Erika's Skyline had remained miraculously untouched throughout the night's events. It stayed parked outside the 'Devil Never Cry' office, silent witness to everything that had occurred during the night. A few snowflakes started to fall lazily from the sky with a graceful gentleness that had no place in this situation. Familiar sights are the most welcome ones. For Dante it was the office that had served as home for as long as he could remember, For Erika it was the vehicle that she had put so much of herself into rebuilding. The scene was ruined by the presence of four bodies, dead, unconscious or decapitated but all wearing Brajin cult robes. Indoors was no better. Trish looked ready to tear Wilson's throat out.
"So did you do anything besides argue while I was gone?" Dante asked sarcastically. Neither one of them said anything.
"Well, what about those guys outside. Did they know anything?" Erika asked
"We didn't ask" said Wilson.
"I think ones still alive; we could try asking him" Trish joked
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Dante went out to find the goon. Trish followed, protesting as she went.
"So, Erika, how are you?" said Wilson. Erika didn't reply.
"We met once, or our parents did, you would've been one or two. I was about six". Erika still didn't reply.
"Did Dante tell you about...?"
"The devil thing? Yeah he mentioned it. Now you tell me, am I supposed to believe it?"
At that point Dante and Trish came back in, dragging the now conscious cultist by his ankle despite his protests. His hood had fallen away from his face and a third eye rolled angrily in his forehead.
"Hey! Wait a minute, I recognise this guy!" Wilson yelled, "That's the man that killed me!"
Erika looked confused but said nothing. Dante searched his desk for his trusty bottle opener
"What are you doing? Your not gonna..." Wilson started
"And leave this moron with whatever that crystal gave him?" Dante pointed out
"Oh... Since you put it that way, let me get this one. I owe this guy"
"How?"
"Oh, ye of little faith". Wilson held out his hand. The cultist started to wail and his eye seemed to swell. Then the crystal shot out like a small bullet, passing straight through Wilson's outstretched hand.
"Forgot about that part" Wilson said for no good reason.
"You may be annoying but that is a nice trick" said Trish. Dante glanced across at Erika, she seemed a little shocked by this but after what had happened at the garage she was coping better. He didn't think she would run again.
"Now, you and your friends have ruined what could have been a quiet night for me, and I don't get those very often". said Trish, playing bad cop. "I'm pretty sure I know why, but now I want to know who I have to point the finger at for disturbing me. Who's your boss?"
"She is upset. You don't wanna mess with her when she's like this". Dante teased. Trish shot him a filthy look. The cultist spat on the ground.
"I will tell you nothing" he hissed
"That 'Giselle' person kept talking about somebody called Marcus, if that means anything to you guys" Erika said forthright.
"It may at that, Who's Marcus?" Dante demanded.
"You will have to kill me". Threatened the cultist.
"You know, that's the best idea I've heard all day" Dante said, throwing the man to the ground and drawing his guns. The cultist wasn't as brave as he had pretended. He cried out the second that he saw the barrels.
"Who is Marcus?" Dante said dangerously. The man spoke quickly, not wanting to anger anyone any more than he already had. He told them that Marcus was the leader of the Cult of Brajin and that he had a plan to resurrect him. Then he told them where the building was where Marcus lived. As he spoke his third eye closed up and sealed, as if it were never there.
"That's everything I know. I swear." he said when he finished.
"There's still one problem. What do we do with you now?" said Trish.
"I say we let him go" said Wilson
"What? You said this is the guy that killed you. You just want to let him go?" Trish argued
"Trish has a point, and you were perfectly happy to float his eyeball out before. What changed?" Dante asked him.
"An eye for an eye and all that, that's fine by me. But killing for killings sake? You gotta draw the line somewhere. You're not monsters" Wilson replied. Dante glanced around at the faces of everyone assembled before making his decision. He drew Ebony.
"You got one chance. Get out of my sight and don't let me catch you around here again, because your 'guardian angel' over there may have manifested somewhere else and won't be able to talk me out of it. Get out of here". He didn't need telling twice. Behind them Dante heard Erika give a quiet sigh of relief. He hadn't realised how on edge she was. Trish wasn't happy.
"He's just gong to run back to his boss and tell him we're on to him"
"Maybe not" said Wilson
"What do you mean?"
"You got to try having a little faith in people. Not everyone in the world lives just to screw people over. Some people are ok"
"Wilson, quit preaching. I liked you better when you were annoying" said Dante, heading towards the door. Wilson just shook his head and returned to the computer.
-
Wilson's intentions were the best, but in this case he was wrong. The cultist returned to Marcus just as Trish had guessed he would. He grovelled before his master and told him what had happened at the office of 'Devil Never Cry'. Marcus's face was unreadable. He clicked his fingers and a huge man behind him came forward. He seized the smaller man by the neck and dragged him away. Marcus watched with a bored interest. Then he turned his chair so that he was facing the Herikarras sword once more. Outside the snow got heavier with each passing moment. On a rooftop facing Marcus's office stood a dark figure. Watching the window through the snow. Dante had suspected that the cultist had been lying, he had broke too easily. This building wasn't the one their captive had described. Dante jumped into the air where he seemed to hang for a moment, then his body glowed with an intense light and a pair of powerful wings extended from his back. This was a natural ability that came from his demonic blood; not an unnatural transformation forced on an unwilling body like the ones the Herikarras crystals produced. He took to the air and headed home.
-
"You followed him, without me" Trish was upset.
"That's not what's important right now. What matters is that he lied to us" said Dante. Wilson was quiet. Erika didn't seem convinced.
"So now what, you're gonna declare open war on the guy?"
"Why not? Those cultists wanted you dead, and they killed Wilson"
"Since when did you care about Wilson?" asked Trish, Wilson shouted "Hey!"
"A reason is a reason; I don't care if it's a good one or a bad one". Dante hadn't told Trish about the 'dream' he had back at the garage, or what he now suspected because of it. That was the real reason he wanted to get in there and do something. Neither Trish nor Wilson had noticed Erika's new silver streak, it was likely that they had assumed that it had always been there and Erika hadn't done anything to draw attention to it. Dante figured that it was her choice. Trish wasn't stupid, she could tell that something was amiss.
"Dante, what's this really about? And don't tell me you've suddenly developed a conscious or something. I know you too well for that"
For a moment he considered telling Trish what he thought, then decided against it. Erika seemed to be used to disappearing. Dante didn't want to give her a reason to run away again. Erika was sat by a window, watching her car get buried by the snowfall. Weather reports were now predicting a severe snowstorm to break out by the end of the night. Wilson had returned to his self-appointed task of pulling up as much information as he could. Trish waited, but no matter how many different ways he ran through it in his head Dante couldn't come up with a way to say what he was thinking. Appalled, Trish turned away. She went to join Erika by the window. An uncomfortable silence filled the room. Dante turned the radio on, more to break the silence than to listen to it. The sudden loud music made Wilson jump. That got everyone's attention.
"Oh yeah! I'm just the comic relief around here, aren't I?" Wilson yelled irritably.
"Wilson, shut up" said Dante as he leaned on the computer desk to see what Wilson was working on, knocking the mouse in the process and hitting a couple of buttons.
"Hey! Watch it!". The screen blazed furiously, different files and images trying to load.
"What? What did I do?" said Dante in a mock innocent voice. Trish smirked at them.
"You were arguing a minute ago, now you're friends again? How does that work?" Erika remarked.
"Nothing clears the air like making fun of the ghost" Trish quipped
"I heard that!" Wilson called back to her before he started grumbling about fixing whatever Dante had done.
Trish hadn't really had much of a chance to talk to Erika before now. She couldn't figure it out yet for some reason the girl reminded her of someone. It was strange to say the least.
"Have we ever met before?" Trish asked, knowing that they hadn't
"No, I don't think so. Why?"
"No reason".
"Guys, I hate to interrupt whatever you're doing but this is huge!" Wilson called.
"What is it?" Dante asked him.
"I've found that prophecy thing; you guys have got to see this"
-
Giselle had never been so livid in her life. She had changed her broken shoes for a new pair upon returning to Marcus's tower. Now she approached his office in a no nonsense manner. She had had enough.
"Marcus, if you do not kill that little brat right now I swear I'll..."
"If I don't? Surely you have enough common sense to see that..." Marcus never finished his sentence for as he spoke Giselle pulled a gun from behind her back and shot him in the head. She went over to his desk and picked a matching gun out of a drawer.
"Anything the Son of Sparda can do, I can do too" She said to herself.
-
Wilson read the prophecy aloud while Dante, Erika and Trish listened.
"I, Herikarras, Seer of events yet to come, do hereby write this journal in hope that one who has power may find and be aided by it. Last night I dreamt a dream, in that a Dark Knight of legend rose against the Prince of the Underworld..."
"Dark Knight. That would mean Sparda, right?" Erika interrupted
"Are you going to let me finish?"
"Sorry"
"Where was I? Dark Knight of legend, ok." Wilson found his place and started again
"The Prince, enraged, shall send first his most trusted lieutenant..."
"Skip this part, get to the bit that matters" Dante interrupted this time
"Tough crowd!" Wilson scanned the pages
"Found it. 'The fallen lieutenant can be returned to his former glory only by sacrificing the heart of one in which flows the blood of he who put to death the one to be restored', Anyone understand that?"
"They need somebody with Sparda's blood" Dante said in no uncertain terms.
"But that must mean..." Trish began, Dante nodded. Trish spun around instantly, grabbing Erika by the ponytail.
"Hey, what are you doing!" Dante yelled, stopping them before anything else could happen
"Someone with Sparda's blood. Dante, you're his son. It must mean you. That makes her one of them" Trish growled, pulling Erika's hair tighter.
"Unless they made her out of Sparda's blood" Wilson said quietly.
"What!"
"It says 'one in which flows the blood', not 'son'. Sparda's known as 'The Legendary Dark Knight', not 'Mr. Friendly'. I sure as hell wouldn't want to mess with his family"
"Wilson, what are you saying?" Erika asked, sounding a little scared. Trish kept a tight hold on her.
"Is it not possible that the cultists 'engineered' their own 'Sparda-child' and used that seal I mentioned before to keep it under control?" Wilson said. Behind them, Dante moved Trish's sword off his desk, finding the first Herikarras crystal underneath it. Trish finally let Erika go as what was being said registered in her mind.
"This is insane" Erika said, starting to back away. Dante grabbed her arm.
"Not this time" he said in an unnaturally calm voice. Wilson had been telekinetically moving the printouts he had made, looking for the one on the seal. Trish beat him to it.
"It says here that you have to know the name of the person you want to put it on, how could they have known that?" she said
"Unless they picked it" Dante mused, the sight of the crystal had put an idea in his head. With his free hand he picked up a pen. Wilson was even less organised than Dante, if such a thing were possible. He had left bits of paper from the printer everywhere. On one of these Dante wrote 'Herikarras', then underlined a few letters. 'Herikarras'.
"They named you after the Seer"
"Ok, that much makes sense, but how did they get Sparda's blood in the first place?" Trish asked.
"There was blood on the Seer sword, wasn't there? Maybe devil blood lasts longer than human blood" Wilson theorised.
-
Giselle sat in Marcus's chair and watched the Herikarras sword shed a tear. Marcus had set up a catching device so that no tears would be wasted. She stood up and took the crystal, before taking the sword itself down. She put the crystal on the desk before unsheathing the weapon. The blade was silver, save for a few inches at the tip, which were stained a deep dark red. Incredible, she thought, that it had lasted this long. But then Sparda was famous for his resilience. She looked down on Marcus's lifeless body, an idea playing in her mind. Outside the wind howled louder than ever.
-
Erika struggled against Dante's vice like grip but there was no way he was going to let her go, not now. Ever since that dream at Calhoun's he had wondered, but hearing Wilson say it aloud made it more real somehow. Dante was certain by now that it hadn't been a mere dream; the sword and the crystal had been exactly as the vision of Sparda had said they would be. He was gripping her arm compulsively now and it was scaring her.
"Dante, let her go" Trish cautioned him. The glare in his eyes at these words made the blizzard outside seem inviting.
"Trish, you were there. You know what happened. You should know what this means if it's true" he said, subconsciously tightening his hold. Erika cried out in pain.
"For god's sake Dante. Can't you see you're hurting her?" Trish spat at him. Dante was stunned as he realized what he was doing. It took conscious effort for him to relax his grip; it had been so tight. Erika jumped away from him like a wounded animal. Fearing she may run again Trish caught Erika by the shoulders and pushed her into sitting on the couch. Dante turned away from them, his hands were shaking. He had really hurt her.
"Anybody care to explain what that was all about?" Wilson asked. Dante shot him a look that said 'If you weren't dead already I'd tear your throat out'. Wilson took the hint and shut up. Trish sat by Erika, keeping her hands on the girl's shoulders to stop her from getting up. She spoke slowly, more for Erika's sake than Wilson's.
"A few years ago, when Dante and I first met, we went to a place to confront a powerful evil..."
Wilson had never seen Dante look more dangerous than he did now. For the first time he was glad he was a ghost. Trish caught Dante's gaze and held it. She continued
"It was a trick by the devil responsible for the disappearance of Dante's mother and brother, Mundus. He wanted rid of anyone who had anything to do with Sparda. And I'm ashamed to admit but I was part of it" Trish felt Erika shudder violently under her hands.
"I'm not the same person any more, thank God. But what happened there..."
"I killed him" Dante cut her off.
"Dante..."
"That's what happened. That coward tricked me and I killed Vergil because of it"
"We don't know that for certain" Trish tried to talk to him. He wasn't listening. Erika watched him silently, torn, part of her starting to understand, another wanting nothing more than to be as far away from here as possible. Wilson, desperate to break the tension, tried to change the subject.
"Err... here's something, it says here that the seal can only be broken by stopping the affected person's heart" he read from the sheet Trish had abandoned.
"What seal? All night you've been saying things but I have no clue as to what you mean!" Erika shouted.
"Doesn't matter, its already broken" Dante said decisively
"You're right, I can feel it" Trish agreed
"How... ?"
"The graveyard, when you were shot"
