[Part 10]

Daniel’s P.O.V

Back in DMC, I breathed a sigh of relief at the power I felt that I could call mine. Technically, it was a ‘loaned’ power from Sparda, considering I was a fake son-of-Sparda when I was in DMC world, but it didn’t matter so as long as I was a half-devil and basically not only human.

As long as I felt like I had the power to control my fate and destiny, then it wouldn’t really matter that much. Considering the ups and downs I’ve been through the pass few days, there was no better relief than coming to a place where I could finally feel like I could control something and do something in times of crisis to not feel useless.

I had felt so useless and unable to do anything when Trish was rushed to the hospital. I had felt so useless when I walked into the studio, trying to clean up the evidence of demons before the police came. I had felt so useless even as I made a cover story of a mad fan stabbing his favorite model, coincidentally my sister-in-law, suppressing rumors of Damon Kries being alive and all. I had never felt so unneeded before, so powerless to do anything while my brother kept vigil over Trish’s bed. All I could do was watch over the kids and make sure they didn’t disturb my brother, but I wasn’t their father.

I couldn’t make them feel better.

I closed my eyes and laid down on the couch, placing a hand covering my eyes as if it could shelter me from the pressures of the world. The person I needed the most right now was the woman I loved, but it seemed as if Kalina Ann had disappeared ever since that night where Trish got attacked. I had tried looking for her, but with the media coverage going on with my family, I hadn’t dared to go looking for her for fear of her being disturbed. Still, I had visited the ER and house, and none of those places had shown me the face of the woman I loved.

I had briefly considered if the demon who had attacked Trish might have abducted Kalina, but after quick consideration, decided that it was not likely since other than Trish, Damon, the kids and Marcy, no one else knew about my relationship with Kalina. I had even kept the secret from Dante and Vergil, in hopes of leaving Kalina out of the dangerous demon world that I was in. Letting Damon know had been a duty, a responsibility, but letting Dante know? It would be suicide.

I don’t know how long I stayed lying on the couch in the silence of the apartment, but it was eventually broken at the jangle of keys, then the opening of the front door. The soft gasp as the lights turned on turned into cautious footsteps, but I pretended to be asleep as my sister carefully stalked into the room with caution, her power rolling over me, trying to sense me out.

The cautious footsteps approached the couch from the back and rounded to the front, Marcy’s power letting go of its prodding.

“Daniel?” I heard her ask softly beneath her breath, but the wakeup call came soon as Marcy shook me by the shoulders. Adamantly, I pretended that it would take me more than that to wake me up, but Marcy’s insistence in shaking made it clear that she would lose her temper if I persisted in pretending to be asleep.

So, stirring, I pretended to open sleepy eyes.

“Hi sis.” I mumbled with the pretense of a sleepy man’s groan.

“What are you doing here, Daniel?”

“That’s one way to greet your favorite brother.” I grumbled, sitting up and patting the seat beside me in invitation. Suspicion immediately flares in her eyes at my amiable nature displayed, but I held on to me smile, determined to be a polite brother that she had never seen before. Slowly –and very cautiously, I must say –she took her seat beside me, occasionally sending me furtive looks as if she expected me to, say, jump on her or something.

“What are you doing here, Daniel?” She repeated once her butt was fully planted on her own couch, no less demanding as it had been before. I pleasantly noted that she had ignored my comment about me being her favorite brother.

“Can’t I miss my sister and want to visit her and see how life has been treating her?” I questioned lightly, but Marcy only rolled her eyes.

“Right.” The drawl of Marcy was a blast from the past, and a distant smile drew across my face in remembrance of a time where things were so easy. Back in a time where my family only included Damon, Trish, Marcy and our parents –and maybe our butler Rainer too –it had been the most carefree days of my life. Much as it was heartless to say, when there was no Dante and Vergil, no Lady and the children, everything was so much easier. I remembered the pranks and jokes we pulled on each other and on Damon, as well as our elder brother’s clever retaliation to us.

I remembered the day Damon and I graduated from university, how I played a prank on the entire university by gluing Damon to the chair beside me, then walking up to the podium to give Damon’s Valedictorian speech in his place. I had been so convincing that the entire crowd had been captivated while my angered brother struggled to not embarrass himself. It was only until the last sentence, when I said, “See you in real life, Suckahs!” that the entire university realize that they had been made the last prank of Daniel Kries’s university life.

So many good memories; so far in the past.

“I really am here to simply visit you, Marce.” I said, a little melancholic with the memories that flooded my mind. Yes, I loved the memories I made with the children, Dante, Vergil and Lady, but they weren’t the same as those I shared with my blood siblings.

“How can that be?” She questioned with a slight smirk. “Has the sky fallen?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Where’s Vergil?” I asked, looking around. It had been a cause for surprise when I found neither Dante in DMC nor Vergil in his own home. Where else could Dante be, if not in DMC sleeping his ass off, and where else could Vergil be, if he weren’t in DMC or his home? While I had been extremely busy in my own world, had those two bastard half-brothers of mine been taking a holiday?

Apparently it wasn’t the correct question to ask my sister, for the smirk dropped immediately, and replaced by it was a sad resigned look, and I became suddenly aware of the emptiness of the apartment that Vergil and Marcy had called homed. The utensils set out for Vergil’s seat at the other end of their dinner table had a coat of dust that I never noticed until now. The couch didn’t smell so much like Vergil at all. He wasn’t here; and hadn’t been here in a long time.

“He’s been missing ever since a week after the birthday party. I’ve been over the worst of the panic attack right now, but I really wish he would just come home soon.” Marcy’s emotions were easily detected to be choked off, but the wetness was coming to the blue eyes that everyone of us had inherited from our parents. Though I was never a perfect brotherly figure, I proved to have the instincts as I shifted closer, resting her head against my chest as I encased her in a protective, comforting embrace. I couldn’t be Damon, but I could damn well be her elder brother right now.

“Your man’s the son of Sparda. There probably isn’t going to be anything to worry about at all. He’s as chaste as a nun, and I think I’ll die if I ever hear of him having an affair or something. So don’t you worry your pretty little head over it, Marce. He probably just lost his time researching on things, and lost his phone or something.” I said softly, stroking her head in a comforting movement as she sobbed quietly.

I should have seen the lethargy and exhaustion in her eyes, but somehow, I’d missed it. It was such a bad time to crash on her right now; such a bad time to escape from the problems of my own world to the problems of my sister’s world.

Still, at least Trish was awake now, and Damon was spending quality time with his family –having rediscovered the importance of spending time and discovering things about his children he never found out before –like how Wynter had inherited her mother’s tendencies to splurge when on a shopping trip, and how Damien seemed to have bad luck with the female teachers and classmates in school because of his uncannily bad timing at confessions and declarations of puppy love.

“Thanks so much, Daniel.” Marcy sniffled after a short while, withdrawing from my embrace as she wiped the tears from red, puffy eyes. “I shouldn’t be so worried and place faith in Vergil.”

“Yeah, you do that. By chance, do you know where Dante is then?”

“He left for Hell to look for Vergil a week ago. Damon sent him there, but we didn’t get any news at all. Lady’s worried sick for him.”

“Damon sent him? A week ago?” I echoed. A week ago… it must be exactly the day before Trish was attacked.

“Yes. He didn’t tell you?” Marcy’s eyes were wide with curiosity and puzzlement, but then so was mine. Why did Damon keep something so important from me when I’d been absent from DMC for so long? Sure, I had the excuse of spending my free time with Kalina, but at least an update would have been good, right?

“No, but I guess he’s been pretty busy these days himself. Trish got attacked by some demon a little less than a week ago. She was rushed to the hospital and operated on and went into coma. She woke up only yesterday. That’s why Damon’s not here.” I updated, considering how Damon, our middle-person, the portal-person, seemed to have been slacking on his appointed job.

Still, how could I blame him in the state of affairs thus far?

“Oh my god, is she alright?” Marcy exclaimed quickly, but I sent her an easy smile. After all, I wasn’t here to worry Marcy more than she already was.

“Trish is doing fine. She had her better days, but we were extremely lucky the demon didn’t get her heart.”

“Damien and Wynter must be so sad.”

“They were, but I think this is has been a good experience for them. Damon stepped up as a father. The demons somehow flooded our place a few days ago and from then on, Damon’s been crazy about wanting to know every little thing about the kids he seems to just realize are his.”

“What is going on in the world right now?” Marcy whined, deflating with a heavy sigh. “Why are there demons in our world, and missing half-devils from this world?”

“Dunno.” I shrugged with an accompanying sigh. “But at least I know that the sons of Sparda will definitely come home. Vergil’s too stuck on you to ever die or leave you alone.”

The comment finally brings a soft smile to my sister’s face, and I grinned at the accomplishment I’d made.

It didn’t last long.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

“Chill out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Come on, do it with me. Breathe in, breathe out.” I advised, taking in and letting go deep breaths as I urged the women to do the same.

“I’m not a pregnant woman for god’s sake, stop making me do breathing exercises! And I’m as chilled out as I can ever be!” The screaming Lady yelled, and while it would have been very kind of someone to point out that she wasn’t the littlest bit calm, I wisely kept my tongue intact behind my teeth. God forbid if this woman snapped and cut my tongue out.

“Umm… you might want to take a seat…” I suggested weakly, not really sure what else to do when confront with a pissed off and worried as hell Lady. Seeing her again definitely reminded me of my missing Kalina, and back in DMC reminded me exactly how different Lady and Kalina were in terms of characteristics, despite their similarity in appearance.

“FOR THE LAST TIME, STOP TREATING ME LIKE A PREGNANT WOMAN, DANIEL KRIES!” Lady screamed in the relative silence of DMC, and I struggled to hide my shrinking wince. If I had a hole in the floor, I would have scrambled in there and burrowed myself, but it appeared that it wasn’t the choice for me –which wasn’t a good thing considering her fingers were already twitching on the triggers of her guns.

“Dante’s going to come back, you don’t have to worry about him. He probably stopped by some strip club or something…” I excused, and lo and behold, I never thought I would hear a woman say this of her fiancé, but…

“I pray he damn well be at the strip club!” Lady threw her hands up in defeat, walking away from me and slamming her guns –thankfully –back on Dante’s desk which was now vacated of the usual sleeping man.

“For all you know, he could be paying big bucks for a lap dance right now.” I suggested, and the further normalcy of Dante’s suggested promiscuous lifestyle seemed to calm down his future wife very much. Taking a seat at her future husband’s usual seat, she took in deep breaths and toned down on the glare of anger made at me –though I hadn’t even done anything to make her relatively unhappy at all.

“We’d better hope that it’s the case.” She agreed, calming down visibly. Marcy was out to ask more questions on possible whereabouts of Vergil, and all information that we had managed to sieve was the fact that Vergil had been, in fact, looking for Mundus’s right hand demon, Mundus’s second-in-line, who had been called –for the first time in the demon’s existence –to execute a job.

The job: To kill Damon Kries and his family.

The information obviously didn’t do well on Marcy and Lady, both of whom had their husbands (and future husband) missing. Still, I wagered that they were sons of Sparda. If Dante had single-handedly beaten Mundus’s ass back to Hell, then Dante and Vergil combined in Hell could do something similar, no?

A weak knocking on the door fills the awkward silence that had settled between Lady and I, and gladly took the chance to be further away from the volatile woman as I made towards the door, ready to chase off customers; Dante-style.

But it wasn’t needed at all, because when the doors opened, someone fell through in straight into my arms with a loud groan. The stickiness of blood dripped and soaked my shirt and pants, but I could only stare at silver-white hair marred with red blood.

“I’ll give you… some money… you bastard… to give me… a lap dance!” Dante slurred, words muffled against my shoulder as his weight was left entirely on me, his legs giving way.

Rebellion tumbled from his hand and fell to the floor in a heavy clutter as I held the man’s weight up, trying to comprehend the sudden situation.

“Dante!” Lady’s gasp was loud and clear as she ran to my side, but there was nothing she could do as she watched while I struggled to get a good grip on the man who seemed to be covered in blood from top to toe. Eventually I grabbed enough of his trench coat and shirt to drag the weak man all the way to his couch. I would have dumped him on the couch, but Lady was around and I didn’t exactly want a rocket launcher in my face, so I laid him down gently, letting myself be elbowed out of the way by a worried Lady.

“He-hey… there’s the gorgeous Lady…” Dante’s perverted thoughts were obviously unfiltered through his mind to his mouth as I silently shook my head as Lady did her best to assess Dante’s wounds. Right now, all I could see was a million of cuts I couldn’t explain, and a palm-sized print on his chest, almost like a burn through his shirt, surrounding what seemed like a sword stab.

“What happened?” Lady asked the question for me, which was a good idea considering I had choice words in reply to Dante’s comment at me.

“Couldn’t find Vergil, but I found answers to what he was looking for…” Even in pain, Dante’s victorious grin could make me smack my head in exasperation. His job had been to look for Vergil; whatever Vergil was looking for was secondary. Right now Marcy was freaking out big time, and Dante hadn’t found Vergil in Hell… so what could that mean?

“What happened to you? Who did this?” Lady demanded, obviously not appreciative of his childish challenge against his brother.

“The same demon who Vergil was looking for.” Dante seemed a little stronger than he was before, but still he allowed himself to be pampered by his future wife as he laid on the couch, blinking slowly. There was no questioning that he had been hurt bad, but it was obviously nothing that Dante couldn’t survive from with a rest.

“Who?”

Finally, blue eyes seemed to take in the fact that I was here, standing behind Lady and trying not to retch at the loving looks they were passing to each other. Dante’s grin widened, and I wasn’t sure if I liked that look or not.

“You better start running, bro. There’s a maniac woman demon looking for you, and you’re dead if she catches you.”

“Who?” I echoed Lady’s question, as Dante closed his eyes for a long moment, taking in a deep breath.

“She said her name was Kalina. That one’s a pisser… she put one hand on my chest, and it was like I was boiling from inside out. She pushed Rebellion through me, and threw me out of Hell. She didn’t kill me though, she said Mundus didn’t want me dead yet.” Dante seemed to have recovered to continue with longer sentences now, but it was obvious that he was still in no shape to be fighting for a few days.

“But why?” Lady asked, for I suddenly had no voice.

“She said something about murdering me in the near future, after she murdered everyone on Damon’s family. That’s one psychotic bitch, but she’s really hella scary. And when I say someone is scary; she’ll make you pee your pants.”

“Was she the one who took Vergil?”

“She didn’t seem to have any idea where the son of a gun is. Verge probably saw her and peed his pants and ran away or something.”

“You said her name was Kalina.” I cut in suddenly, a strike suddenly hitting me, as if I had been electrocuted on the spot. Surely it wasn’t… there were many Kalinas in the world, right? Even Lady’s mother was Kalina… hell definitely had to have another demon called Kalina, right? “Are you sure?”

“Heard it clear as day. She didn’t look like a Kalina, though. She had crazy wings. Like crazy big black wings.”

“What did she look like?” I demanded, pushing Lady out of the way as I got a clear look of him. I prayed to the high heavens that he wouldn’t say the thing my heart said he would. I prayed to all my lucky stars and whoever who was blessing me at this point, that I was wrong in my conjecture. I prayed with all my heart that he wouldn’t say the words.

“That’s the scariest thing.” Dante said, somehow seeing the fear in my eyes and turning confused. “She looked exactly like Lady. I thought she was Lady. That’s how she caught me by surprise.”

By then, I wasn’t even listening to the excuses Dante was giving to vindicate his injured state. That one sentence had doomed everything else.

She looked exactly like Lady. She said her name was Kalina.

I spun around on my heels, and charged for the door, stopping just in time to scoop Dante’s Rebellion from the floor. I would have to borrow his weapon for now. I had things to do. A demon to confront in Hell.

A girlfriend to confront in Hell.