Devil's Omen
Chapter 4 – Lady
After the bewildering battle with something he had never seen before, Dante's mind was filled with endless questions, the foremost being, 'what the hell was that thing?' It was unlike any vampire he had seen in medieval tomes scattered around their old home, property of the enigmatic Dark Knight Sparda. It was a pale yellow in colour (which raised a faint, bizarre hope in Dante that perhaps the beast would die of unchecked jaundice) with tridactyl hands (claws, actually) and a crest of sorts on its temple which, if not composed of organic matter, would have looked almost regal.
Dante stared at Rebellion, stained with the warm blood of his departed adversary. It trickled down the blade and little globules dropped upon the street below. He looked around. The whole road was a visage of devastation, with cars piled up against the strip-club and desaturated bodies lying spread-eagle on the pavement, their eyes popping out of their sockets. A lamp-post lay discarded on one side, a testament to the villain's superhuman strength. But then again, even Vergil and Arkham possessed superhuman strength near the end. And that had not ended well for either of them…
A drop of vampiric blood oozed onto the hand gripping Rebellion's hilt. Dante studied the small drop. It looked like ordinary blood, but there was something in its very nature that seemed supernatural. Still, demonic biology was not his forte. Maybe Lady would know what to make of this…
It was early evening by the time he reached Devil May Cry. He could see Lady polishing her humongous bazooka, the Kalina Ann, from the window. It was about her size, and had a long, wide bayonet with a serrated blade attached to it. Dante was often amused by the fact that Lady could carry it around unscathed, but never in her presence. Or he would have to stand on a whizzing, flying rocket like their first meeting, and that was hardly fun in a cramped shop.
"Evening, Lady!" he called cheerfully, kicking open the already-unhinged door, causing it to crash into the desk upon which Lady sat. She did not take kindly to this unwelcome disturbance, and glared at Dante as he placed his sword on the table.
"You know how much we've spent on doors in the past few months alone?" she snapped. "There's a reason they invented doorknobs!"
"There's a reason they invented chairs too, but both were really ridiculous reasons. Anyway, take a look at this."
Lady placed Ann against the table, and then focused on the crimson patches of slowly-drying blood that marked the silver blade of Dante's ancestral sword. She remained impassive for a minute, while she studied the red blotches that had now cooled.
Dante added, "The blood was steaming when it dripped from the beast's flesh."
"The beast… You mean the vampire? Yeah, I was confused about that. You see, vampires have been extinct in our world for centuries now. What did it look like?" Lady raised an eyebrow and sat back into her chair.
"Like your dad, had his mum been a dinosaur," said Dante coolly. Lady, who hated her slain father with a passion fiercer than Dante's abhorrence of his demonic lineage, grinned at him. He smiled back; slightly more cheery than before, if such a thing was possible.
"Well, my dad would have made an acceptable vampire. But what features did you notice in particular?" she insisted.
"He had long, white hair, pale-yellow skin, and claws for hands, with this sort of crest on his head. He seemed like a cross-dresser, if anything, 'cause he was decked up in rings and, uh, ear-rings. And he had this red cape with a weird symbol. I can't quite describe it."
Lady could. She remembered an old story her father had once told her, about a time when he had met an old wizard from a different world. She remembered only bits and pieces of it, but as she began associating it with this new piece of information, all of it came back to her. "Kain!" she exclaimed out loud, suddenly disoriented.
Dante looked nonplussed. "Come again?"