iron nails impaled into it at even points. From some of the nails hung various herbs, while what looked like matted fur seemed to hang from the rest. Dante looked at the floor below the drawing and was unsurprised to see the remnants of animal bones and dried blood collected underneath. Various melted candles adorned every surface in the room, with some even fused to the walls themselves, and there was the thick smell of expired incense in the air. He looked up and saw even more scrawls on the ceiling, drawn in either blood or wax. "Guess we found the right place," Dante said quietly to himself.
The strange feeling continued to grow as he forced himself forward with the intention of searching for clues. Every part of him wanted to leave such a bizarre room, but he knew that Vergil would probably kill him if he didn't at least try to look around. A double bed was pressed up against the middle of the left wall, facing the pentagram opposite. It too was all black, and was unmade, as though the owner had suddenly left in a hurry. Dante opened a drawer in one of the bedside tables, finding nothing but more bones and candle wax inside. As he closed it again, he noticed a loose photo lying face down on the table and attempted to flip it over. Perhaps as expected, it was stuck to the table, encrusted in an unidentified brown liquid. After a substantial amount of effort, it finally came free, and Dante's eyes widened slightly as he saw what it depicted. Three people were in the photo of what appeared to be a snap from a family holiday of some sort. At least, he assumed they were a family based on the similar hair colour; the eyes of all the people appeared to have been stabbed out, with red marker pen (or something else?) being used to make it look as though blood was pouring from their mouths. The word 'DEMONS' had been angrily scrawled through the middle of the image.
A quick search of the other bedside table revealed similarly mutilated photographs, however these ones only seemed to depict what he assumed to be the parents with no eyes and bloodied lips. It didn't take long for Dante to work out that whoever did this must have believed that the adults had been possessed or similar. Whether they actually had been or not was hard to say. He brought one of the images over to the window, hoping to use some more natural lighting from outside to get a better look at the teenager in the photographs where he had remained intact. He let out a thoughtful hum as he saw that he looked similar to the man in the folder that Trish had managed to steal. At the very least, it was obvious that he looked nothing like the man he had met at Vergil's place. He chose one of the least damaged photos he could find and slipped it into a pocket, suspecting that it could come in useful later.
Another look around the room revealed nothing but more of the same as before. Satisfied that he was done there, Dante finally allowed himself to leave. He would have to convince Trish to come here if Vergil would allow it, to see if she could figure out what was causing the unpleasant feeling to seep through him while he was in the room. The writing on the walls and ceiling meant nothing to him, but he suspected they were most likely responsible. With one final glance, he turned off the light and stepped outside, instantly feeling much lighter.
"Who are you?" a voice demanded angrily.
Dante froze in place, his vision adjusting to the darkness and revealing a stern looking woman standing in front of him wearing a nightgown. Her greying hair was pinned up on top of her head and she was currently holding a large knife about an inch away from Dante's chest.
"I've already called the police," she said, her voice wavering slightly. "If you try anything, I won't hesitate to hurt you."
"It's okay, we're not here to cause any trouble," Dante said, holding his hands up.
"We?" she shrieked shrilly. "How many of you are there?!"
"Just the two of us," Vergil suddenly said from behind her. Before she could turn to face him, he quickly struck the back of her head and she slumped to the floor, unconscious.
"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" Dante asked, crouching down to check for a pulse.
"She'll be fine," Vergil said calmly. "I didn't hit anything that will cause any permanent damage."
"You can't just go around knocking old ladies unconscious!" Dante said disapprovingly.
"Did you find anything?" Vergil asked, stepping over the woman and pushing open the door to the bedroom behind Dante.
"I wouldn't go in there," Dante said. "There's something not quite right about it."
Vergil blinked in surprise briefly as red light flooded the room and hallway. "I can't see what you mean, this looks perfectly fine to me," Vergil said. When Dante stood up to protest, Vergil turned and gave him what almost looked like an imperceptible smile.
"Wait… Did you actually just make a joke for once?" Dante asked, unable to stop the corners of his own mouth from turning up slightly.
"From a quick glance, this room appears to be full of amateur strength sapping spells," Vergil stated, stepping inside and closing his eyes. "Unfortunately, it seems that while it was most likely intended to ward off demons, these ones seem to affect humans in particular." He opened his eyes and glanced around briefly. "Whoever set this up clearly had no idea what they were doing."
"But when I went in there-"
"Yet more proof that you are too human for your own good," Vergil stated, trying to hide the slight strain in his own voice. "It's probably also why this room hasn't been cleaned out since its occupant left."
"Man, this just keeps getting weirder and weirder…" Dante said.
Vergil took a few moments to look around, making note of the symbols he saw in case they meant anything further that what he thought. Yet more research to be completed. "We should retreat for now," he said at last. "I don't believe that this woman has called the authorities, but I would rather we don't risk it."
"What are we going to do about her?" Dante asked, pointing to the woman who was still lying unconscious on the floor.
"She will need to be questioned," Vergil said thoughtfully. "But that can be arranged for another time."
"I mean right now, jackass," Dante grumbled. "We can't just leave her like that."
"Place her back in her bed; she will likely think this a dream in the morning."
"...Should we check her room too?" Dante suggested.
"I think we have enough for now," Vergil said after thinking for a moment. "We can always come back on another occasion."
"Did you manage to find anything useful?" Dante asked, scooping the woman into his arms. She was surprisingly heavy given how thin she looked.
"Potentially," Vergil said, nodding. He turned off the light and closed the bedroom door, then followed Dante as they made their way back to the master bedroom. "I searched all of the rooms downstairs," he began to explain. "It's clear even from a quick glance that this woman lives alone." He held the door open as Dante stepped inside, being careful not to hit the woman's head on the doorframe. "Given the number of photographs I saw in the living room, I expected the rest of the house to be the same, however it seems that only that room-" He paused as they stepped into the bedroom. Rows and rows of photographs adorned the walls, with framed photos also standing on every flat surface. They were all arranged very neatly in a grid pattern, and each one had its own thin glass frame. It seemed then that this was not the frantic work of an unstable mind, but rather someone…
"Wow, she really must be lonely," Dante said somewhat sadly as he tucked the woman back into bed.
"She's grieving," Vergil stated, walking over to some of the photos and squinting at them as he tried to make out details in the dark room.
"Even after all this time?" Dante asked. "Didn't her husband die six years ago?"
"Grief affects people differently," Vergil mumbled. He lifted one of the frames down and nodded as though he had suddenly finished working something out in his mind. "I don't think her husband is the one she is grieving for," he said, holding up a photo of a young smiling boy, who must have been no more than around four years old. "Look around," he said, opening the curtains slightly. "Look at what these photos actually show."
With the new illumination from outside, Dante did a slow circle of the room, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. The photographs seemed to be ordered chronologically, showing a small boy growing from infancy to young adulthood. There seemed to be a gap of about seven or eight years, and then the photos resumed. In these photos however, the boy – or rather, man, by that point - looked far more sullen and agitated. The photos finally stopped at a one of him standing over a grave and placing flowers on it - presumably his father's. Dante reached into his pocket and pulled out the photograph he had taken. He held it up to one of the others, confirming that it was the same person. "I don't get it," Dante said, pocketing the photo again. "This guy looks nothing like the one I spoke to."
"That's because they're not the same person," Vergil said matter-of-factly.
"But the father in the background of these clearly looks like the dead dude in that file Trish took," Dante said in confusion.
"Must I explain everything to you?" Vergil asked exasperatedly.
"No," Dante said haughtily. "...But you should tell me your thoughts to make sure we're on the same page," he added after a brief pause.
"Let's get back to the shop first," Vergil said. "There is no point in having to explain this twice."
"Sure," Dante agreed. Just then the room became flooded with blue light as the sound of sirens approaching sounded from outside. "Looks like that's our cue to leave," he said as Vergil hummed in surprise.
"Well, what do you know…" Vergil said quietly, before stepping away from the window and opening a path home.
A/N - I'm sorry it's been so long since the last update! And now quite a short chapter after such a wait too...
I had the start of this written *ages* ago, but then I was really busy with work and other commitments, then when I finally had some time off I got a lame 2 week long flu and... gah ;_;
Anyway, I hope this chapter is okay after such a long wait! I'll try to update again a lot sooner!