Disclaimer: DMC belongs to CAPCOM and all that jazz. Plot's mine. Sorry it took me so long to update this one. Gadget

Chapter 2

Devotion was actually as tall as he was, her blue eyes looking directly into his green ones. Those eyes had gotten her tossed out of Heaven millennia's ago, those eyes could see all the way down to the soul. Dante could look into them easily being that his soul wasn't that of a human's.

It was after business hours and only Devotion, the bartender and the bouncer were present. The bartender had his back to them, leaning over a built-in sink while washing glasses, his shoulders hunched. The bouncer though wouldn't take his eyes off Dante, measuring him up and down behind those stupid-looking wraparound sunglasses. He was obviously making sure that the hunter didn't try to hurt his boss, Dante would never hurt Devotion. She'd never let him.

The bouncer wouldn't have a chance against Dante anyway. Brute strength and thick-headedness were nothing when compared to his know-how and demon skills. Not that he was bragging or anything it was just the truth. The bouncer wouldn't have a fucking chance.

"When did your girls start to vanish?" Dante asked Devotion as she knocked back the rest of her scotch.

"A week and a half ago," She told him. "Cheri was first to disappear. She went in the back to entertain a client; the client came back by himself. I called Cheri's cell phone but I didn't get an answer. She still had two hours until she was off."

"But the John came back right?"

"Yeah, minutes after Cheri took him in the back. There wasn't any time for him to kill her Dante, he was back too soon."

Dante couldn't really agree with that, there were demons that could slow down the passage of time. Actually, they slowed down the perception of time and not time itself. But the slayer wasn't in the mood to argue those points; he just wanted to get paid.

"Who else? The guy that contacted me said there were two bodies found."

Devotion pulled a napkin from the bar and dabbed at her delicately painted eyes. "Blossom."

Dante felt one of his white brows shoot up. "Cheri and Blossom?" He asked.

The woman nodded. "Nevaeh has a theme, Hunter."

"The Garden of Eden," He said. "Like I really care. Tell me about Blossom,"

"Such a sweet girl, she was only in this work to pay off some student loans. It's the same story every time with these girls, but with Blossom, it was true."

"Same line of questioning Devotion," He said dryly.

She signaled to the bartender and the kid brought her the bottle of scotch. She took a long swig and then passed it to Dante. "She got off at her normal time; she was leaving in a few days to see her mom on the East Coast. Blossom was supposed to call when she got home, I like to know my girls got wherever they were going safely. But she never did. I sent Bubba to her place to check on her and he found...those things."

"What sort of things?"

"Bubba, come here."

The hulking bouncer came toward them, towering a good foot over Dante and much wider through the shoulders. But he couldn't stare the Hunter down, very few people could, hell, very few demons could stare Dante down. But this human gave it an effort at least before looking down at his boss.

"Tell the Hunter what you found at Blossom's apartment."

"A lot of blood," He said and the way he stood at attention made Dante think the man was probably ex-military. "No footprints in the blood, which is hard to pull off, given the sheer amount of it. Blossom was in the bathroom tub, I only knew it was hers 'cause of her eyes; she had funky contacts. Her skin was all gone but other than that...she looked like herself. There were a bunch of candles around, the power wasn't working and there was this smell like brimstone or something. Plus there was this weird glow hovering 'round the bathroom."

Maybe an ex-cop, now that Dante thought about it. "You call the law?"

"An anonymous tip from a payphone," The man said.

"Good, then what?"

"I hacked into the database and read the coroner's report. The guy had made a note linking Blossom's body to another they'd found in a dumpster on 50th. The other body had to be Cheri's."

"Or another woman's," Devotion offered. "But I don't want to think about this demon killing some other innocent girls."

Like strippers were all that innocent, Dante thought but then remembered Blossom's reason for getting in the biz. To pay off some loans so she could start a real life somewhere. That constituted some level of innocence or maybe just naiveté.

"What makes you think it's a demon doing this shit?" Dante asked.

Devotion reached into her purse on the bartop and pulled out a silver coin similar to something he'd seen on Mallet Island. Shit, demon indeed.

"Right then, demon it is." He muttered.

Devotion's purse snapped shut. "I can pay double your normal fee and I'll triple it if I can have a go at this bastard myself."

(pagebreak)

Smell of brimstone, candles and a weird glow. Run-of-the-mill summoning as far as Dante was concerned. There was always the chance it was some punk with a grimore fucking around with powers he couldn't begin to understand, but that was pretty rare. No, this was the real deal, a demon in Las Vegas. Go figure.