Chapter 10 - Empty Hole
Clanking sounded throughout the room, the loud squeak of a thick, heavy chain, set amongst the constant chanting of the robed figures lining the edges of the room. It was the same storage facility in the warehouse, only on the opposite end of the room where the fighting between Dante and Arias had taken place only a few minutes before. On that end of the room, there was a trap door on the floor where materials were lowered for storage. Above those closed doors hung a large chain, and on the hook at the end of the chain was tied the three people who'd entered earlier, back to back to back.
Marvin, as it stood, was the only one who'd been awake as the cultists had tied them up. He'd only been able to put up so much of a fight considering the situation Dante and Lady had been in, and as things stood now, he was just as bad off as the both of them were. Marvin turned his head however when he heard a grunt and, seeing Lady slowly lifting her head, he asked her, "Hey, how ya feeling?"
Lady wasn't exactly sure what was going on. All she knew is she couldn't feel the ground, and there seemed to be a very tight chain around her chest. Not to mention she couldn't feel her weapons anywhere, and she didn't like that sensation, it left her feeling almost as if she were nude and completely vulnerable.
"Not sure yet," she told the police officer before clearing her throat and shaking her head, "What's the situation?"
"Well, they've been chanting for the past few minutes and we're all tied to a big hook. They took your weapons, and I'm just waiting for the guy over there at the crank to pull the lever."
Lady's bicolored orbs peered about as Marvin said this, and she glanced down around the floor, noticing the cultists, and the one robed man at the crank to the chain supporting the three of them, his hand on the lever ready to pull it. What he was waiting for was anyone's guess. But she didn't see her weapons, and she sighed softly in annoyance.
She'd also heard a sudden snore and she narrowed her brows, looking around. "Is Dante asleep?"
Marvin shrugged a little bit, "He was knocked unconscious, he's been snoring on and off. I don't know if asleep's the right word for it or not." Marvin could actually turn his head and see Dante on the other side of himself than Lady, as Lady's back was directly against Dante's. "Hey, Dante," he tried again to move and contact the devil hunter by nudging him with his shoulder but still no such luck.. "I can't actually get to him to wake him up," Marvin explained to Lady, "I can't turn enough."
"That's not a problem," Lady replied confidently, and then she swung her head back and into Dante's, hitting the back of his head with hers. At the smack, Dante suddenly groaned and sputtered slightly as he'd been snoring again, coughing a slight bit and opening his eyes.
"What the fuck?"
Lady was just smirking coyly, and she spoke, "Welcome back to the real world Dante, your snore was annoying, sorry. How ya feeling, Geronimo?"
"I think I'm gonna puke."
At the suddenly spoken words, Marvin leaned to the side slightly as if he might've been afraid of getting vomit on him. Turning his head to look at Dante, he sighed, "Well, you'd better puke quick, maybe it'll scare some of them away."
Dante narrowed his brows and glanced down at the cultists surrounding them all. He didn't know what the hell they were saying, it sounded like Latin or something, but he guessed it didn't matter. He couldn't feel his own weapons anywhere on his body and he was still feeling sick from the poison that Arias had gotten into him earlier with his blade. Cringing a bit as another wave of nausea rolled over him suddenly, he looked straight down and saw the doors beneath them all. Having to force himself to concentrate with as queasy as he was, and yet at the same time, immensely thankful he was no longer in the pain he'd been in, Dante took a deep, long breath and he asked Lady, "What the hell are they saying?"
"Hell if I know."
"You're the one who speaks Latin."
"Yeah, and they're not exactly speaking Latin, okay?" She grumbled over the assumption he'd made, but she told him what she'd gathered from it so far. "It's some odd form of it I've never heard before, but my most logical guess is something about turning day to night and making dark things light or bright, or some shit."
"Well that makes absolutely no sense," Dante said blandly as if he'd expected it. "Sounds typical." Coughing a slight bit, feeling as if he were about to gag, he somehow got the feeling that they might've been trying to summon a demon, and so he called out to them, "Hey fucknuts, whatever douche you're about to bring into this world's gonna die a horrible death, I hope you know that."
"Dante, I'd really rather not die right now," Marvin grumbled, "They have our weapons."
"Pfft," Dante scoffed, "I know that, I can see 'em on the floor there. Hey Lady, do me a favor wouldya? Start swinging your legs with me."
"What the hell good is that gonna do?"
"I might be able to reach them if we're gonna be lowered down into whatever's down there."
"My guess is spikes, and we won't need the weapons," Marvin grumbled on a droll tone.
The comment made Dante smirk, and he asked Marvin as he began swinging his legs with Lady, "You ready to become a holy man then?"
"Haha, funny, funny," Marvin grumbled, feeling the chain swinging now as Dante and Lady put their efforts forth into it. "This is kind of fun too. Makes me wanna say wee. Or get motion sick like you. Whichever one comes first."
"You're a good guy, Marv," Dante told him before he grunted to make the chain go back his way, "I'd hate to let that sense of humor of yours go to waste. So just trust me."
"Dante, I don't even trust you all the time." Lady chimed in.
"With good right," Dante smirked a bit, hearing Lady's grumble.
The cultists below had all looked up at the now swinging chain, the chanting having stopped several moments beforehand, and as they watched, a loud crash and thud could be heard below. The man standing at the cranks pulled one of the levers and the trap doors opened at that point in time. They could hear a loud growling coming from the room below, and the lever started lowering, causing the three of them to descend into the room beneath them as they swung back and forth.
The floor where their weapons rested was coming toward them, and they swung over it. As they did, Lady could suddenly see the weapons with how far they'd swung back, and as she lowered, she stuck out her legs. She missed Rebellion completely, but she just nicked Ebony and Ivory with the bottom of her bottoms, and then hit Kalina Anne dead on, knocking the weapon to the side and into the trap doors, hearing a loud metal thud a few moments later from below as it landed.
Dante's own boots had drug across the surface of the floor in time to catch Rebellion behind his shoes, straightening the blade out which caused it to scoop up both Ebony and Ivory, and they as well were knocked into the trap door. Once they'd managed to gather their weapons so they would at least have a chance below to deal with whatever was growling down there, the chain swung into the opposite side of the trap door, and suddenly jerked the three of them hard to the opposite direction.
"Fuck!," came Marvin's yell as they were suddenly tossed the other way, and when the chain hit the corner of the trap door again on the other side, a loud screech, and then a ping was heard. The chain connecting them to the world above was broken, and the three of them all went falling to the floor below, the chain that had bound them together loosening so that they could fall apart, though their hands were still cuffed behind their backs.
All three of them landed in different spots about the floor of the room, barely able to see anything in the very dim light surrounding them, but the darkness didn't stop the loud growling that seemed to surround them, though at the moment, the growling seemed somehow subdued and calculating. Marvin pushed himself onto his back and then used his cuffed arms to hoist himself up, seeing the white of Lady's shirt just a short ways from him, appearing to be a dark grey in the surrounding room, as she pushed herself onto her back.
Lady followed that movement by pushing her arms down below her bottom and then pulled them up in front of herself by pushing them around her legs, and she reached over her shoulder to grab Kalina Anne. Grunting as she pulled the heavy weapon up, she placed the chains linking the cuffs against the blade at the tip of the gun and then she drew her arms back with an upwards motion until the blade broke the chains in half and her arms flew apart.
Marvin managed to get over her way, and they heard Dante as he grunted and propelled himself upward from his own spot nearby without the use of his arms, swinging his legs into the air to do so. His back facing them, he started stretching his arms out behind himself. The metal of his handcuffs screeched and then broke, Dante's arms flying to the sides with the momentum he'd created as the cuffs broke open, and he turned to the two of them as another, louder growl sounded, bending down to grab Marvin's hands and break the cuffs on him as well.
"Thanks," Marvin told him.
"Don't thank me yet," Dante replied, finding his guns on the floor when a sudden light shone down on the three of them, blinding them for a moment as they all held their hands up in front of their faces. The blur of light that had appeared and was glowing down on the three of them now seemed to encompass the entire room, breaking off into three smaller lights, and as they did so, the comrades who were all standing up now, broken cuffs on their wrists, could see what was generating the light.
Three large, demonic fireflies that didn't appear to be giving them any sort of menacing gestures, yet only floating calmly about in the air, loomed over them. The three then broke off into three more a piece, making nine separate lights moving about the room in total, and finally allowing Dante, Marvin, and Lady to see a large, gaping hole in the wall behind the flying insects. The growl sounded again, low and rumbling, coming from that hole, and with his guns in hand, Rebellion sticking out of the floor just ahead of him, Dante just waited for it.
It happened fast. A large glow worm came out of the hole in the wall, the back of its body covered in a hard shell, the underside sectioned off along its long body, the head set with two black eyes that were lifeless and cold. As it reared back, then flung its top half forward, the entire floor shook beneath its weight, and in the glowing lights of the fireflies, shadows began to form.
The glow worm opened its mouth in a massive roar, rows of fangs lined with saliva edging its circular mouth, and Dante put his hand up as the force of the roar blew his hair back. Marvin's face had taken on a look of disbelief, especially when Dante just waved his hand and said, "Damn, someone got a tic tac? Smells like death in there."
"Well, if you need some fish bait, at least you got a bunch," Lady told Dante, pulling Kalina Anne onto her back.
Dante just grinned, then he glanced at Marvin and tossed him Ebony and Ivory. "Take care of 'em. It's time to get to work."
The Shadows were being cast now in the light of the fireflies, the only retreat from the light being very close to the glow worm, where it was much darker. The only thing visible from the glow worm was the bioluminescence of its body, and they all knew it was set up that way to drive people closer to the worm in order for the worm to consume them. Either that, or they'd be killed by the Shadows. Dante, however, didn't really care all that much.
Running toward the worm, he grabbed Rebellion on the way there and once in the shadows, he leapt into the air. Drawing Rebellion around, he turned it and came down onto the oversized worms back, jabbing the tip of it into the hard shell before he ran out of sight and into the hole in the wall where the rest of the worms body rested. As he moved, he continued drawing Rebellion across the demons back in order to irritate it, which seemed to work as it made a loud growl at him.
"What the hell is he doing!?" Marvin asked, giving Lady a look that suggested Dante was crazy.
"Playing Dare Devil, as always, help me take out the fireflies before they cast the Shadows on us." She'd pulled up her own weapon and started shooting, and Marvin looked up, and then he got the point. Dante was much more equipped to handle the glow worm by himself than the two of them. They just had to keep the shadows off of themselves until he could get rid of it.
Aiming, Marvin helped Lady to take out the fireflies with the use of the lent Ebony and Ivory, getting used to the powerful recoil in the hand guns after the first few shots, and six of the lights were taken out, leaving the two in darkness. The last three began to fly about too fast for Lady and Marvin to take aim, and they reformed in the middle once again.
"I think they're trying to multiply again," Marvin pointed out, taking aim with his new lady partner, and firing bullet after bullet at the one bright light now to get it to go out before it could split again. Once that happened, they watched the remaining firefly fall to the floor and squeal angrily.
Lady turned Kalina Anne and fired at the bug, the rocket from her weapon destroying it immediately, and Mervin just grinned at her, "Where can I get one of those?"
The question made Lady smirk at him as she stood up straight again, but she didn't have time to answer, hearing some commotion coming from their other demonic enemy.
In that moment, the glow worm began to rear up, his own body casting enough light for them to be able to see him more easily now as he seemed to get angrier and angrier because of whatever Dante might've been doing to its backside so deep in the hole, and it started to move. Lady grabbed Marvin's arm and pulled him with her as the bug crawled quickly out of the hole, roaring violently as it pulled Dante out and slung him towards the far wall.
Dante landed against the wall easily and pushed himself forward again, flipping down to the ground as the stunned glow worms body rolled onto its side, and he began to violent slice his blade into the newly exposed soft flesh of the creepy crawly.
The glow worm wasn't done yet however. It came back to its senses before Dante had the chance to completely take it down and violently jerked itself up the right way before it started to crawl around the room at a very swift pace, circling the three of them. As it circled, orbs of electricity started to shoot off of its body, towards the three comrades fighting together, and Lady yelled so that Marvin would understand how to defend himself, "Shoot 'em!"
Normally it seemed that projectiles like these could be warded off with weapons fire, and Marvin gave it a try, turning and taking aim, shooting one of the moderately paced flying orbs quickly, several times, causing it to disperse into nothingness. But even then, amidst the chaos, the cultists above weren't happy with the showing, and began to shove heavy objects down into the room on top of them. Several hard crates landed and broke, their contents which happened to be things like boxes of metal pipes and the like toppling about everywhere, and Dante rolled his eyes over the entire mess.
"Tough crowd to please," he called out to Lady.
"You're the popular one, why don't you sing 'em a song?," she asked him as she took out another electrical orb and stepped back to back to back once again with the three of them.
"I have an idea," Marvin suddenly told them, interrupting their idle chit chat, and he turned and handed Dante's weapons back to him. Dante took them after he put his sword on his back, and he watched Marvin grab the box containing the pipes from the floor. Another crate landed near them, causing Marvin to put his hand up incase something flew at him, but it was too far away, and so he just turned and then moved toward the glow worm. Waiting for it to pass quickly, he took the box and grunted as he swung it back, then tossed it forward, the heavy, round, metal objects flying out of their cardboard casing and across the room, landing on the floor and rolling toward the wall in a pretty line.
As the glow worm passed the same area again, it stepped onto the pipes, and its many legs got tangled in them, slipping and sliding on them, causing a train wreck of sorts, which made Dante and Lady both grin. "Marv, I'm buying you a beer later."
Marvin just smirked as he backed up, listening to the creatures thrashing and growling in anger, its bottom side once again exposed to them. Dante gave Lady a look, and they both knew what to do. In a showing of synchronized comradery, the two devil hunters took aim, Dante with Ebony and Ivory, and Lady with Kalina Anne, bullets flying through the body of the worm and tearing it apart as a single rocket rammed into its belly, causing the worm to let a final, loud shriek into the air before it tensed up hard, and then collapsed onto its side, a large pool of demonic blood and saliva forming from its mouth and onto the floor.
"Looks like we win," Lady smiled, hoisting her large weapon onto her back once again, then turning her head to look at Marvin with a smile. "You know, you're pretty useful in a tight situation."
"Tssh, yeah, maybe," Marvin smirked, and then he looked up, hearing a voice coming from above them. One of the cultists had leaned over the edge of the trap door they'd been lowered through, and he didn't sound happy.
"What have you done!? Do you know what you've done!?" His voice wasn't pleased one bit.
"Yeah, we know what we did, why? Does it look like we care?" Dante asked.
The man went on about how they would pay, and other such things, Dante wasn't paying any attention to him, simply aimed his gun and shot at the guy, not to kill him, but just to scare him off. It did the trick, and Dante flipped his weapon back into the holster on his chest inside of his trench coat. He then looked at Lady and sighed, "Guess we're gonna have to find another way out of here."
Lady had been about to reply when they heard a gasp from behind them. Turning to look back, they spied Marvin running across the room to where the hole in the wall was located, moving so fast that when he stopped, he slid across the floor and landed on his knees. He snatched something away from the wall that had been hanging where the jagged edged of the torn away metal jutted out and shook his head no.
Dante and Lady both moved over behind him, saw that the item he was holding was a pendant with a locket on it. Opening it up, seeing the pictures inside, the man in the image being himself, with a woman and a little girl. Marvin's hands began shaking as the realization of what the item meant set into his mind, and he held the pendant up to his forehead. Dante and Lady both knew what it'd meant as well. His wife and child had been brought here, and killed by the glow worm earlier before.
"Vanessa," came the grieving mans voice, "Linda...no..."
Dante took a silent breath deeply in through his nostrils and then he turned to the side and kept his face tilted downwards. It never mattered to him how victorious he'd been, seeing anyone who'd lost something close to them like Marvin had after a battle never let him enjoy it now matter how well he'd done. In the end, it made him feel as if he could've done much better, as it stood to reason that perhaps, if he had, Vanessa and Linda might still be alive.
This case seemed to kept getting more and more personal as time went on, and hearing Lady telling Marvin how sorry she was for his loss, he couldn't help but think of his own loss in the past, that which rivaled Marvin's.
"Dante, run!" The words echoed out in his mind as if he'd just heard them a few moments ago.
"Dante?"
Looking up, having actually heard his name spoken and seeing Lady, she'd placed her hand on his shoulder to get his attention. "You alright? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Dante just shrugged, pushing the depressing thoughts from his mind, then he went over to Marvin and put a hand on the man's shoulder. "Come on, Marv," his words were logical yet soft, "no sense hanging around this burnt out camp fire."
Marvin lifted his head, tears streaming down his cheeks, his eyes closed, and he slowly stood up, surprised he could find the stability in his legs to do so. His closed the locket in his palm, and then lowered it, placing it into his pocket. With a deep, loud sigh, he said on a hoarse voice, "I have nothing left, except an empty hole." He looked at Dante. "You've helped me tremendously though, and I don't know how I'll ever be able to repay you. But they still have a hold on this town, and they might do the same thing again."
"I know," Dante told him, "my job's far from done yet. I'm just gettin' started."
Marvin gave him a nod, then he looked into the hole a bit more deeply. Lady walked up between the two men, and she took a breath, "Sometimes hole's are best used for putting things in. Maybe there's a way out at the end of this one."
"Let's get going," Dante said, starting off ahead of the two, sword on his back, and fists shoved into his pockets. For some odd reason as he walked through the tunnel with the two of them, he thought of Regan. Thinking of the other night, after their little snow date so to speak, and of what he'd just found out about her now, he only wondered if he should tell her anything, or just keep it quiet. After all, he really hadn't known the woman for very long, and so he couldn't really tell if she were acting any differently now that she usually did. But he decided he'd tell her if she began acting strangely from what he could really see with his own two eyes. There was no sense in causing needless worry with her, so he'd just keep an eye out himself.