/Lovely,/ Dante muttered to himself, digging through a carton of Chinese for a last few stray bean sprouts. He scooped them up with the spoon and munched on them, downing it all with a beer. /Juuuust friggin' lovely./ He looked down and contemplated the gutted innards of the takeout box for a few moments, his feet and legs painfully propped up on his desk with the carton in his lap. It was better than looking at Trish. She kept walking by his desk with rigid back, thunderous expression and eyes turned away in a very familiar manner that said out loud she was Still Not Talking To Him.
While she was busy between calls with a fervently renewed attempt to research the nature of the creature that had attacked he and Anne, she was still apparently not forgiving him for forgetting to keep in managable contact with her. She let him know about that last night, even before he'd gotten away to shower the blood off himself.
Oh *boy* had she let him know about it.
She'd been furious. Enough that she did the one thing Dante hated the most coming from her.
She'd used the Mom Voice.
Dante *hated* it when she used the Mom Voice. It was bad enough she resembled his late mother, but when she used *that* tone of voice it bypassed all his higher reasoning functions and hit him right in the center of the portion of his brain that remembered viscerally being six years old and being found having broken the cookie jar after Vergil had dared him to get into it. It was *hell* on your machismo when you started flinching when your partner started shouting at you in a certain way, and Trish knew it.
He spoke up, trying to keep the pleading out of his voice. "Can we let it go already? OW!" A pencil had flown at him and bounced off his forehead. Point-first. Apparently she was still Not Talking To Him.
Dante rubbed the mark on his forehead, wincing and looking up at one of his vast collection of impaled demon heads on the walls of the office.
"Ever had one of those days?" he muttered to the nearest one. "Oh, yeah, you did. I happened. Never mind."
A very loud, very miserable sneeze echoed faintly from upstairs, causing Dante's sensitive ears to prick in interest. Apparently Anne's case of the sniffles was coming along...well...'nicely' was probably not the right term to use in this case. 'Notably' was probably better.
Trish had been kind enough to hit the nearest CVS for a large quantity of Kleenexes, zinc lozenges, and other related supplies when it became obvious the stresses of the previous day had taken their toll on Anne's immune system. (And a full package of pencils for target practice, in very pointed, Not Talking To You fashion.) Anne was already well through the first box of tissues and Dante, judging from how much the amnesiac upstairs was *not* enjoying the experience, was desperately hoping that hybrid vigor would come through again and keep him from getting the curse. His hearing was picking up enough sneezing, snuffling, whimpering, moaning and groaning to make the upper floor sound like a viral torture cell. And, of course, until they all felt a little bit safer about just *what* it was that tried to grab her last night and how to fight it, she was under semi-house arrest in Dante's apartment. Sleeping on his couch, and using his bathroom. Again.
"Looooovely," he muttered under his breath again.
Trish suddenly made a startled little 'hmm' voice, staring intently at the screen of her Powerbook and dropping most of the frigid Not Talking To You attitude. Dante made notice of this and sat up, pale aquamarine irises focusing on Trish and the fact from the look of it she was suddenly paging down the screen a lot and reading, her blue eyes flickering rapidly as she did so.
"Okay, Trish. If you're still pissed at me, drop it, because if you have a lead I need to know it too."
Trish frowned absently, still reading, but nodding, a more scholarly demeanor taking over. It was creepily reminiscent, from what memories Dante had of his mother doing the same with books. "I think I found a description and reference of the thing that you went up against last night, Dante."
Dante sat up further in interest, feet sliding off the table and onto the floor. "Yeah? You have any idea what kind of demon it was? 'Cos I've never fought anything like that before and you say you haven't seen one before either life. Nobodies are almost as ugly though."
"Yah." Pause. "Idiot."
"I said I was *sorry* okay, dammit!"
Trish looked up at him, eyes blazing. "Yeah, but sorry wouldn't have meant *crap* if your being all macho and oh no, I don't need a cellphone had gotten Anne---" She trailed off, took a couple deep breaths, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Later, later, already screamed at you for that. And yes, Dante, I've got a match, finally. It took some doing, though."
Dante walked over. Carefully. Hiding any wince he made at any strikes she'd scored on him. "Yeah? So what kind of demon is it?"
"That's the thing, Dante."
"What thing?"
"It's....not."
"Not.......what?"
"Not a demon."
"Okay. Back up. That thing, stink, skinlessness, slime, blood, and all, *wasn't*? What in the name of Hell *was* it then, Trish?"
"A faerie."
Dante paused.
"Uh, hold on, hold on, *back* *up* here. A *faerie*?"
"That's what the webpage said, yeah."
Dante blinked. Several times. "You mean Barnum and Bailey's annotation to /Gray's Anatomy/ is a *faerie*?"
"That's what I SAID, yes!" Trish snapped, still paging.
Dante blinked some more, then smacked himself upside the head. "Shit. For a moment I had a vision of trying to link Skinless with Tinkerbell and my brain barfed. That's just *wrong*."
Trish blinked a lot, trying to resolve things.
After a moment she commented distantly. "Faeries apparently exist. Now, from looks of things, faeries aren't anything like the flitty fluttery Victorian and Disney crap, but that really hurt my mind, Dante. Now I'm thinking of the....*thing* with little fluttery insect wings.....and.....*ow*."
"Heh. Payback for the macarena thing." Dante stretched, popped vertebrae back into place, then--cautiously--leaned over Trish's desk to look at the screen. "Okay. What *did* you find?"
Trish pulled up the window so he could see. "This is just for starters, but it's a launching point."
Dante read.
"...Nuckalavee the Skinless."
Trish nodded. "It's an evil Scottish water faerie. Or I should probably say, of the sea. The description matches just about exactly what you and Anne saw last night. Identified with plagues and failing crops." Dante nodded. Trish continued. "It apparently hates fresh running water, so if it's chasing you you just need to cross over say, a creek or stream to escape it."
Dante paused, then slowly facepalmed, leather glove smacking against forehead.
"What?"
"I...didn't say what Anne and I did last night."
"What?"
"Jumped over Rock Creek carrying her. Looks like it was the best thing to do, and I didn't even know it."
Trish paused, looking at him, chin in palm of hand. She knew how wide the creek in question was. "Let me guess. Aside from all *this*, she's starting to get suspicious of what we *really* do for a living."
"Aaaamong other things. I bet me taking Alastor to that thing didn't exactly help."
"Gosh. Who Would Have Thought." Trish was marvelous on the sarcasm.
"What the hell am I supposed to do, Trish? Really? Tell her, 'hi, my dad was one of the spawn of the pit of Hell, but he got better and I don't bite, really'? I mean, maybe *three* human-type people on the planet know who and what I really am and you're one of them."
Trish's voice was dry. "Looks like you're going to have to expand to four before long if she keeps around here, bonehead. Which we don't have much of an option about unless we *want* the Nuckalavee to get her."
Dante muttered something obscene about Alastor, special effects, amnesiac women having breakdowns, and overachieving under duress. It was colorful, complicated, and a lot more detailed than Trish thought possible, especially given Dante being Dante and being more used to expressing things by hacking them up into small bits.
"The thing is, why does it want her in the first place?" Trish muttered absently after parsing Dante's expanded vocabulary. "And what in the name of the Underworld is a *Scottish* faerie of any sort doing in America and a good half-hour drive at least away from any salt water? It's not like they get first-class tickets from Virgin Airways anyway. Unless there's interesting provisions post September 11th for parahumans that I didn't know of."
Dante shook his head. "Damned if I know, babe. If there's anything for bringing weapons on board, I *really* want to hear about it."
Trish glanced over at the massive blade hung over Alastor, which was covering the more ahem *interesting* attributes of Dante's treasured girlie poster. "Maybe museum exhibits?"
"Can ya just *imagine* the freight on the Sparda?"
"Ugh."
The air exploded in a sudden, percussive, and incredible barrage of sneezing. Once Dante had popped up from his roll on the floor with Ebony and Ivory both in his hands, and Trish had finished her startled spin, both realized that it hadn't emitted from upstairs.
In fact, it was from behind the door that led to the upstairs. The silence now emitting from there was entirely too innocent for its own good. And, for Dante, punctuated by an occasional snuffle.
After a second of standoff, it opened.
Anne looked like she'd seen better days. Her dark hair was a mangled tangle, her eyes were bright red and squinting from the light, and her nose was currently of a shade that was an almost exact Pantone match for Dante's pants and vest. This was disregarding the pained shuffle, attitude of general misery, and rapidly shrinking box of tissues. With them, the general aura of looking like she'd been dragged through a hedge dramatically increased.
Dante realized absently that Anne had never *been* in the office aside from her first nearly fatal entrance with Trish and had taken the outside stairs to go downstairs or upstairs just before the sneezer actually entered the room. Judging from the widening of cold-reddened eyes, this was apparently a good supposition to make.
While Trish and Dante were maintaining a sort of "oops, caught in the act" posture, Anne moved further in. Surly squinty eyes swept across the collection of sword-impaled demon heads; dusty drum set; desks; pool table carrying empty pizza boxes, takeout carton corpses, and dossiers; runecircle on the floor; and laptop and printer; finally coming to rest on both the Sparda and Alastor, the latter still providing bikini coverage for the bosom of Dante's Playboy centerfold.
For some odd reason Dante now felt a lot like some guy naked and sweaty on top of some girl in the bedroom, looking up at his wife who just walked in and starting in on the 'Look, I can explain' routine. In a weird metaphysical way, it *felt* similar.
Red-eyed and squinted or not, Dante noted that those eyes were getting....awfully gimlet.
They came to rest on Trish and himself. Somehow, it didn't help being the focus for the regard. Especially since holding two .45 handguns wasn't helping him avoid thinking about the whole cheating husband being caught in flagrante delicito parallels.
"Somebubby 'xplain. Lige now. Private investiggdur my azz." Anne said this tersely, then punctuated it with a 7.8 Richter sneeze.
Dante looked at Trish.
Trish looked at Dante.
Dante looked at Anne.
"Eheh. Uh, oopsie?" he said feebly.
"My azz." she snapped, when recovering from her latest paroxym. Or tried to. It came out too phlegmily to be a good snap.
Trish sighed, then elbowed Dante. Dante yelped, then straightened and carefully reholstered his guns. He then sighed, running a hand through his bangs and causing them to stick out in a white electroshock. All this time trying to ignore the hard, watery stare of the waifish young woman near the doorway.
"Look, I can explain..."
While she was busy between calls with a fervently renewed attempt to research the nature of the creature that had attacked he and Anne, she was still apparently not forgiving him for forgetting to keep in managable contact with her. She let him know about that last night, even before he'd gotten away to shower the blood off himself.
Oh *boy* had she let him know about it.
She'd been furious. Enough that she did the one thing Dante hated the most coming from her.
She'd used the Mom Voice.
Dante *hated* it when she used the Mom Voice. It was bad enough she resembled his late mother, but when she used *that* tone of voice it bypassed all his higher reasoning functions and hit him right in the center of the portion of his brain that remembered viscerally being six years old and being found having broken the cookie jar after Vergil had dared him to get into it. It was *hell* on your machismo when you started flinching when your partner started shouting at you in a certain way, and Trish knew it.
He spoke up, trying to keep the pleading out of his voice. "Can we let it go already? OW!" A pencil had flown at him and bounced off his forehead. Point-first. Apparently she was still Not Talking To Him.
Dante rubbed the mark on his forehead, wincing and looking up at one of his vast collection of impaled demon heads on the walls of the office.
"Ever had one of those days?" he muttered to the nearest one. "Oh, yeah, you did. I happened. Never mind."
A very loud, very miserable sneeze echoed faintly from upstairs, causing Dante's sensitive ears to prick in interest. Apparently Anne's case of the sniffles was coming along...well...'nicely' was probably not the right term to use in this case. 'Notably' was probably better.
Trish had been kind enough to hit the nearest CVS for a large quantity of Kleenexes, zinc lozenges, and other related supplies when it became obvious the stresses of the previous day had taken their toll on Anne's immune system. (And a full package of pencils for target practice, in very pointed, Not Talking To You fashion.) Anne was already well through the first box of tissues and Dante, judging from how much the amnesiac upstairs was *not* enjoying the experience, was desperately hoping that hybrid vigor would come through again and keep him from getting the curse. His hearing was picking up enough sneezing, snuffling, whimpering, moaning and groaning to make the upper floor sound like a viral torture cell. And, of course, until they all felt a little bit safer about just *what* it was that tried to grab her last night and how to fight it, she was under semi-house arrest in Dante's apartment. Sleeping on his couch, and using his bathroom. Again.
"Looooovely," he muttered under his breath again.
Trish suddenly made a startled little 'hmm' voice, staring intently at the screen of her Powerbook and dropping most of the frigid Not Talking To You attitude. Dante made notice of this and sat up, pale aquamarine irises focusing on Trish and the fact from the look of it she was suddenly paging down the screen a lot and reading, her blue eyes flickering rapidly as she did so.
"Okay, Trish. If you're still pissed at me, drop it, because if you have a lead I need to know it too."
Trish frowned absently, still reading, but nodding, a more scholarly demeanor taking over. It was creepily reminiscent, from what memories Dante had of his mother doing the same with books. "I think I found a description and reference of the thing that you went up against last night, Dante."
Dante sat up further in interest, feet sliding off the table and onto the floor. "Yeah? You have any idea what kind of demon it was? 'Cos I've never fought anything like that before and you say you haven't seen one before either life. Nobodies are almost as ugly though."
"Yah." Pause. "Idiot."
"I said I was *sorry* okay, dammit!"
Trish looked up at him, eyes blazing. "Yeah, but sorry wouldn't have meant *crap* if your being all macho and oh no, I don't need a cellphone had gotten Anne---" She trailed off, took a couple deep breaths, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Later, later, already screamed at you for that. And yes, Dante, I've got a match, finally. It took some doing, though."
Dante walked over. Carefully. Hiding any wince he made at any strikes she'd scored on him. "Yeah? So what kind of demon is it?"
"That's the thing, Dante."
"What thing?"
"It's....not."
"Not.......what?"
"Not a demon."
"Okay. Back up. That thing, stink, skinlessness, slime, blood, and all, *wasn't*? What in the name of Hell *was* it then, Trish?"
"A faerie."
Dante paused.
"Uh, hold on, hold on, *back* *up* here. A *faerie*?"
"That's what the webpage said, yeah."
Dante blinked. Several times. "You mean Barnum and Bailey's annotation to /Gray's Anatomy/ is a *faerie*?"
"That's what I SAID, yes!" Trish snapped, still paging.
Dante blinked some more, then smacked himself upside the head. "Shit. For a moment I had a vision of trying to link Skinless with Tinkerbell and my brain barfed. That's just *wrong*."
Trish blinked a lot, trying to resolve things.
After a moment she commented distantly. "Faeries apparently exist. Now, from looks of things, faeries aren't anything like the flitty fluttery Victorian and Disney crap, but that really hurt my mind, Dante. Now I'm thinking of the....*thing* with little fluttery insect wings.....and.....*ow*."
"Heh. Payback for the macarena thing." Dante stretched, popped vertebrae back into place, then--cautiously--leaned over Trish's desk to look at the screen. "Okay. What *did* you find?"
Trish pulled up the window so he could see. "This is just for starters, but it's a launching point."
Dante read.
"...Nuckalavee the Skinless."
Trish nodded. "It's an evil Scottish water faerie. Or I should probably say, of the sea. The description matches just about exactly what you and Anne saw last night. Identified with plagues and failing crops." Dante nodded. Trish continued. "It apparently hates fresh running water, so if it's chasing you you just need to cross over say, a creek or stream to escape it."
Dante paused, then slowly facepalmed, leather glove smacking against forehead.
"What?"
"I...didn't say what Anne and I did last night."
"What?"
"Jumped over Rock Creek carrying her. Looks like it was the best thing to do, and I didn't even know it."
Trish paused, looking at him, chin in palm of hand. She knew how wide the creek in question was. "Let me guess. Aside from all *this*, she's starting to get suspicious of what we *really* do for a living."
"Aaaamong other things. I bet me taking Alastor to that thing didn't exactly help."
"Gosh. Who Would Have Thought." Trish was marvelous on the sarcasm.
"What the hell am I supposed to do, Trish? Really? Tell her, 'hi, my dad was one of the spawn of the pit of Hell, but he got better and I don't bite, really'? I mean, maybe *three* human-type people on the planet know who and what I really am and you're one of them."
Trish's voice was dry. "Looks like you're going to have to expand to four before long if she keeps around here, bonehead. Which we don't have much of an option about unless we *want* the Nuckalavee to get her."
Dante muttered something obscene about Alastor, special effects, amnesiac women having breakdowns, and overachieving under duress. It was colorful, complicated, and a lot more detailed than Trish thought possible, especially given Dante being Dante and being more used to expressing things by hacking them up into small bits.
"The thing is, why does it want her in the first place?" Trish muttered absently after parsing Dante's expanded vocabulary. "And what in the name of the Underworld is a *Scottish* faerie of any sort doing in America and a good half-hour drive at least away from any salt water? It's not like they get first-class tickets from Virgin Airways anyway. Unless there's interesting provisions post September 11th for parahumans that I didn't know of."
Dante shook his head. "Damned if I know, babe. If there's anything for bringing weapons on board, I *really* want to hear about it."
Trish glanced over at the massive blade hung over Alastor, which was covering the more ahem *interesting* attributes of Dante's treasured girlie poster. "Maybe museum exhibits?"
"Can ya just *imagine* the freight on the Sparda?"
"Ugh."
The air exploded in a sudden, percussive, and incredible barrage of sneezing. Once Dante had popped up from his roll on the floor with Ebony and Ivory both in his hands, and Trish had finished her startled spin, both realized that it hadn't emitted from upstairs.
In fact, it was from behind the door that led to the upstairs. The silence now emitting from there was entirely too innocent for its own good. And, for Dante, punctuated by an occasional snuffle.
After a second of standoff, it opened.
Anne looked like she'd seen better days. Her dark hair was a mangled tangle, her eyes were bright red and squinting from the light, and her nose was currently of a shade that was an almost exact Pantone match for Dante's pants and vest. This was disregarding the pained shuffle, attitude of general misery, and rapidly shrinking box of tissues. With them, the general aura of looking like she'd been dragged through a hedge dramatically increased.
Dante realized absently that Anne had never *been* in the office aside from her first nearly fatal entrance with Trish and had taken the outside stairs to go downstairs or upstairs just before the sneezer actually entered the room. Judging from the widening of cold-reddened eyes, this was apparently a good supposition to make.
While Trish and Dante were maintaining a sort of "oops, caught in the act" posture, Anne moved further in. Surly squinty eyes swept across the collection of sword-impaled demon heads; dusty drum set; desks; pool table carrying empty pizza boxes, takeout carton corpses, and dossiers; runecircle on the floor; and laptop and printer; finally coming to rest on both the Sparda and Alastor, the latter still providing bikini coverage for the bosom of Dante's Playboy centerfold.
For some odd reason Dante now felt a lot like some guy naked and sweaty on top of some girl in the bedroom, looking up at his wife who just walked in and starting in on the 'Look, I can explain' routine. In a weird metaphysical way, it *felt* similar.
Red-eyed and squinted or not, Dante noted that those eyes were getting....awfully gimlet.
They came to rest on Trish and himself. Somehow, it didn't help being the focus for the regard. Especially since holding two .45 handguns wasn't helping him avoid thinking about the whole cheating husband being caught in flagrante delicito parallels.
"Somebubby 'xplain. Lige now. Private investiggdur my azz." Anne said this tersely, then punctuated it with a 7.8 Richter sneeze.
Dante looked at Trish.
Trish looked at Dante.
Dante looked at Anne.
"Eheh. Uh, oopsie?" he said feebly.
"My azz." she snapped, when recovering from her latest paroxym. Or tried to. It came out too phlegmily to be a good snap.
Trish sighed, then elbowed Dante. Dante yelped, then straightened and carefully reholstered his guns. He then sighed, running a hand through his bangs and causing them to stick out in a white electroshock. All this time trying to ignore the hard, watery stare of the waifish young woman near the doorway.
"Look, I can explain..."
