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The possessed doll died with one last horrifying jingle. Nero revved Red Queen one last time, just to be really sure.
“Maybe I should’ve just advertised as an exterminator,” he muttered, kicking the remains of its slithery corkscrew hair. It stopped twitching and crumbled to dust. “Killing bugs would be less disgusting.”
But the thing was definitely dead, so he packed up and headed down to the first floor of the old museum to discuss payment. The director was super grateful, if still surprised the whole thing was real. Nero made sure to get cash from him right off, just to be sure he wouldn’t decide the whole thing was a delusion and cancel a check on him.
“Yoink,” said Nico, when he climbed into the van. She plucked a chunk of bills out of his hand.
“Hey,” said Nero. “I wasn’t done counting that!”
“So I’m taking my cut.”
“What cut,” said Nero. “When do you get a cut?”
“Since I’m gonna be making you a sweetass new piece out of that button you’re about to give me, right?”
Nero sighed and tossed her the remains of the doll’s beady little eye. Nico grinned.
“Just don’t lick it will you?”
“No promises,” sang Nico. She shoved it down her shirt instead. Nero had just decided he’d better not think about it when the car phone rang. He picked up half for the memory cleanse.
“Devil May Cry,” said Nero, automatically.
“Nero.”
Nero froze. He’d never heard him over the phone, but that voice was unmistakable.
“Uh… Yeah--” Vergil? Father? Shit, it had to be bad if it was him calling and not Dante. “V?” He’d panicked. “What’s up?”
“Yikes?” mouthed Nico, observing the disaster of a conversation starter none-too-quietly. Nero turned away from her for the illusion of privacy.
“Are you close to the Via del Rudra?” asked Vergil, without questioning that term of address at least.
Via del Rudra was one of Fortuna’s main streets. “About an hour out with the way Nico drives. Why?”
“Then meet me there in an hour. Alone.” He hung up. Nero stared into the speaker.
“Is it just me or has his conversation gotten worse?” asked Nero.
“Dunno. Calls more than my daddy does.” Nico smirked. Nero looked at her. “Get it? ‘Cause he’s--”
“Just drive,” said Nero. He put his head on the dashboard.
It took Nero less than a second to recognize the man waiting outside the Trattoria Fortunata. The white hair was a dead giveaway. The choice of clothes caught him off guard. He was wearing black, which Nero expected from — well, V, actually — but he’d traded the battered coat he’d worn stumbling out of hell for a chic dark long peacoat and a suit. The only hint of the flair Nero had come to expect from him and Dante was a blue and gold embroidered scarf slung fashionably around his collar, and a silver cane which pulsed with a familiarity not entirely visual. Nero’s right palm prickled at the sight of it. He clenched his hand. Yamato, then.
Vergil tapped the cane idly as Nero approached, sparing him one of those piercing stares that counted either as acknowledgement or sizing him up before a sneak attack. Nero tensed. He wished he hadn’t put Red Queen back in his case, but the Order had had rules about toting live steel in the main street and — well, okay, Credo chewed him out for packing live steel in the main street.
“That was timely,” said Vergil.
Okay, no sneak attack.
“Like I said, with the way Nico drives—”
“I’m familiar with it,” said Vergil, who’d been V all along, after all. “I half-expected the van to come down from the roof.”
“Yeah, around here that might cause a scene,” said Nero. “She dropped off about a block ago. Told her it’s fine to head back to the garage to resupply. Think we’ll need back-up? I can give her a call if we need some extra juice or something.”
The corner of Vergil’s mouth turned into a ghost of V’s crooked smile. “For this? The two of us will do just fine.”
He nodded in the direction of the restaurant, tipping the head of his illusionary cane in the general direction of Nero’s sword-case.
“Besides,” he said. “They’ll make you check that.”
The Trattoria Fortunata was actually Fortuna’s one big restaurant. It was a known favorite of Duke Spardini, and he often used to to schmooze with government officials or business leaders he wanted money from. It was considered more a tourist attraction than anything else, too secular for the Order to do business in — though Credo had gone once or twice as the Duke’s bodyguard, and to report to Sanctus any ventures that might be worth knowing about. Him and Kyrie sometimes stopped to look through the window at the food on patron’s tables. Nero had never been in himself. With his white hair and his reputation for starting small fires, he was barely welcome in the mess hall, let alone Fortuna’s one starred restaurant.
He trailed Vergil inside, torn between his childhood desire to give the host the finger and a very adult urge to tuck in his shirt.
What was weirder that the host was expecting them.
“Signor Redgrave,” he said, like he hadn’t worked there for years and hadn’t once dumped a pitcher of water over Nero’s head for trying to tag the back alley entrance. “What a pleasure to see you again so soon. You and your… guest.”
Oh, the host definitely remembered that graffiti.
“My son ,” said Vergil, simply. Nero wasn’t sure if him or the host were more surprised by that one. The host stared. Nero stared. It was true, but he’d never expected him to just say it. Vergil prompted the host, boredly. “I have a reservation.”
He clicked his cane against the ground in a way that seemed to add, ‘And money.’ The host unfroze and showed them to their table. By then Nero had regained some of his wits. He didn’t quite have the gall to put his feet on the table, but he leaned back a little in his chair.
“You know, V,” managed Nero, weakly, “you could’ve given me a heads up about the venue. I’m beginning to feel a little underdressed.”
“Dante once answered a party invitation without a shirt,” said Vergil. “Underdressed means a bit more in this family.”
“I believe that, but—” It was that awkward span between lunch and dinner when there weren’t any other patrons, but Nero was getting looks from the rich tourists in the corner.
“A descendant of Sparda,” said Vergil, “dresses how he likes.”
Again, true, but still unexpected. Nero’s ears burned from the amount of rapid-fire acknowledgment. He tried to look nonchalant as he flipped open one of the menus that the host left on the table. Nothing there had prices on them. Neither did the drink menu. As though sensing weakness, a server came over to take their drink order. Vergil instantly requested a bottle of the nicest wine on the menu, had it poured out, and didn’t take a single sip of it.
“On me,” he added, as though he’d only just noticed Nero’s stunned silence.
“That’s… generous,” managed Nero, “but where the hell did you get this kind of money…”
“Finished a job,” said Vergil. He picked up the glass, sniffed it, and placed it back untouched.
“Tell me you put some of it away for your power bill.”
“That's Dante's concern.”
The server returned. Nero wondered what was the best way to ask what the cheapest thing on the menu might be — he didn’t have a chance to figure it out. Vergil ordered for them both of them.
“That one’s decent,” he noted at one point. At another, “That should be adequate.” He seemed to actually know what everything meant. “Nero will have the juniper steak.”
“And here I thought you were a powerbar kind of guy,” said Nero.
V hadn’t eaten much in the time Nero knew him. V had brought back food in the motel room the night the Qliphoth broke through, but he hadn’t touched it himself. Kyrie had tried to offer him dinner the brief time he’d ever visited the house, but he’d picked at it. Nero had gotten concerned about it during V’s final trip to Redgrave. He’d practically shoved a fist full of those granola bars Nico stuffed into the glove compartment of the van. V had spent their brief downtime waiting for Lady to wake up methodically picking out all the chocolate chips, and leaving everything else. It was no wonder he was so thin.
It was a little hard to reconcile that with the guy ordering them both a veritable banquet.
But he recognized the flicker of amusement passed through Vergil’s eyes as he glanced at him. There was still a little V in it. “A man can’t treat his son to a night on the town?”
“Y’know, that either of those two things could apply to me? Still news.”
“That’s why,” said Vergil. The amusement faded in favor of that icy loftiness Nero had unconsciously come to expect from him. “You haven’t come here before?”
“Not really my scene,” said Nero, plucking at his collar in a way he’d hoped looked careless, but he suspected verged on self-conscious. “Hoighty toighty place like this? They wouldn’t let me in even in uniform. Not exactly like my Order stipend amounted to much.” What didn’t go towards headphones, gun mods, and an electric guitar, anyway.
“Tch,” the ice became pure contempt. “I would’ve expected better from this place.”
“Better for a scawny-ass orphan?”
“Better for a child of mine,” said Vergil, suddenly meeting his eyes. Nero couldn’t move. He felt his breath stop for a moment. “In this place? Your blood demands you should’ve been treated with the utmost care. Your hair. Your eyes. It’s written all over you. I knew that, even when I knew little else. Amazing they couldn’t recognize it. Imagine. They thought a doddering old fool of a duke shared my father’s blood — when the real thing was right in front of them. Mark my words, Nero, if I’d known your existence, I’d never have allowed them to show you such disrespect.”
It was probably the most Nero had ever heard from Vergil in one go. He finally managed to break his gaze away, rubbing at his nose. The first course arrived. It smelled amazing. Nero didn’t quite have the nerve to touch it.
“Credo and Kyrie took care of me,” he said, finally. Because it was true, and he loved the hell out of them for it.
Vergil relented, a touch. “They show better judgment than the rest of this town, then.”
“And I don’t think anyone really thinks the Spardinis had any demon blood in them.”
“Are they worth defending?”
About a thousand nasty names, cold faces, and nun-inflicted canings flashed through Nero’s head at once. “Not really.”
“Then don’t waste your breath on it.”
The food was amazing. It vanished almost immediately. Nero had had mussels before — it was a pretty beloved staple in the spring and summer in the mess hall — but it’d never actually tasted good before. He wondered if he could figure out how they did the sauce. He wondered if Kyrie would want to give it a try. He actually wasn’t sure how many courses or sides Vergil actually ordered, but they kept coming, and they kept vanishing.
“Okay, but if the royal treatment is so big for you,” said Nero, sucking the last bit of meat out of the crab leg, “how come you and Dante are living off of pizza and ice cream?”
“It’s a bit out of the way.”
“Not what I meant.”
Vergil seemed to think this one over before answering. His index finger tapped the top of his cane — Yamato’s pommel, no doubt. He hadn’t actually let it go the entire time they were there.
"Dante's never had a care for our lineage,” he said, “nor does he care if he's respected or not. I don't share that view. Sparda was no God, but he was a warrior of considerable strength and integrity. ...Guts and honor, as our mother used to say."
“...My grandmother,” said Nero, both saying it and realizing it at the same time.
It was the first time he’d acknowledged the relation out loud. Vergil’s eyes fell on him.
“Yes,” he said, quietly. “Your grandmother.” He recovered, tilting his head back to observe Nero as though from a great distance. “Both her and my father had a fair bit of class. It’s worth honoring now and again. Can’t let all of Dante’s bad habits rub off on you, now can I?”
Nero really wouldn’t have minded having a bike like Dante’s, but fine.
“Now I really wish you’d warned me about the dress code,” grumbled Nero. “If it was about appearances. I kind of would’ve liked a chance to get some of these demon guts out of my jeans—”
“You’ll get more in them soon enough,” said Vergil, voice going low. “We’re not just here for pleasure.”
Nero stopped. He caught the reflection of the other guests in Vergil’s untouched wine glass. Their eyes hadn’t left them, talking quietly among themselves.
Vergil nodded. “You sense it.”
“Shit,” hissed Nero, reaching back with one hand for Blue Rose. “They’re everywhere. Why didn’t you say sooner. We’re surrounded—”
Vergil reached across the table to grab his wrist.
“Wait,” said Vergil, as the server came back to check in on them. “Dessert first.”
Turned out, there was a demon working as the new chef. His name was Phegor and he’d been one of Agnus’ little pets. He’d broken out the labs after the Order fell apart and had opened up a little business luring rich humans into his restaurant — and replacing the occasional business man with one of his demonic buddies whenever one of them paid him enough.
“My compliments,” said Vergil, sheathing Yamato. The demon, pinned in place by one of Nero’s wings, slid down the wall in two pieces, bisected neatly. Both halves of his hat fluttered to the ground as he faded to nothing but an abandoned chef’s uniform.
“Okay, but please tell me he wasn’t cooking people,” said Nero, shaking out his spectral wing as he retracted it. The demon had spat up a lot of gross acid. The kitchen was covered in it now. “I really need to know I didn’t just eat people.”
“No, he saved those meals for the private events,” said Vergil. “Demons prefer their sacrifices fresh.”
“And rich, apparently.”
“Better places of influence mean more souls to reap,” said Vergil. “Fresh, like I said.”
“Order’s really falling down if they let that get through,” Nero sighed. Not that the Order hadn’t been crawling with demons itself last time it had anything like a chain of command — but still. “Guess I should’ve gone out to eat more often, huh?”
The host and the server were hiding in the coat room when Nero came back for Red Queen. They’d made it through the battle without her, but Nero was still glad to have her back.
“You can come out now,” said Nero. There weren’t any bodies in the main dining hall or the kitchen. Most of the rest of the human staff had called out that morning, apparently. Courtesy of… someone. Nero wondered about that. He wondered about the two people in front of him now, too. “Party’s over. We were just packing up.”
The server ran for it. Nero thought he should be given a medal for not saying, ‘Check, please?’ But somehow with Vergil standing right there, it seemed like a bad idea.
“Signor Redgrave,” said the host, stumbling out. “Thank you so much. However shall I ever—”
“Leave it,” said Vergil.
“So was that a job or a favor?”
“A bit of both,” admitted Vergil, as they walked up the Via del Rudra. The sirens were just starting to blare. Some Order arms were still working after all. “I used to be a regular.”
“Seriously? When the hell…”
Vergil looked at him.
“A little bit before I was born, huh,” said Nero, breathing out. “But if it was a job, he forgot to pay you.”
“And we didn’t pay for our meal,” said Vergil. Nero thought about it. Shit, they hadn’t. He was just about to turn back out of reflex, but Vergil’s slight chuckle stopped him. “Don’t bother. It’s even. He gets his precious restaurant back, we get a king’s banquet free of charge.”
“And I thought Dante was the free-loader.”
“Ever heard the term noblesse oblige ?”
“No.”
“Never mind.”
Nero turned back.
“The host was a demon, too,” said Nero, finally. “You notice that?”
“Yes,” said Vergil. “I noticed the first time I came here, too.”
Twenty-five years ago, he meant.
“Aaaand you didn’t do anything about that because…”
“He hasn’t eaten anyone,” said Vergil. Yamato had long since returned to its cane form. He tapped it thoughtfully against the cobblestone. “Not in the way you’re thinking. You could barely sense his demonic power. He was nearly powerless. Chances are he’s just been subsisting on the the greed of patrons these last two decades. Once Phegor showed up, it was fall in line or get eaten himself. That is the order of Hell, at any rate. Trust me, Nero. He wasn’t worth the effort. Chances are, he’s never harmed anyone who didn’t deserve it.”
Nero rubbed his head and looked back at the restaurant. The glass window was cracked. The sign hung askew. Outside, he saw the host meet the Order police — now mostly just regular police, these days -- flailing around whatever cover story he was going with.
“Kind of took you for more of a hardass than that,” admitted Nero.
“I’ve had a taste of that kind of weakness,” said Vergil. “I didn’t like it very much.”
“I did,” said Nero. He said it without really thinking.
Vergil looked at him. It was that sideways look, head tilted to as though to hide his eyes behind hair that no longer fell in front of them.
“How sentimental,” he said, at last.