Mission 01: A Little Ain't Enough
Grue was a solid mercenary for what he was, an aging gunfighter and a father of three. Jessica always gave him hell, but Tiki and Nesty were good kids; went to bed on time. Wondered how he got saddled with these circumstances after so long, the three kids, enormous bills, a crummy apartment and his position on the social ladder. A lowly mercenary. He could almost laugh at it were it not for the bullets that often flew by his head reminding him his job was an actual threat. He took jobs where he could find 'em, and tonight, he found a job working for the Red Grave Bowery Circuit. Organized crime paid big, even for the small-timers, and he couldn't have found a sweeter deal than the Bowery boys.
He pulled his car — an old burnt-out Sedan — into the back alley of a quiet town street. Grunts were waiting for him; motioned for where he need to park.
Pulled off under a fire escape and left himself enough room to get out. He killed the engine and met his contact. Young fat Italian man. Name was Gino.
"You're late," the boy said. "Red's not gonna like that."
"Hit some bad traffic," Grue replied. "Got my piece."
Gino nodded in acceptance to the two bruisers beside him.
They took him into the building, through the back door, into a warm foyer, dimly lit. The bellhop was sitting on a chair, purple-faced and cold. Suffocated. Behind the desk, the concierge was lying back in their chairs, bullet holes in their throats. Bled out in seconds. The night officer was lying on the floor of the dingy old place. Head cracked in two. The frizzle-haired merc almost shuddered at the executions in the lobby. They were clean, quick. Each shot had been a kill strike.
"Is he still here?" Grue asked.
"Yeah, he should be. Still upstairs. Probably catch him on the ass-end of the last one if we take the elevator," Gino explained.
The man nodded in understanding.
They took the lift; brisk ride through the building set to old jazz — they walked out onto the seventeenth floor.
Blood spattered the right wall of the hallway from a headless corpse that laid in its own grey matter. Bile started rising. The merc suppressed the inherent reaction immediately. He walked past it and looked back at the other three who stayed in the elevator. Gino gave him a small salute, a code for good luck, and the doors closed. Grue almost shouted indignant remarks had he not heard a lamp breaking from somewhere else in the place. He walked steadily across the blood-soaked carpet, python magnum drawn. He looked through the first door.
All dead in there.
The man was efficient.
He traced through the hall, found more dead in different ways. All of them suits. Must've been rivals for the Bowery boys.
He heard a man begging for his life in Room 666. Fitting number. He stayed careful, kept his pistol cocked at the ready, scanned all around him before he got to the broken door, put his ear to the barrier, heard the steady whimpers of a man tortured, and slowly walked in, the door creaking open as he raised his pistol to a large man standing over another, the victim a bloody and beaten sod tied by plastic.
"You're an hour late," the man said.
Grue relaxed and lowered his weapon, "Traffic."
"Yeah, there's been a lot o' that, 'specially down at bullshit junction," the man mused.
The pathetic mess on the hotel floor cried gore, "please mister, help!"
Grue rolled his shoulders and motioned with his gun hand, "what's his story?"
"He's the informant," the man said. "Been at it with him for a little while now."
"He talk yet?"
"Eh," the man threw up his gloved hands and shrugged, "a little ain't enough."
"Sorry I missed the rest."
"Don't sweat it. Boss probably won't hire you again, but one night o' pay ain't bad."
Grue grumbled to himself, and he lit a cigarette. He offered one to the man. Shook his head and passed. It occurred to the merc that the pro was quite unusual-looking. Snowy white hair draped over his skull like a mop, unnatural color, and on his shoulders was a red trench coat. That was Gino's nickname for him, 'red.' Made sense now that he saw it. Was told he'd be working with Bowery regular, a big-name hitman in the trade. Wondered how the man could operate with such a loud appearance, something that caught everyone's attention. Certainly made a noise when he bashed that lamp over the poor soul's thick head. Grue inhaled carcinogens and puffed smoke as the red embers at the tail end of his stick glowed mighty fierce. He held the tip over the bleeding man's face and he crouched down beside broken ceramic, then grabbed him by his hair.
"Why'd you make this guy angry, huh?"
"Wh—what?" the man stuttered.
"This guy," Grue motioned, referencing the torturer. "Him. What d'ya do, huh?"
"N—Nothing! I know nothing, I swear! You've got to help me," he pleaded.
The merc puffed in his face and the victim coughed as he took the cigarette and dangled it over his forehead. He felt the warm ember glance close to his eye and his breath quickened.
"You sure about that?"
"I—I don't know anything about Urizen!"
Grue put the cigarette to his cheek, and flesh sizzled. Screams rung out like a banjo put through a blender. The man in red crossed his arms and watched with a smirk.
The cigarette was out. Grue lit it again and kept puffing. Grabbed the man by his hair again.
"How'd that sit with you?" he asked.
"Thanks," the man said bitterly. "I needed that."
Grue looked to the hitman, "Tough blockhead, huh?"
"Yep," the man said. "Not half-bad an actor either."
Grue stepped away as the silver-haired man knelt down and pressed his thumb into the burn. The sap screamed out again, and the man covered his mouth.
"Boss just wants to know," the man said. "Where's he hidin' out, huh? Where's your pal at?"
He took his thumb out of the sore wound, redder and deeper than before. Still, what they got was a smile.
"You stupid son of a bitch, it doesn't matter was you do to me. I'll never spill a damn thing."
His eyes were a stranger to him. Seemed blued out and inhuman, hypnotized.
"That's too bad," the silver-haired man said and put a black pistol to his head.
A pull of the trigger and the top of his head vaporized. Its owner spun the weapon and blew away the gun smoke, then he put it away. Grue looked him up and down, and he puffed the last bit of his cigarette before flipping the butt off on the corpse. The man in red took out his cellphone and dialed away a number on the keypad. Brief conversation. Wasn't much he could glean from it.
"What's up? What now?"
"We're out of here," the man said. "Cops'll come clean this up for us, claim it was a gang war. Got a fall guy for the damages, coroner should take care of the diagnosis."
"What about the other guests in the hotel?"
"Already cut the phone lines, took care of the staff. Out through the fire escape. Don't be seen."
Then a light flickered. A rattle came from dead men's throats, and soon, stiff cadavers rose.
Grue's jaw slacked, and he stared in awe as the dead man climbed to his feet, groaning ghoulish undead shrieks. The man in red struck out his boot to the sternum and sent the howling zombie across the room. It smashed against the TV and battered the floor as the other dead slowly stood, former-fixers-turned-living-corpses by an unknown puppet master's hand. They opened fire, Grue putting out 357 magnum shells, and shot down three for the count before he was empty and had to reload. He struggled with the casings, distraction torn by strong axe swing.
A demonic weapon of crimson composition, the heavy metal tore staggering carcasses in half and ripped apart walls every time he swung.
Needed more than that. The entire floor came back to life, the power scuttling on and off, lights flickering from an unknown drainage.
An energetic one broke down the door and bared down on the smoker, pallid hands reaching for his human throat as he bashed the reloaded pistol's handle against its head and knocked its biting mouth away from his shoulder; grabbed by the suit-tie and blitzed a bullet through the brain stem. That put it back under. Freed, he took aim at another and shot, head exploding right behind the man in red.
He looked back. Smirked.
Tore through more with his axe. Still, they rose.
He blasted past them, grabbed the merc and bolted for the window.
Out through the fire escape. Out past the fire escape.
Glass rained, the waiting Gino and co. surprised as the hitman landed firmly on the blacktop beside Grue's parked car.
"What the fuck!" the short Italian man exclaimed.
"Time to go," the man in red replied. "It's a trap, Urizen knew."
"Fuck," Gino swore.
Grue grunted as the man let him go and he limped to his feet, falling back against his car door, "what the hell happened? Who the hell is 'Urizen?'"
No time to answer that, corpses piled out of the window above, raving horde thirsting for flesh. A corpse fell into the man's axe blade, split in half vertically.
Gino and the two ran off towards their own vehicle, an unmarked van. Grue rushed to the driver's seat and unlocked his car, then shouted toward the hitman staring upwards, "Don't stand there, get in!"
The man looked at him for a moment, looked at the car, and then looked back up. Grue was a good option. He got inside and the merc hit the steer into reverse, accelerating away from the fire escape as one of the reanimated crashed down on the hood and crawled up toward his windshield, leaving a sizable dent in the metal. Grue's passenger lowered the window, reached out and tore the zombie off the car with his bare hand, then produced both his pistols, a black and a drab grey one, and fired endless shots furiously fast at the staggering creatures, taking out knees and eyes, sending them back to death till Grue rolled around the corner and sped off down the road.
He checked the rearview mirror to see if anyone followed. Thankfully, they hadn't.
"Would you mind telling me what the fuck I just saw?" he demanded of the killer.
The man in red looked at him blankly, "Well, zombies."
"Jesus Christ," the merc replied, lighting a cig as he drove, rolling down the window when he caught his guest's glare. "There's no way, man. No fuckin' way that just happened."
"Well, you saw it plain as day, Pilgrim. I just killed the same twenty-four slobs twice," the man joked back. "Those finooks were dead as doornails."
Grue drew another breath of smoke and exhaled with a shake of his head, "I mean how?"
"That'd be Urizen," the man explained. "He's, how we say, a special kinda threat."
"He did that?" the merc questioned.
"Yep. Been trying to cut into the boss's territory for a little over a month now. Super-powered necromancer, for what we know about him. I say he's a demon. Would ya believe it?"
"No, I wouldn't."
"Join the club."
"So who are you then? How d'you get put onto this? As a matter of fact, how'd you even jump from the top floor of a place and walk away just fine?"
The man gave a smirk as he replied, "I specialize in this kinda thing. Been a Bowery boy for a long time. The name's Dante." And he held out his hand to shake.
Grue took it with some hesitance, but he shook like a man and relaxed.
"And the jump?"
"Can't give everything away, misterrrr . . ."
"—Grue."
"Grue," he repeated. "Pleasure to meet ya."
The merc stayed silent for a moment.
"Would he really not call again? The boss?"
Dante looked at him for a moment.
"I was just bustin' your balls earlier. Why you worried? You got family or somethin'?"
"Three kids. Girls."
Dante smiled, "they like you or their mom?"
Grue chuckled, "yeah, too much like us. They give me a handful, but I love 'em."
"Regular chips off the ol' block," Dante joked. "There a woman in the picture?"
"No," Grue said plainly. "Not anymore."
The man nodded at him, "I gotcha. Kids without a mother. Hard thing."
"Yeah. Work's hard to find these days for someone like me. I'm tryin' to do good by 'em, leave 'em somethin' better than bad habits and mental scars."
Dante looked at the merc as he drove sullenly, his sandy hair curled but slicked back, his brown trench coat hanging baggily on his well-worn shoulders, that mug hard-lined and rugged, older than he really was. Hell of a thing to be a single dad in this business. Hell of a thing to be out of work with three kids you love. Dante wiped his forehead and sighed.
"I tell ya what," he said to the man. "You had my back tonight. I'll get yours. Put in a kind word for ya upstairs."
"Really? You'd do that?"
"Yeah, why not? You look like ya need the excitement."
"Are we gonna go up against more shit like that?"
"Guaranteed. On Monday, we'll do werewolves."
Grue scoffed, "Can't wait. Where we headed?"
"Back to the office, downtown," Dante smirked. "Got some more things to sort out. You can tag along, meet everyone. I think they'll like you."
(*.*.*)
Vergil walked through the priory with a sense of satisfaction. He walked tall, dressed in black, book in hand, contrition within the hearts of the flock in the pews. Mass was over. He stepped into the confessional booth and sat awaiting the inevitable verbal response that often came with such a place, the one he'd grown to know well over the past year.
"Forgive me father, for I have sinned," came a small voice, a little boy.
Vergil smirked to himself and replied, "Yes, my child. Tell me what you have done."
To Be Continued.
Author's note:
Hey there, new story ^_^ this one's like my other ones, AU. It's kinda what I specialize in for those that don't know. But anyway, the first thing about this one is that it's a supernatural crime thriller. So there's gonna be a lot of stylish gangster film nods and whatnot, I drew parallels between the style elements to DMC and want to bring more of that to the world in place of the anime vibe it usually goes for. The second thing about this story is that it's in a world where Dante and Vergil have reversed fates. I write in a DMC multiverse where there are multiple realities, and different things have happened in each one to these characters. The universe focused on in this story and in most of my work is one where the twins' positions indeed switch on the day their mother died.
Flat out the premise. Love it or hate it. Anyway, I'll get to Vergil more directly in the series a little later. Expect a lot of moral ambiguity and blurred lines between who is good and who is bad. Invoking a Noir tone for this again in place of my usual Horror style so the prose is dirt simple.
Astute readers will have also figured out that this story is going to be a sendup to the old DMC novels that never get enough credit or attention. Some of you who aren't familiar with them, that's where Grue comes from. I've been reading the early ones again and so the story pulls on a lot of elements from the early series while doing my own separate thing with it, mostly mixing elements from the first game with cherry-picked stuff from the later entries for my own particular aesthetic. Part of the fun of Alternate Universe fiction.
Well, that's it for notes, hope you enjoy.