[Part 7]

Daniel’s P.O.V

“What is this about?” I asked with faint interest, taking a soft sip. It wasn’t every day that my sister-in-law walked into my office doors without the kids and a serious expression, so I knew things were not exactly lively for the day when she invited me out for coffee.

“I’m really glad that you’ve found a woman whom you can share your heart with, Daniel.” Trish began, sipping her coffee delicately as she purposefully delayed her next words. I could hear a ‘but’ coming up soon, and by pure instincts, my defenses came up. What was she going to say about my darling lover? Trish had seemed to fine with Kalina… what was she going to say?

“I’m glad I have too.” I answered quickly, not betraying my inner confusion. Trish’s eyes flash with something like regret, and I knew immediately that it wasn’t something that I was going to like.

“But is Kalina really the one?” Her question was probably only a preamble to what she really wanted to say, but I was quick to jump to my girlfriend’s defense.

“She is the one. The one and only.” I declared strongly, and Trish seems to recognize that I was protective over my darling woman. Of course I would; it had taken me so long, so many years to find the one woman I could commit to. It had taken me so long to forget Lady as a love partner, and to have Kalina take over where Lady was… it was like my life was complete. With Kalina, it felt like my life was now full, no longer emptiness and no longer me trying desperately to fill it in.

For the first time, I truly understood what Trish and Damon felt for each other; what made them so crazy about each other.

“I like her too, Daniel, but-” Trish’s painful expression made no difference as I set the cup down on the saucer a little too harshly, interrupting her.

“Then don’t complain about anything. I didn’t protest when you and Damon decide to get together. I didn’t have this talk with Damon. I accepted you, so you should accept Kalina.”

“Listen, Daniel-” Trish began again, taking on a begging tone of voice, but I didn’t want to listen. All I wanted was a little of my family’s blessings to settle down with a woman I loved. I thought they would understand, considering how even Marcy had found her true lover in Vergil. I had never complained about my brother-in-law, had not complained about Trish. I had accepted them all. So it was only right that they accepted Kalina as she was, wasn’t it? Sure, Kalina didn’t belong to the other world, Kalina was just a normal girl in a normal life, in the normal world.

But that was the point. I had too much craziness. I just wanted innocent Kalina in my life, being shy and all. And looking like Lady, but acting so lovely in her own way.

“It doesn’t matter what you say, Trish. Kalina’s going to be the one, and whatever you say isn’t going to change that.” I cut her off again, almost unbelieving that my sister-in-law, the woman who had been with me all this while, even when Damon wasn’t around –was the one who was sitting here, trying to tell me things about Kalina that I didn’t want to hear about.

“Daniel, you need to stop being so paranoid!” Trish protests, raising her voice a little.

“I’m not paranoid.” I retorted quickly, though, in hindsight, I guess I really was being paranoid. “I just thought you would accept that I’ve chosen the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. But maybe I thought wrong.”

“I like her too!” Trish looked desperate and annoyed, and while I know from experience that an annoyed and desperate Trish isn’t a good combination, especially now that the experienced mother knew how to take her children in hand, I stood up, ready to leave and escape the imminent argument.

“Then continue liking her. Leave things the way they are, and I won’t turn nasty.” I warned, intending to walk away, but it was obvious that it wasn’t Trish’s personal opinion when I saw my brother –my twin –standing behind me, a hard expression on his face that said he was here as well to convince me of the same things his wife was trying to say.

“You need to calm down and listen to us, Daniel. We’re not asking you to leave Kalina, and we’re not trying to drive a wedge. We just want you to know how we feel about her.” Damon’s stern voice said, and if I wasn’t already so annoyed and pissed, maybe I would have stayed around a little longer. But I was pretty pissed and annoyed at the moment, so...

“Why else am I here, then? You, of all people, won’t let Trish pull me out from my job at Kries Tech just for a friendly update on what you think about Kalina unless it’s something important. And I don’t want to hear it. Whatever you think about her, I don’t want to know. I love her, and I’m going to marry her. So suck it up if you hate it, Damon. Suck it up, because I’m going to spend the rest of my life with her.” I admit that I might have been a tad too sensitive, but it was clear to me that whatever that was coming –it wasn’t good. And I didn’t want to admit it; I wanted to know that the relationship between Kalina and me was perfect.

I wanted to keep things perfect. I didn’t want to be silently jealous anymore. I wanted a woman I called mine. Hell, even Dante had a woman who loved him for all his problems –and this was a guy who had a hell-lot of problems! Granted, as his doppelganger, I had social problems when it came to settling down with a woman too, but Kalina had changed that –like how Lady had changed him. I hadn’t heard of Vergil complaining about his would-be-sister-in-law either. So why were my brother and sister-in-law making a fuss?

“This isn’t only about you, Daniel.” Damon’s voice was so leveled and even that it sounded –for a moment –that he was trying to control me. And I hated that. It was annoying enough that he had the power to control demons, and control everyone he wanted. Now he wanted to control me? His own brother that he had promised to protect as fiercely as everyone else in the family?

“Not everything is about you, Damon!” I yelled, the fact that Damon Kries should be dead in the real world barely scraping past my mind. So what if there was news coverage? So what if there was rumors that Damon Kries was actually still alive? If Damon Kries got in the way of my love to Kalina, then to hell with him.

Something dangerous flashes past his eyes, but he stood unafraid before me, his composure not even changing a single bit.

“I have never assumed that fact. But you need to understand that Kalina –the woman you know as Kalina Ann –went missing three months ago.”

“You were searching about her background?” I yelled, not even registering the part about her going missing. How could she go missing, if she was here in my life every day, meeting me for dinner every night?

“I was trying to make sure that you are safe.” Damon replied so coldly and matter-of-fact that I almost couldn’t believe it. Did making him powerful and half-human also make him less humane? Did gaining power make him lose his sense? Was this even Damon? The Damon I knew and lived with before he was trapped in Hell?

“That’s an infringement of privacy, in case you’ve been gone for too long.” I growled. I didn’t even want to know what they found out about Kalina’s background; I just wanted to know why they were looking into my girlfriend at all. I hadn’t even tried to search about Trish’s background –technically, I didn’t need to, considering I was already a DMC fan by then –but still, I hadn’t been suspicious of her at all. Who gave them the rights to be suspicious of my girlfriend? “Stop giving excuses!”

“Then you stop giving excuses!” Damon barked so suddenly that for a moment, even I was shocked. My brother, ever since coming back, had been even-tempered. Even when Dante acted as a total ass, Damon had only smiled through everything and exacted his own revenge through his newfound powers on Dante and me. But this was probably the first time Damon seemed to lose his control.

“I don’t know what you are afraid of, Daniel. If you’re so afraid of listening to whatever we have to say about Kalina, then why are you even protesting? If you’re so afraid of fights, then why are you even dating her? Will you honestly give up everything for her? Your family?” Damon continued in a low voice, a spark in his eyes that betrayed something a little less human.

“If it means giving up a suspicious brother and sister-in-law,” I sneered, blinded by the haze of anger that now had completely swallowed me up, “I’m willing to give it up.”

The shock struck in Damon’s face, and behind me, Trish gasped my name in alarm, as if hearing something that should have never escaped from my lips. Pissed beyond words at the major overstepping of boundaries, I set my jaw and began to stalk away from the café that Trish had invited me to. How was it that my brother still couldn’t trust me to set my life straight, when all I’d done in the years he had gone missing was keep his family safe? It was almost unbelievable.

Did Damon totally miss the part where I was a thirty-plus year old man, totally capable of taking care of myself?

“Daniel!” His shout in the now-silent café shoots through me, and it is only by pure instincts that my feet stop moving, even though I was only a few steps away from the door.

“Don’t regret every single word that you’ve said. Don’t forget every single word.” His eyes pierced through mine, and in that single moment, Damon wasn’t the one speaking to me.

A demon –a full-fledged demon –spoke to me through my brother’s voice.

“I won’t. And I sure as hell won’t forget your words. You, whom I thought cared.” I said, determined to have the last words before I charged out of the café, slamming the door behind me close.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

“Why the black face?” My beautiful woman asked as she skipped to the table where I had been waiting, glaring at the candlesticks even though the one who had offended me weren’t the wax sticks. How I wished right now I could mold the wax into a certain human figurine shape and burn them all down.

“Damon pissed me off.” I grumbled, even as Kalina took my both hands from the table. How could her soft hands, her warm and amazing hands, be anything but pure? How could her hands belong to someone conniving, someone to be suspected of something bad? I couldn’t even begin to conceive what Trish and Damon saw in her, what they could have possibly spotted in such an amazing specimen of a woman.

“Aww, come on.” She whined so adorably that I had to look up at her, in admiration of the beauty that I had adopted to be my girlfriend. How was it that she had fallen in love with me too? I knew I wasn’t the perfect man. I knew I had my own problems –which answered as to why no woman ever was willing to be my girlfriend for long even with my financial status. But how was it that a woman so wonderful and amazing –so very similar and yet different from Lady –was my girlfriend?

“Give me a smile, Danny.” She said affectionately, screwing her face into such a cute pout that resisting wasn’t an option at all. I dredged a reluctant smile across my face, and the replying one was so breathtaking I almost forgot to breathe.

“That’s it. That’s the Dante I met at that convention.” She grinned, watching the alarm write across my face. Honestly, there was no other person who could affect my emotions so truthfully, and it shocked even me.

“And this is the Lady I fell in love with at the convention.” I replied honestly, still holding on to her hands even as she took a seat across the table. We were at a fully-packed restaurant close to my office, but at the moment, it felt as if there was no one else in the world. “But you’re all that I need in my life right now, not Lady.”

“Don’t say that, I’ll be embarrassed.” Kalina replied with such a girlish giggle that I was appalled at how much I used to be infatuated by Lady’s tomboyish characteristics. How could I have liked the roughness of Lady’s beauty, when I had such a perfect woman; such a perfect specimen of a lady in front of me?

“I don’t know why, but I’m constantly reminded by how amazing and beautiful you are.” I expressed, and would have continued if not for the annoying waiter who spoiled the perfect moment by slotting himself at our side, asking for our orders. Kalina, on the other hand, seemed relieved for the break, for her face was already as bright red as a fresh tomato –which I could only fall in love more than I already have.

“Do you want to tell me why you were so mad at Damon?” Kalina ventured to ask as soon as the waiter was gone, obviously trying to escape the compliments that I had been ready to shower on her by changing the topic.

The thought of the events that had transpired in the afternoon brought a frown quickly to my lips, and though I knew that I was in the wrong too –having been too compulsive –but fault laid in Damon and Trish too. Then again, who could blame Damon and me for having inherited the fiery anger from our father?

“He was checking on you, Kalina.” I expressed with a frown. There was nothing I wouldn’t tell my lover, and since she had been so fine with finding out that my brother was still alive and well, I figured nothing would bother her. “He and Trish were checking out about your background. I can’t believe they still can’t treat me as an adult enough to invest my heart where it counts.”

The shock wrote itself on her face, but it faded almost as quickly as it came, the sympathy writing equally quickly on her face as she reached over the table and closed a hand over mine with an encouraging smile.

“They were just worried about you, Danny dear. Damon and Trish must really care a lot about you. I understand that.” Her understanding was so accepting that I almost cried in relief for having finally met this woman in my life. How could I love this woman any less? How could I have found this woman at my age; how could she have not been taken before this?

“They were infringing your privacy, and you don’t mind?”

“Sure, it bothers me a little that they are suspicious. But I know that your brother and sister-in-law are very protective of you. They take care of you very well, so it’s understandable if they’re wary of an outsider. Besides, I know your family’s secrets, and you always leave me so close to Wynter and Damien. It’s natural that they would want to get to know me better, to determine if I’m safe with their kids.”

At that very moment, I almost fell to my knees and prayed my thanks to the heavens above. All those years of waiting and pining for the wrong woman only to have Dante steal Lady away; it must have paid off. Leaving Lady to be Dante’s true love, it must have paid off for me. I had found my own lady, and this was a woman who was more benevolent than I had ever imagined. How could someone so ethereal ever exist?

It almost wasn’t human. Her amazing beauty, her stellar character; she almost wasn’t human at all.

“I’m so glad I found you at that convention, my dearest.”

Once again, her face blushed a pretty pink, but a sheen of wetness came to her eyes as her amazing green eyes averted to the candlelight fire before us.

“You should go talk things out with your brother and sister-in-law before your relations sour, Danny. I don’t want to spoil your family ties just because of me.”

“I will, in time to come. But let me be angry at Damon a little longer.” I replied childishly, and her replying giggle was melodious –almost as if angels had blessed me with their voices.

Dinner went on amazingly, with little allusion to my fight with my brother. Emerging from the restaurant with a full stomach and a beautiful woman by my side, it was almost hard to imagine that I was Daniel Kries, that I was the twin brother to Damon Kries, or that I am a doppelganger to Dante Sparda. It was hard to imagine that I once lived in a world where I had demonic powers, that I was consider a half-son of Sparda and that I killed demons for a living and chased after a demon huntress.

Back in this world, I was just Daniel, just Kalina’s ‘Danny’. Back here, walking down this road in the night, I am just a lover who had found his perfect other half. There was nothing in the world better that I wanted. Nothing else that I wished for. There was nothing I wanted more than Kalina Ann in my life.

The sound of a phone ringing jerked me out of my dreamy thoughts and I pull back to reality to see Kalina on the phone, a slightly worried expression on her face.

“Alright,” She said, sounding nervous and anxious, “I’ll come.”

Upon hanging up her phone, my lover turned up to face me with an apologetic face, the urgency written in her eyes. As an emergency nurse on-call, Kalina Ann often received such calls looking for nurses off-duty whenever manpower at the ER was limited. As a boyfriend, a lover, I understood the passion at which she dedicated herself to save lives. I understood her need to leave halfway between dates, and I couldn’t complain, for had she not endured the extensive media coverage, the reporters dogging our steps when she was first spotted dating the most available bachelor of the town?

“You’ve got to go.” I put in for her with a smile to tell her that things was alright. “Don’t let me hold you up from saving lives, Superwoman.”

The serene smile comes in returns as she tiptoes to leave a peck on my cheek. In an instant, a cab had been flagged down, as I stood by the road-side, watching my lover wave her goodbye to me through the window.

The world seemed darker without her, as the cab turned and disappeared around a corner.

With a heavy sigh, I looked up to the tallest tower overlooking the entire town. It was my workplace. It was my prison. A prison, where I was chained to the name Daniel Kries. A prison, where I was destined to work as a businessman, in place of my brother, and succeeded my father and my brother’s success. Through the 10 years of Damon’s disappearance, I have propelled Kries Technologies into the global market.

Where it once was a large accomplishment to me, it now meant nothing. Nothing, except a painful reminder that I would be forever stuck to the name Kries, forever remaining a slave to my family name. Forever a tool for Damon to work through.

A ringing sounds, and this time it was my phone as I swiped a glance at the screen. Lit up was the home screen of a picture of Kalina and me at the beach, but on the top was the caller’s registered name. Trish.

I sighed. No matter what, she was still sister-in-law. No matter what, she was still family. She still cared.

“Daniel.” I greeted, purposefully grumbling to let her know that I was still miffed at her attempts to interfere with my love life. What I heard instead wasn’t something I wanted to hear at all; it was something that chewed a bitterness in my heart, and never let go.

“Dan… Daniel…” The heavy breathing came through the phone, as I barely recognized my sister-in-law’s pained voice through the phone. “Daniel… Help…”

“Trish? Trish! Where are you? What happened?” I called, my feet picking up. My car was still parked at my office –I had walked with Kalina to the restaurant from my workplace –but my feet was already bringing me charging towards where my Mercedes waited.

“D-Demon… I-I’m at…at… stu…studio…”

“The modelling studio? Hold on, Trish. I’m going to get you. Don’t worry.” The pang of fear that struck didn’t strike as deep as I thought it would. Demon. How could demons come to this world? Other than that one time where Dante and Vergil’s arrival in our world invited demons, there had been no other sightings of demons in our world. This world wasn’t meant to hold demons; that was why we had felt so safe leaving Damien and Wynter in this world, training their skills.

What if Damon’s return had upset some sort of balance?

I didn’t have time to think about it, as I charged across the road, gaining blares of horns in reply. But I didn’t leave the angry commuters any attention, as I burst through the stairwell, making to where my car was parked in the basement.

“Dan…iel… Protect… Wyn… ter… and… Damien.” The pain was easy to hear in Trish’s voice, and a cut sank through my heart. Anything could have happened to Trish; she could be dying, and yet her last words were for me to take care of her children? The extent of a mother’s love cut deep into my heart, as I –at the very moment –regretted every single word I spoke to her in the afternoon.

“I will, Trish. You just hold on and focus on keeping alive. I’ll get Damon.” I promised, even as I wrenched the car door open. I barely remembered jamming the keys before the engine roared to life. I didn’t even give the engine a moment to purr as I slammed the accelerator. Damn it, the studio was at the other end of the town. It would take me minutes to get there.

“T-Thank… you… I… love… you…”

There was the sound of a last breath leaving, and heavy, scary silence filled the other end of the phone connection. I burst through traffic, screaming Trish’s name through the phone, but nothing happened. There was no reaction.

There was only one person to call in such a situation, and damned if Damon was supposed to be dead.

“Damon! GET DOWN TO THE MODELLING STUDIO! Something happened to Trish!” I screamed once my brother picked up the call, and it was probably the first time and the only time I would ever scream at my brother. There wasn’t even a single moment of question from my brother. I heard a brush of wind through the phone, and Damon’s gasp through the phone.

“Trish!” The heartbroken cry came distant through the phone, but I didn’t stick around to listen to my brother’s desperate calling. I called for an ambulance, barking orders immediately.

By the time I reached the modelling studios, they were rolling Trish out on a stretcher. Damon was there with her, and at the moment, there was nothing I could do. I could not break Damon’s cover; could not appear there to distract the EMTs from the fact that there were 2 Daniel Kries present at the scene. I could not delay the emergency team, and it was only pure instincts that made me stay put in the car.

I watched the ambulance race off.

And for the first time since Damon returned, a very humane fear returned to the marrow of my bones.

For the first time since my brother returned, I prayed that we were all safe from demons.