Thanks Marisa!
I'm shifting things around in the thread, so can everyone please read my first post again?
That and if it gets too bad, can one of the mods just give me fair warning? I've put down that it's meant for the mature readers but I don't know if that will suffice.
Anyway. Second draft!
_________________________________________________________________________
It was far too early to be awake on a sleepy Sunday morning. The stars were still high and bright in the onyx dome of night. Dante sat behind his desk and stared out the tall windows of his office. He was sure it had been a scream that had woken him before. The scream of a woman, or a child...or maybe it'd been both?
Regardless, he couldn't fall back asleep. The scream was still echoing through his memory, stirring a strange jumble of emotion within him. The pain from the past was haloed in a foreboding sensation, like an inaudible magic siren sent straight from the pits of hell to alert him of something big coming his way. Something evil. Something powerful. Something that mattered.
Trish had been feeling the same thing since the night before. She'd answered a call for him, and tactfully turned down the person when they offered no password – and afterward, before she'd left him alone for the night, Trish had taken him aside with turmoil in her eyes.
"I don't think I should have denied that customer our service," she'd said tightly.
"Well if they didn't have the password then it really isn't our problem," Dante had tried to set her at ease. "I told you if the job matters, I'll take it, and if they don't have the password then it isn't a priority."
"It does matter, Dante," Trish had said quietly, and shrugged at him. "It was wrong of me to hang up on him."
Now, hours later, Dante kept watching his antique phone, waiting for the familiar rattle to echo through the silence. The instinctual feeling that his presence was needed somewhere was always associated with a phone call. Unless they were going to come busting through his door or doing somersaults through his window.
The fan above him squealed in slow rhythm.
The leaves of the potted palms swayed and rubbed against each other.
A cat yowled in the alley next to his office.
The chair beneath him groaned loudly as he restlessly shifted his booted feet from the desk top to the floor.
He leaned back and impatiently rubbed his hands across the rough stubble on his cheeks. He turned to look at the window again, and let out a long-suffering sigh. The air was stifling. Fickle frustration and fear coiled itself around him. Somehow he knew he was too late. For what, or why, Dante wasn't sure. He thought of phoning Trish and asking her more about what the customer had said, but he wasn't certain it would aid him in any way. It had been the only phone call they'd gotten in a week. Dante rolled his shoulders in an attempt to ease his tense muscles. They shouldn't have let this one slip by them.
Something bad had happened – could possibly be happening this very moment – and he was sitting here eating air and counting minutes.
The atmosphere was as suffocating as his thoughts. Dante rose from his chair and headed for the door, his heart beating too fast and too hard against his chest. Fresh air. He just needed to catch his breath and take a moment.
The crisp, light breeze iced his skin and played through his blonde hair when he stepped outside. He drew a deep breath and recognized the sharp scent of demon blood immediately. He followed his senses to the narrow alley beside the building, and scanned the ominous shadows with cold accuracy. He expected to find a wounded demon but there was no movement. He edged deeper into the alley and stopped dead when a sudden gust of fierce wind bellowed past him. He caught the unmistakable but faint odour of human blood a second before a gurgling exhale emanated from between a load of black garbage bags to his right.
Dante stepped closer quickly and stared down at the sight in horror. In his mind he was paralyzed, unable to process what he was seeing, but his body took charge and acted swiftly. He scooped the mutilated figure into his arms like it weighed next to none. A thin, jerking arm reached up and a small bloody hand pressed against his cheek as Dante strode back into his office. He looked down at the round face of the child as he gently eased him onto the couch.
"It's okay, kid, look I'll get you help," Dante said in a strange, faint and quivering voice.
Angry scarlet blood ruthlessly gushed forth from the wide and deep overlapping slashes that coated the boy from head to torso. It ran down the rich leather of the couch and streamed to the floor below in a waterfall of sickening red. He was going to bleed to death – Dante could see it clear in the pale blue eyes wildly staring through him. There was little life left in those oddly familiar eyes.
Dante's head was spinning – with the thin layers of pink fat and the stark white of shattered bone protruding from the gaping wounds the kid looked like he'd been mauled by a tiger – but it was the sheet white face of the child that made him lightheaded with recognition.
Dante darted across the room for his car keys and was back beside the boy in a second flat. He'd shifted his one arm beneath the blood matted ice blonde hair when the boy weakly grabbed the collar of his coat with shaking fingers.
"Mother..." The boy wheezed out in a voice strained with so much pain it made Dante wince.
"Don't speak, just try to keep still and keep breathing, alright?" Dante said, strength returning to his own voice.
The child tugged at his collar before his hand fell limply back onto his chest. "No...Mother... save her..." there was a drawl in his voice, one Dante couldn't mistake no matter how much denial tried to beat him into submission, and it overwhelmed him. Dante went down on one knee, fighting against the childish notion to curl into a ball and weep.
"If I don't save you now, I won't be able to save you at all," Dante said firmly as something inside of him began to crumble.
"Mom... " The boy broke off on a choke. Dante had to turn him onto his side to cough up blood and clear his airway.
Part of Dante's mind was fighting against the moment. Was this a nightmare? It would explain why he was presented the chance to save his mother or brother, how he'd come to have control of the situation, why this was even possible. He must have gone overboard with the beer, but then he couldn't remember having anything to drink before bed. It couldn't be real – Vergil wasn't a little kid, and his mother had died over twenty years ago.
Yet the boy before him looked back at him with Vergil's eyes, was pleading with him in Vergil's voice. The hand on his chest moved and Dante recoiled onto his haunches when the boy brought forth an identical amulet to the one Dante wore beneath his own shirt.
"No...no, no..." Dante breathed, cupping his hands over the boy's hand.
"Home... he's going to take her... Opal Avenue... hurry..." His breathing was becoming erratic and shallow, his voice a raspy hiss.
"If I leave you, you'll die," Dante said, gripping the boy's hand tighter.
There was a slight jerk, and the amulet came lose. The child pushed it into Dante's hands with a final, whispered, "Hurry."
"Just hang on," Dante said roughly, slipping the amulet into his pocket before sliding his hands beneath the boy and carefully picking him up into his arms. He rose to his feet in one fluent move and managed a step toward the door before the child's body suddenly arched and pulled taut in his arms.
"No," Dante choked the word out in the flare of terrifying realization that it was too late. He cradled the boy against his chest, and his eyes burned when the child drew a breath and went still and limp in his grasp.
Dante held him a moment longer, tight, before laying him out on the couch with great care. He couldn't tear his gaze from the youthful features. He couldn't let the tears stinging his eyes blind him and distract him. Not now, not yet, not when there might still be hope for someone else.
Dante had Ebony and Ivory at his sides and Rebellion at his back in a heartbeat. He spared a second to glance at the kid one last time before he leapt out into the night and took off in his red sports car. He knew where Opal Avenue was – on the other side of town, where the rich folk lived in their five-star luxury homes. He parked at the end of the street and walked past the heavily gated, manicured green lawns and the silent double story villas.
It wasn't hard to track down his destination. A bloody trail led him to the unlocked door of a villa, and Dante briefly puzzled how the child had managed to cross town and get to his office alive before he slowly shouldered the door open. He dragged his mind away from painful thoughts of the boy to focus on his present location. The front parlour was dark, the house silent. He took a moment to discern his surroundings and stiffened when he saw movement at the top of the stairs. A shadow was crawling its way down to him, slowly, haltingly.
Dante took out one of his guns and stepped forward, tilting his head to the side as his eyes struggled to distinguish what it was. The shadow stopped suddenly at the loud metal sound of a bullet sliding home, ready to be unloaded.
"No!" The shadow shrieked in a woman's voice – and with a jolt Dante recognized it as the scream that had woken him. "You shouldn't have come... run! You have to run!"
The note of terror was as genuine and identical as the one that had been in his mother's voice. Dante crossed the foyer and crouched down before the woman the same instant obscene hisses and growls rocked through the house.
Bullets rained down on the shifting and slithering creatures lurking in the dark, accompanied by the defeated howls of his opponents. A black pit had appeared in the middle of the foyer and spurted out red-hot fire. It lit the place up like a Christmas tree and Dante took out several more deformed, leaping demons with a few accurately planted bullets. All the while, he hadn't moved an inch from his position. He didn't trust to leave the woman alone for a second. These were all small fries – the leader of the pack was around here somewhere, waiting for Dante to lower his defences.
The fire spread across the floor and up the walls, consuming every bit of plaster and ceiling with searing orange flames. There was no way they could get to the door, they had to back up. Even as Dante turned to the woman to tell her to move, he knew it was a trap. They were being forced upstairs, and they had no choice but to play along.
Eyes like honey onyx stared back at him from a pale, bloody face. She was shaking her head at him, long raven black hair swaying in the heat of the flames. "You must leave. This isn't your fight!"
Dante gritted his teeth and grabbed her by the arm before practically dragging her behind him. He took the stairs two at a time, and she stumbled to keep up with him. Dante headed for the window at the end of the broad hallway, shattering the glass with a couple of bullets before pulling the slight woman up beside him.
He gauged the distance from the window to the grass below before looking at her. "We're going to jump. This might hurt."
"Where is he? I sent him to you, Dante," the woman hissed back at him.
Dante hesitated. "The kid?"
"He made it to you safely?" The woman asked, her face lighting up fleetingly. "No, no, that's not who I sent..."
Dante readjusted his grip on her arm with a grim scowl that silenced her. He firmly planted one foot on the window sill, and rammed his head painfully into glass. He stepped back, startled, rubbing his head with his free hand and staring at the glass in bewilderment.
"I thought I just cleared the way," Dante grumbled, confused, reaching out to touch the smooth hard surface with his fingertips.
"No!" The woman whimpered suddenly, wrenching out of his firm grasp and flattening herself against the wall. "You shouldn't have come alone, Dante."
Dante glanced at her angrily. She looked pathetic and out of her mind in terror – no different than any other human would in these circumstances. He opened his mouth to berate her, but never got a word out.
"Dante."
The voice turned Dante's blood to ice. His temper folded up and collapsed in on itself. He hadn't heard that voice in a very long time but it was one he could never forget or mistake. Dante turned slowly, and held his head high to stare back at the entity across from him.
Fierce blue eyes glared back at him with the emotional detachment of a demon. The man was a near replica of himself – tall, broad shouldered, strongly built, flaxen hair smoothed back to reveal the undeniable features of his father. He was partially in his devil form from the neck down, and wielded the long, sharp blade of Force Edge in his hand.
"I didn't think you'd want to get involved," Sparda continued, slowly pacing the top of the staircase, his eyes locked on Dante's, "But now that you are here, I suppose you'd want to prove your skill."
Dante stared back at him for a long moment as the reality crashed down on him. Any doubts he'd had that this was some kind of alcohol induced dream was obliterated by the sheer power permeating from the man before him. It rolled through the smoke tainted air with a scorching heat all of its own, encompassing everything around them with raw pressure. It was a daunting, oppressive phenomena he remembered well from his early childhood.
He lowered his gaze to the floor, unwilling to meet the challenge they posed, and pursed his lips hard. There was a tremor beneath his feet. He scowled. Dante had to face whack-jobs trying to follow in Sparda's footsteps nearly all his life; he'd fought them all and beaten them all, including his own brother. None had possessed the true power of Sparda. None had the face and the voice and the body standing before him now. None had ever taken the time to challenge Dante in a civilized manner, and none had ever given him the opportunity to opt out.
Dante took a slight step back and straightened to his full height, noting that he had at least a couple of inches on his father. His glare was met with a familiar half-smile from Sparda. Dante reached over and pulled the woman closer to him, and ****ed his head to the side.
"What do you want with the lady?" Dante finally responded.
