The bedroom was filled with sunlight when Nero woke. For a few groggy minutes he lay there, basking in its warmth, until he awakened sufficiently to recall the events of the previous night. He swung upright and turned to check on Vergil, but the other side of the bed was empty.

Nero paused only long enough to glance at the clock—it was nearly ten-thirty—before bolting down the stairs. The living room was empty, but he followed the sound of Kyrie's humming to the kitchen. "Where's Vergil?" he burst as he rounded the corner into the room.

"Good morning to you, too," Kyrie laughed. She stretched up to kiss his cheek. "Your father is in the shower. He said he didn't wake you because he knew you needed the rest."

"Like hell," Nero muttered. "He didn't want to wake me because he knew I'd sit on him to keep his ass in bed. He shouldn't even be walking around, in his condition."

Kyrie frowned at his language, but pulled out a chair for him. "Sit. I've kept your breakfast warm."

Nero obeyed, scrubbing at his gritty eyes. Now that the brief panic over Vergil's whereabouts had subsided, he found himself drained of energy. "So where is everyone?"

"The children are at school. Dante is in his room. Trish and Lady left just after breakfast to scout the remote parts of island. They said they likely wouldn't be back until supper time." Kyrie retrieved a pan from the oven and spooned sausage and potatoes onto a plate. "I hope they find some clues. The only thing worse than knowing what's out there waiting for all of you is not knowing where or when it will next appear."

"Yeah, I hear you on that. Thanks." He accepted the plate and a cup of coffee, which he half-drained in a single draught. Maybe enough caffeine would take the edge off his lingering fatigue. "So what's the plan for today?"

Kyrie poured a coffee for herself and joined him at the table. "Life as usual, I suppose. I have some laundry to do, but I was going to wait until both of you finished your showers so we don't run out of hot water. And after that, there are a few errands to run." She lowered her voice. "I thought it might be nice for Dante to get out of the house, but as worried as he's been these past few days, I doubt he'll want to leave Vergil's side."

"Maybe he will now that Vergil's back on his feet. We'll give them a few hours to annoy each other, and I bet by this afternoon Dante will be climbing up the walls like normal."

"You think so? I was hoping this whole experience might have…" She cast about for a word. "I don't know, made them cherish each other the more, I suppose. Or at least make peace with one another."

Nero laughed around a mouthful of sausage. "Yeah. And while we're dreaming, let's hope some relative we've never met suddenly leaves us a whole pile of money."

Kyrie frowned. "I don't think it's that unrealistic. Surely all this has had some impact on their relationship. Seeing how much Vergil wanted to protect Dante, and how worried Dante was, don't you think they might finally put aside their differences? They must remember how close they were as children, and it's clear they still care about each other to some degree."

"Nobody says they don't care about each other. Dante spent months in the underworld rather than let Vergil out of his sight, once he found him again. And even before all this happened, I think Vergil would have skewered anybody who looked cross-eyed at Dante, if he thought Dante couldn't handle it for some reason."

"But you told me that they don't get along. You said it was stressful to work with them because they fight all the time."

"They do. Until I saw those two in action, I never thought I'd see actual bloodshed over the question of what toppings to order on a pizza." Nero shrugged. "But I think that's just how they are. I mean, look how often Credo and I butted heads. Just because we didn't see eye-to-eye on most things didn't mean we hated each other."

From the hallway came the sound of the bathroom door opening. Nero shoved the last bite of breakfast into his mouth and mentally scrambled for something to say to Vergil. He probably shouldn't reprimand him for getting out of bed, even though that's what was foremost in his mind. He wasn't sure how familiar he should act, either; Vergil had been fairly open with him the previous night, but that might have just been a result of the pain he was in. Maybe he wouldn't want Nero to act like they were on friendly terms. Which was absurd—of course they should be on friendly terms. They were family, even though they'd only met a year and a half ago, and even if Vergil had largely ignored him for most of that time, Nero had practically raised him over the last three months and nursed him back from near-death over the past weekend, and if neither of those qualified them to be on familiar terms, he didn't know what did…

Nero clenched his teeth until his jaw ached. This overthinking was ridiculous. He should just play it casual, like always, and when Vergil joined them he'd say good morning and ask how Vergil was feeling and wait for him to lie like he always did and pretend he was fine. Nero held his breath as the sound of Vergil's long strides approached the kitchen.

Then the footsteps continued right past the kitchen without pausing, and a moment later Nero heard the squeak of the springs in the living room armchair. A few seconds after that, Dante padded past, a magazine tucked under his arm, on the way to join his brother.

Nero released his breath and sagged over the table. Overthinking things, indeed; he had been foolish to think that the familiarity Vergil had shown the previous night would result in a sudden change in his behavior. Vergil had never gone out of his way to greet him or make conversation, and it seemed he had no intention of starting now.

He caught Kyrie giving him a concerned look. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Fine," Nero sighed. "I'm gonna go grab a shower."

After his shower, Nero volunteered for laundry duty, then followed up by cleaning the entire bathroom. When he offered to put fresh sheets on all the beds, Kyrie pinned him in the corner of the laundry room with a stern look. "Nero, I don't know what happened last night, but you can't avoid your father forever."

Nero tried to look confused at her statement. Judging by Kyrie's expression, he failed. "I'm not avoiding him."

"You haven't set foot in the same room with him all day."

He shrugged. "I was just trying to help out around the house, since I haven't done anything the last couple of days except sit upstairs."

"You just offered to change the bed linens."

"So? They're due for it, aren't they?"

"You hate fitting bedsheets. You once told me that you'd rather have a root canal than have to fold bedding around the corners of our mattress."

He dodged her knowing gaze. "I was just trying to get you to spring for the fitted sheets."

Kyrie crossed her arms. "All right, if you insist you aren't avoiding Vergil, you can prove it right now. It's nearly lunch time. Send Dante in to help me set the table, and then I want you to sit down and converse with your father for at least five minutes."

He groaned. "What are we gonna talk about for five minutes? Vergil doesn't do small talk."

"Once you start a conversation, I'm sure you'll find something to discuss. It's not as though you two don't share plenty of common ground."

Nero sighed. It wasn't that he couldn't think of a topic; there were easily a dozen important questions he still wanted to ask his father, and after their easy conversation last night, he was beginning to have hope that Vergil might even give him a straight answer. But over the past few weeks, he had observed that whenever Vergil had showed any spark of humanity or familiarity with Nero, he tended to overcorrect and revert to cold and standoffish at their next interaction. Nero didn't want to push things forward, only to have Vergil turn into a block of ice.

But he knew Kyrie wouldn't back down, and she did have a point—the house was too small for Nero to keep avoiding Vergil, and in any case they'd have to eat lunch together in a few minutes. He might as well get any lingering social awkwardness out of the way before the meal.

In the living room, Vergil was reading in the armchair as usual. Dante had flopped at the end of the sofa nearest his brother, paging through a magazine that he must have read a dozen times already. Nero leaned over the couch and tapped the boy lightly on the top of his head. "Kyrie's getting lunch ready. Can you give her a hand in the kitchen?"

"Sure." Dante rolled off the cushion, leaving the magazine behind. At the door, he tossed a lingering look back at Vergil before exiting.

Vergil remained motionless in the armchair, though one of his eyebrows flicked as Dante finally departed. "Peace at last."

Nero hadn't expected Vergil to make the opening sally, but at least it saved him the trouble of coming up with something to say to him. "Has he been bothering you?"

"Dante has dogged my footsteps relentlessly since I came downstairs this morning. I've scarcely had a moment's privacy."

"That's not surprising. He probably just wants to make sure you'll be okay. He was pretty worried about you." Nero rested his elbows on the back of the sofa. "We all were."

If Nero hadn't been observing him closely, he might have missed the subtle stiffening of Vergil's frame. "I am not so frail as you all seem to think."

Nero had assumed Vergil would appreciate their concern for his welfare, but this reaction wasn't at all what he expected. "Would you rather we didn't care at all?"

"I would rather you credit me with the strength to endure whatever challenges I choose to face."

"What are you getting all worked up about?" Nero frowned. "You got hurt, and we didn't know if you were going to recover. It was a valid concern, not a value judgment."

Vergil didn't immediately reply. To fill the awkward pause in conversation, Nero scooped up Dante's abandoned magazine and stretched over the couch to add it the stack of other periodicals on the coffee table.

Vergil's eyes flicked critically over Nero as he extended his arm. "You seem to have recovered from your injury."

Nero gave his shoulder an experimental roll. "Yeah, getting a full night's sleep helped."

"You shouldn't overexert yourself." Before Nero could point out that Vergil's attention to his wellbeing was a double standard, Vergil added, "The Nilepoch could reappear at any time, and engaging it while in less than peak condition would be foolish." He returned his attention to the book in his lap.

Nero wasn't so easily deterred. "I think that's my line. I know there's probably no point in telling you to go back to bed, but for the record, I think you should still be resting. Not because I think you're weak or whatever, but because your body is still recovering."

The tension in Vergil's shoulders ratcheted up again. "I'm fine."

"Fine. Sure. You don't need rest." Nero leveled a finger at him. "But if you hurt yourself because you're doing too much too soon, it's on you."

"That's a risk I'm willing to assume," Vergil replied without looking up from the text. "If what you told me last night is correct, I've done nothing but rest for three days."

Nero matched his dry tone. "Yeah, I suppose bleeding out in the bathtub while we tried to stick your brains back in your skull could be considered a form of rest. I mean, you sure as hell weren't doing anything else while that was going on."

With each exchange, Vergil's words were becoming more clipped. "There's no need for dramatic embellishment."

"That's not embellishment; it's a history lesson. Ask Lady if you don't believe me. She's the one who helped me scrape up what was left of you after the tower came down." Vergil's brow creased at that, but Nero continued his forward press. "We practically needed a spatula. And on that note, you probably owe Lady a new pair of gloves."

"I'm sure she's already added the cost to the interest accruing on the loan she extended to me." Vergil's manner cooled even further. "She has never failed to press an advantage, particularly where I am concerned."

Nero frowned. "Considering the events of the past few days, that's a pretty cynical statement, even coming from you."

"We have a long history."

"I'm aware," Nero shot back. "But I think I've got a broader perspective than you do on this one. Because while you were doing your corpse impression, Lady was taking twelve-hour shifts sitting with you and helping Kyrie change your bandages."

"A service I will no doubt see reflected on my invoice as well."

Nero shook his head at the unfeigned wryness. "Man, you really are a piece of work. You just can't stomach the thought of anyone doing something purely to be nice or helpful, can you?"

Vergil's expression darkened. "In my experience, there is no such thing as a selfless act."

"Really." Nero stared back at him. "So, what, you think I brought you and Dante here for my own amusement? Or are you expecting a bill from me, too?"

"There's no denying it's to your benefit to restore us to normal, faced with an enemy like the Nilepoch."

"I see." Nero jerked his head back toward the children's bedrooms. "And all the other kids? You think they're all gonna grow up to be devil hunters, too? Or maybe you're under the impression that somebody's paying us to take care of them. How about all those kids at the orphanage—you think the sisters have nothing better to do than work themselves to exhaustion raising dozens of children? Kids like me, with no parents, no money, no place to go?" He let those uncomfortable words dangle in the air for a few seconds. "You think Dante gets paid for every job he does? That he never takes out a demon just for the sake of protecting people?"

"Dante's business acumen is not the stuff of a well-supported argument."

"Fine. Just answer me one thing, then." The look Nero leveled at him left no doubt as to the gravity of his question. "When you saw the Nilepoch in that warehouse, the first thing you did was push me out of the way. Why?"

Vergil's expression closed. "I told you before, our best strategy was—"

"Bullshit. Dante stood a better chance of beating that thing than I did, so if it was only about strategy, you would have saved him before me. Or you could have used that split second to get out of the line of fire. You could have put yourself in any strategic position you wanted with the Yamato. But you didn't. You chose to get me out of there, instead."

An all-too-familiar sneer hovered around Vergil's mouth. "I suffer one momentary lapse in judgment, and you argue that as evidence for inherent selflessness? You'll forgive me if I'm not convinced."

"A lapse in judgment." Nero tried not to let the sting of those words show, but they cut deep—far deeper than they would have even a week ago. He pushed away from the sofa and fought down the nameless emotion that tried to claw its way up his throat. "Yeah, maybe you're right. I guess as far as you're concerned, all I've ever been is a mistake you made twenty-five years ago."

A flicker of something like alarm flashed across Vergil's face, but Nero didn't wait to see what expression it resolved into before fleeing toward the nearest refuge. His hand was already turning the knob of the garage door when he heard Vergil's voice again. "Nero—"

Nero paused with the door ajar and waited for several seconds, but no more words followed. He hated the desperate desire that drew him back toward that sound, but hope soon overcame his vanity, and he retraced his steps to the entrance of the living room.

Vergil was not looking in his direction. Instead, he sat with his head turned away and cocked to one side, as though listening to something distant.

Nero's flagging pride rallied. He didn't deserve to be toyed with. If Vergil kept yanking his chain like this, he could damn well—

The thought was blown from his mind as the room exploded around them.

Nero's back slammed into the far wall of the hallway, knocking the breath from his lungs. He tumbled to the floor as shards of glass and chunks of plaster rained about him. Vergil was nowhere to be seen, though the roiling dust limited visibility to a range of a few feet.

"Nero!" Kyrie's voice reached him over the ringing in his ears. Hands closed on his arm and helped him right himself. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

Nero was coughing too hard to answer, but pushed her back toward the relative safety of the kitchen. "Stay back," he choked when he finally managed a breath that was more air than dust. "Don't know what happened yet."

She retreated only a step. "Are you hurt?" she repeated.

Nero took quick stock of his limbs, but apart from a few stinging cuts and a dull ache across his shoulders where he'd struck the wall, he seemed intact. "I'm fine." He coughed again. "Stay back. I'll check it out."

The door to the garage had been knocked open by the blast. As Nero tried to catch his breath, Dante appeared in the doorway, hauling Red Queen's massive storage case. "There's something bad out there," he said, depositing the case at Nero's feet. "You'll need this."

Kyrie seized the boy's shoulders and pulled him nearer. "Stay close to me, Dante. Whatever did this could be dangerous."

Dante nodded. "Don't worry. I'll protect you."

Kyrie opened her mouth to correct him, but stopped when she met his earnest gaze. She didn't need to look down anymore; Dante was nearly as tall as she was, and while he still had the gangly proportions of a young teen, the confidence in his stance spoke to his comfort in the face of danger. After a moment she simply nodded and turned back to Nero. "Where's your father?"

Before Nero could answer, another sound reached them—a chest-vibrating hum that quickly descended into the subsonic range. Nero had last heard it atop the Qliphoth, when he'd been forced to dodge the Yamato's deadly vacuum-cut spheres. "Sounds like he's kicked off the party without me." He knelt to open Red Queen's case. "Since we don't know what we're fighting, I want you two to be ready to run out the back. As soon as—"

With a shriek of displaced air, a lance pierced the space that had been occupied by Nero's head just seconds before and embedded itself in the wall. Nero expelled a profane word that he usually reserved for the most fraught of situations, and for once Kyrie didn't reprimand him; her face showed that she shared the sentiment, if not the exact phraseology. "Check," Nero growled when he'd recovered from the momentary shock. "Guess we know what we're fighting after all."

Kyrie's fingers tightened on Dante's sleeve, pulling him closer. "We do?"

Nero rapped the lance with Red Queen's blade as he stood. "Last time I saw one of these was when Sanctus sicced a flock of his pet Angelos on me."

As if summoned by its name, a metallic hulk stamped into the demolished living room and oriented on Nero. The conduits of demonic energy coursing between the armored plates glowed red-violet instead of the usual blue, but there was no question that it was a Bianco Angelo of the Order's design. Its wing-shaped shield still bore the Order's crest in the center.

"Here we go," Nero muttered.

With a hollow growl, the construct lunged forward, reaching for the lance embedded in the wall. Nero ducked beneath its outstretched gauntlet and parried with the flat of Red Queen's blade, though he couldn't use the long weapon to advantage in the close quarters of the hallway. Even so, the blow was enough to knock his enemy off balance for a second or two. Nero used that time to leap behind the suit of armor, catching the back of its gorget with his spectral arm as he passed. Bracing himself against the door jamb with his left arm, he hurled the Bianco Angelo back toward the gaping hole where the front room's bay window had once been. The armor crashed into the edge of what remained of the ceiling, ricocheted off in an explosion of plaster, and continued rolling gracelessly toward the street.

Nero turned back to Kyrie. "Okay, listen: These bastards tend to travel in packs, so scratch what I said about the back door. Get behind something solid in one of the back rooms and stay there. I don't want you anywhere they can get to you without going through me."

From above them came the sound of shattering glass. Kyrie glanced anxiously toward the stairs. "That was our bedroom window! Are they smart enough to circle around and separate us?"

Nero repeated the earlier oath under his breath. "We can't rule it out. All right, stay right here between the garage and the front door, but keep your heads down. If one of them gets past us, you get out any way you can and run."

Behind Nero, the lance suddenly snapped in half, the length tumbling to the floor while the tip remained in the wall. The otherworldly light faded from the weapon, and within seconds it began to char and curl into ash as the demonic power sustaining it died out.

"That was the last of the vanguard, but there are more incoming," Vergil announced as he stepped over the remains of the sofa to join them. Dust coated his shirt, and his face was sweat-sheened and a shade paler than usual, but his steady movements gave no indication of injury. Strangely, the sounds of combat from the front of the house seemed to be continuing without him. "The next wave appear to be larger and better-armed."

"Probably that missing unit of Alto Angelos," Nero groaned. "How many?"

"At least half a dozen. I've managed to occupy them temporarily, but we have a minute at most."

Nero blinked. "Occupy them?"

A cold smile hovered briefly on Vergil's lips. "I opened a portal and let something loose. Something with rather strong opinions regarding artificial demonic life forms. It won't last long against so many enemies, so I suggest you use the next few seconds to find a more defensible position."

"Yeah, not a lot of those around here." Nero glanced around the ruined front room. "You and I will just have to hold them off out front, and hope Lauda hasn't sent the whole squadron at once."

"I can fight, too!" Dante interjected.

Nero shook his head. "I don't want you or Kyrie anywhere near those things. They're tough and merciless. You see one coming, you just get the hell out of here."

"But there's just the two of you," Dante pressed, "and there's more than two ways they could come after us, like Kyrie said. How are we supposed to get past them if we can't fight? If I had a sword, I could at least make us a path to get out."

"Well, I only have the one, and I'm using it." From the street in front of the house came an inhuman screech, and the sounds of combat abruptly ceased. "Crap. Sounds like intermission is over. We'd better get out there." Nero took a step toward the collapsed wall, but Vergil didn't move. "You coming?"

Vergil's gaze was fixed on Dante. He considered him for several seconds before slowly extending his left arm. The Yamato rested in his fingers. "This is temporary," he said crisply. "I'll expect it returned."

Dante's eyes had gone wide at the offering. He nodded his understanding as his own hands closed on the sword's lacquered sheath.

Nero frowned at Vergil. "If you give him the Yamato, what are you going to fight with?"

Vergil said nothing, but opened his right hand. The same ice-hued flame Nero had seen before pooled in his palm and spun itself into the form of a sword, long and symmetrical, much like the flying blades he summoned in combat but larger. The shimmering devil power made it difficult to make out much detail, but Nero could tell that the pommel bore a wicked-looking spike.

Dante's eyes stretched even wider. "Force Edge?"

"Merely a replica." A scowl replaced Vergil's thoughtful expression. "Since someone saw fit to transmute the original…"

"Discuss later." Nero jerked his head toward the front of the house, where the ring of metallic footsteps on pavement was growing louder. "Here comes round two."

They raced out through the break in the front wall, and Nero slid to a halt within a semicircle of Alto Angelos. Several of the armored constructs bore gouges across their shields, and a short distance away one lay crumpled in the street, twitching spasmodically beside its detached right arm. Beyond it, some large organic form was gradually flaking to ash. Nero was curious as to what kind of demon Vergil had thrown at them, but he didn't have time to speculate on that now. "You take right, I'll take left," Nero called.

The Alto Angelos gave them no further time for communication before charging. Nero leaped straight into the air, just clearing the five swords that collided exactly where he'd been standing. He performed an aerial flip and brought Red Queen down on the leftmost armor's outer pauldron. The silver-white metal dented beneath his blade, but an instant later the Angelo twisted and knocked him aside with its shield. Nero managed to get his feet beneath him, but the force of the blow sent him into a skid as his shoes touched the pavement.

He didn't wait for the construct to prepare another attack, instead launching back toward it with Red Queen extended. As he'd hoped, the Angelo swung its massive shield forward and braced for the blow, pushing its center of gravity forward. Nero kicked off from the sidewalk, touched the rim of the shield with one foot to propel himself higher, and executed a neat flip over the Angelo's helmet. At the zenith of his arc, he twisted and seized the gorget with his spectral arm. Angling Red Queen's tip straight down, he pulled with the Devil Bringer to reel himself in hard and fast. Red Queen slammed into the gap between helmet and gorget, plunging into the semi-solid demonic flesh that filled out the armor. The violet energy flowing over the construct pulsed once and began to fade.

Nero scarcely had time to confirm the successful strike before he was forced to leap clear; two more Angelos were already swinging at him. He rolled beneath their blades, but before he could regain his footing, they were upon him again. He managed to block their blows with the flat of Red Queen's blade, but they drove him back, blow by blow, until he stumbled over the detached arm of the damaged construct that was still sprawled across the opposite lane. As his opponents charged yet again, Nero reached for the downed Angelo's shield, still mounted to the construct's remaining arm, and flung it up before himself. The blades slammed into it, jarring the Angelos to a momentary halt. Nero leaped the fallen Angelo, ducked around the standing ones, and bolted back toward the house. If they had all been following him, he might have been able to lead them away from the house and give Kyrie and Dante a chance to escape, but two of the constructs had peeled off to face Vergil near the blown-out front window. As long as there was a threat in proximity to Kyrie, he needed to stay nearby.

The Alto Angelos were powerful, but not fast, so Nero reached the breached wall well ahead of the two enemies chasing him. He used the few seconds' reprieve to scan for Vergil. It wasn't hard to spot him: Light sparked from his spectral sword with each strike, and blue flame trailed in its wake, silhouetting the two Angelos he'd engaged against an aura of otherworldly energy. The blows Vergil inflicted channeled more raw strength than the techniques Nero was used to seeing him use with the Yamato. The katana was pure cutting grace, while this blade of concentrated devil power was a nearer relative to Dante's preferred weapons—long, heavy blades like the Rebellion. The eponymous sword Dante had acquired in the intervals between facing Urizen was even more massive, and it bludgeoned as much as sliced. From what Nero could see of Vergil's attacks, the sword called Force Edge must have used a similar style.

As Nero watched, Vergil finished off one of his opponents with a mighty swing that cleaved through its breastplate. Before it had even collapsed to the ground, the remaining Angelo lunged forward with redoubled efforts. Vergil turned and raised his sword to block the attack, giving Nero a clear view of his face. The close combat with this heavier weapon must have been taking its toll: Perspiration streamed from Vergil's forehead, and his chest heaved for breath as he fought. A blow that Nero expected him to deflect with ease instead knocked him back, and only the timely deployment of a ring of summoned swords spared him from the Angelo's next strike.

Just in time, Nero hauled his attention back to the two constructs charging him. He sprang to one side, landing a glancing blow against the vambrace of the first, but his mind stayed with that other fight. He'd automatically assumed that Vergil was capable of defeating a half-dozen Alto Angelos with ease, but in all the excitement, he'd temporarily forgotten that his father had awakened from a coma less than twelve hours earlier. Even wounded, Vergil was far from helpless, but he'd already spent some of his strength destroying the first wave of Bianco Angelos that had attacked the house. Sooner or later, his reserve of energy would run out.

Nero just needed to kill the rest of the Alto Angelos before that happened.

As Nero slammed a flurry of blows into the nearest Angelo's shield, Vergil dodged to the side to avoid his opponent's sword. The move brought him within a few paces of the second Angelo that had been targeting Nero. Presented with a more opportune target, the construct leveled its sword at Vergil's back and prepared to lunge with its weight behind it. "On your six!" Nero shouted, hoping Vergil could hear him over the clash of metal.

Vergil started to glance back, but just then the enemy in front of him charged, and he was forced to throw himself out of the way. The Angelo at his back reoriented even before Vergil's feet touched the ground.

Nero swore and abandoned his own combat advantage to fling his spectral arm toward the second Angelo. He just managed to catch the edge of its shield and used it to reel himself in. Airborne, he twisted and aligned Red Queen beneath his own falling body weight. The sword speared the Angelo's shoulder just inside the pauldron, driving it to the ground. The construct issued a guttural hiss and writhed against the blade pinning it down.

Beside him, Vergil had righted himself and was standing with his back to Nero, sword held low. "You're welcome," Nero panted, tossing a glare over his shoulder.

"Be ready to move." Vergil's voice was breathless, but authoritarian.

Nero glanced between the two remaining Angelos—one facing Vergil, the other oriented on himself—and wondered exactly where Vergil expected him to move to. Red Queen was lodged firmly in the grounded Angelo's armor and would take a second or two to free. He could leave it behind to dodge faster, but that would mean abandoning his only weapon…

Before he could begin to calculate his exit strategy, the Angelo on his side raised its sword and charged. "Now!" Vergil shouted, throwing himself back toward the house. He seized Nero's shoulder and pulled him along. Nero's left hand was still wrapped around Red Queen's hilt, and the unexpected force disrupted his balance. Thrown sidelong by Vergil's momentum, Nero slammed hard into the ground and gasped for air.

Vergil had fallen with him, but recovered first; before Nero had even fully processed what had happened, Vergil had rolled into a balanced crouch, sword at the ready. After a second, he relaxed. "That worked well."

"What," Nero hissed, scrambling upright after him, "the hell?"

Vergil pointed back toward the two Angelos. They leaned against each other like an armored A-frame, each one's sword extending through the other's back. As the men watched, both constructs began to flake into ash.

Nero stared. "You planned all that on the fly?"

"Once we were directly in line between them, it seemed the obvious solution." Vergil rose and kicked the remains of the crumbling Angelos out of the way. The enemy Nero had targeted previously remained on the ground just beyond them, still thrashing against Nero's sword. "Catch." With his free hand, Vergil wrenched Red Queen out of the armor and tossed it easily toward Nero, then drove his own spectral blade deep into the gap beneath the Angelo's helmet. With an eerie groan, it collapsed and began to disintegrate like its fellows.

Nero caught Red Queen and used the sword to lever himself to his feet. He had landed close to the house, and the hole in the front wall yawned ominously behind him. "What a mess. I wonder how we're gonna explain this to the neighbors."

Vergil swung the ethereal sword across his back, where it hovered as though lodged in a harness. Apparently Trish didn't have a patent on that technique. "I believe an earthquake is the usual recourse."

Nero caught the undercurrent of humor beneath Vergil's dry delivery. "I'm pretty sure fault lines extend more than one house width." He knelt in the grass and probed a fragment of shattered brick that had been blown from the structure. "What did this, anyway? This is way too much damage for something to have just hit the wall."

"Some sort of beam attack. I sensed the flow of power just before it struck the house. After I engaged them, they attempted to use it a second time, but I managed to deflect it upward." Vergil moved back a few steps and pointed to the upper floor, where a corner of the dormer had been stripped away. A few jagged triangles of glass were all that remained of Nero's bedroom window. "I dispatched the remainder of the first wave before they could charge it again. I suspect their intent was to destroy the entire house."

Another attack on the house would almost certainly have caught Kyrie in the devastation. "Damn you, Lauda," Nero hissed. He flung the fragment of brick away. It skittered across the pavement behind him and bumped against something metallic. Probably more debris; he hadn't even checked for damage to the garage or the neighbors' houses. Nero flopped back to sit in the grass and looked over at Vergil. "So what do you think—"

Vergil's gaze had idly followed the brick's path into the street. As Nero watched, his arm flew to his left side, and his entire body twitched in place—then his eyes shot wide. "Nero!"

Nero quickly twisted to follow his father's line of sight, but before he could even rise from the grass, the armless Alto Angelo he'd left lying in the street slammed into him shield-first and carried him into the wall of the house. Brick shattered around his ears, and his head rebounded against something structural before striking the shield again.

As his vision irised into darkness, all he managed to think was, Not again.