Chapter Text
By the time Dante finished clearing out the warehouse, dawn had started leaking through the dirty windows in thin gray strips.
He stood in the middle of what used to be the bulk storage section of a mega supermarket, surrounded by torn cardboard, ruptured freezer units, and enough demon remains to make a health inspector quit. The place smelled like old blood, spoiled meat, and industrial cleaner that had lost the war several hours ago.
Dante lowered his sword.
For a moment, he just listened.
Nothing skittered behind the shelves or dropped from the ceiling with too many teeth and eyes. The only sound left was the slow drip of something dark from a broken pipe overhead, tapping steadily into a puddle beside his boot.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
He blinked once and checked his watch before groaning.
“Aw, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”
The job was supposed to have taken three hours. Four at most, since the business-tycoon client hadn’t been wrong to use the dramatic word infestation. The whole warehouse had been crawling with little skittish demons from the loading docks to the staff bathroom. Not the interesting kind, either. No grand speeches. No ancient horned monarch rising from the frozen seafood aisle to declare the age of man over. Just claws, spit, and bad breath.
Dante had cut and shot through them the way someone else might clear weeds from a driveway, with very little emotional investment. Not that there was much to invest in. These weren’t Makaian refugees looking for shelter. They were bloodthirsty pests with fangs, and they’d made the mistake of being easy to find. Somewhere around the second hour, the whole thing had blurred into muscle memory. Step, swing, shoot. Duck, stab, reload. Kick one through the discount cereal display. Repeat.
He had barely registered the time until it was over.
Now the sky was turning pale, his coat was ruined again, and his night was gone.
Dante dragged a hand down his face, smearing a line of demon ichor along his cheek.
“Next time,” he muttered, “I’m charging by the hour.”
Then he looked down. His V-neck was soaked black in places, his red trench coat freckled with darker red where blood had soaked into the leather. From the corner of his eye, he could see the ends of his bangs stained purple and red.
He grimaced. “And dry cleaning.”
At least he’d had the sense to get paid upfront. Small mercy. People had a funny habit of remembering their budget only after the monsters were dead.
He stepped over what remained of a horned thing that had tried to escape into the vents and made his way toward the emergency stairwell. The metal door groaned when he pushed it open.
Outside, the back lot was empty except for abandoned shopping carts, a row of delivery trucks that hadn’t moved in weeks, and his motorbike parked crooked near the loading dock, looking about as tired of the night as he was.
The air had that strange early-morning cold to it, the kind that made everything feel hollow before the city reawakened. Far off, beyond the gray line of rooftops and utility poles, the glow of ruined New York sat low against the horizon. Not quite asleep or awake. Barely alive.
Dante looked at it for half a second too long, then turned away.
He swung one leg over the bike, kicked it awake, and let the engine cough, snarl, then settle into a rough purr. The sound cracked through the empty back lot, too loud for the hour, but Dante couldn’t bring himself to care right then. He wanted a shower, a mattress, and maybe three days where nothing tried to gnaw at him.
So he rode to his place.
Calling it his place was generous. It was an abandoned apartment he had broken into, claimed, and never bothered to make comfortable. It sat above a dead laundromat on the outskirts of Jersey, in a building with cracked brick, boarded windows, and a front door that no longer understood the concept of locking.
Home sweet nowhere.
The stairs creaked under him as he climbed. Second floor, then third. The hallway smelled like dust, rainwater, and old cigarettes. The walls were spray-painted and grimy. The apartment door stuck when he shoved it open.
Inside, the silence hit him first.
It always did.
It was thick and heavy, the kind that invited everything but sleep. It settled into the walls and made his ears ring.
Dante stood in the doorway for a moment, sword balanced over one shoulder, listening to nothing.
He could turn on the boom box. Usually, he did. The thing was half-broken and sounded ugly as sin, but it worked if he smacked the side hard enough and didn’t ask too much from the left speaker.
But tonight, he was too tired even for that.
A mattress lay on the floor near the only window that still had glass in it. A crate served as a table, and his pistols sat beside an empty pizza box. Newspapers were stacked in one corner, most of them old headlines about curfew schedules, evacuation zones, military restructuring, demon outbreaks, public safety, public lies, and even more public panic.
He dropped his sword against the wall and heard the blade scrape through peeling paint.
Three days of sleep. That was the plan. Maybe four, if it didn’t get too hot out. Not like he had much else going on.
After the collapse of New York during the Hybrid Eclipse, staying anywhere too long had become a bad idea for Dante. The city had gone from battlefield to military cage almost overnight. Martial law, curfews, checkpoints, soldiers with nervous trigger fingers, and DARKCOM’s leftovers folded into the U.S. military as a special forces unit. Everybody pretended they didn’t remember what they’d done to those innocent Makaians.
Cute. Nothing said “fresh start” like the same bastards with new badges.
The government itself was still limping through the chaos, too busy putting out fires and running election campaigns to organize a proper hunt for him, but that wouldn’t last forever. They’d come for him eventually.
The thought exhausted him.
Not scared him. That would’ve at least been interesting. Just exhausted him.
He could already picture it: the speeches through megaphones, the shouted orders about arrest and containment and public safety, the bullets that might hurt if they ever managed to touch him. Ever since he’d learned to call up his Devil Trigger, something in him had stayed awake even when the horns and claws were put away. He was stronger now. Faster. Harder to break.
So it wouldn’t be a fair fight. Not really.
Bullets chewing through walls. Rockets blowing out stairwells. Tranq rounds hissing past his head. Soldiers in body armor learning the hard way that expensive gear still folded under a punch from a half-demon. Drones, armored trucks, tactical nets, whatever ugly little toys terrified taxpayers had bought for terrified men. He could break all of it without doing much harm to the soldiers.
It would be boring. There would be no thrill in it. No rhythm. No rockin’ theme. No familiar rifle crack from somewhere impossible. No Lady turning the whole hunt into a cat-and-mouse game neither of them ever admitted they enjoyed.
That last thought landed badly.
His mood soured so fast it almost felt physical. The faint trace of humor that had been dragging itself along behind him finally gave up and died somewhere near his boots.
He didn’t want to think about Lady.
He definitely didn’t want to think about the letter tucked inside the inner pocket of his jacket, folded once, then twice, then too many times after that. He hadn’t thrown it away. Hadn’t read it again either. It just sat there against his chest, burning through leather and fabric like it had teeth.
Yeah.
He’d have to skip this broken city soon.
Maybe he’d head west. Maybe he’d disappear into the Midwest, somewhere flat and quiet where the biggest local disaster was a bad storm and people still had the decency to pretend monsters were metaphors. He’d probably get bored without the action. Bored out of his skull, actually.
But boredom sounded better than ghosts.
Better than old streets. Better than familiar ruins. Better than thoughts that knew exactly where to find him.
Dante shrugged out of his bloodied jacket and tossed it over the crate with a silent promise to get it cleaned tomorrow. Maybe. If tomorrow happened to be ambitious.
His boots came off next, one after the other, hitting the floor with dull, tired thuds. Then he dropped onto the mattress. His eyes shut almost instantly. His muscles loosened one by one, the last of the night draining out of him. For the first time in hours, the silence felt less like a thing watching him and more like something he could sink into.
Sleep reached for him easily.
Then someone knocked on the door.
Softly, at first.
Once.
Twice.
Then again, more persistent.
Dante opened one eye.
“Unless you’re room service, rent control, or holding cash, try another door!” he called, voice rough with exhaustion.
The knocking stopped.
A moment later, the door came off its hinges, shoved inward with clean, insulting force.
Dante reached for Ebony and Ivory and fired, but the woman moved before the sound had even left the barrels. She caught the broken doorframe with one hand and vaulted over the shots, twisting through the air with a grace that made the rundown apartment seem unworthy of her. Blonde hair flashed pale in the dawnlight spilling through the dusty window. She looked like a blade cutting sunrays in half.
Then she landed on the balls of her feet and drew two pistols from the holsters strapped low against her leather pants.
Dante’s brows lifted.
Lace-up leather corset, fitted leather pants, dark sunglasses, twin holsters low on her hips. She looked like she was either headed to a rock concert or one of those demon-hunting gigs reserved for clients with several penthouses and a private island.
“You know, most people at least introduce themselves before committing a felony,” he chuckled.
The woman let out a small, bored scoff.
“You didn’t seem interested in conversation,” she said, voice smooth as honey. “I had to improvise.”
Dante let out a laugh.
Finally, something interesting.
“Well, you’ve definitely got my attention now.”
She fired at him again. Dante ducked, the shot taking a bite out of the wall behind him. He answered with Ebony and Ivory, forcing her to twist aside. She moved beautifully, folding under one bullet, stepping over another, her body cutting through the torn apartment like gravity had forgotten her. One boot hit the wall. She pushed off, flipped over the crate, and fired down at him midair.
Dante rolled back across the mattress as bullets tore through it, missing him by inches.
“That was my bed!” he shouted, genuinely annoyed now.
“It was barely a mattress.”
“It had great back support!”
She landed lightly behind him, both pistols angled toward his chest. Dante quickly mirrored her.
Her expression stayed hidden behind the sunglasses, but the line of her mouth twisted into an amused smirk. Dante couldn’t help but chuckle back.
“You’re not here for the bounty, are you?” he asked. “You’re not trying hard enough to knock me out.”
Her expression hardened. She lowered her guns.
“No. No, I’m not.”
Dante sighed, crossing his feet on the floor and stretching his back.
“Man, you could have just started with that and not made a mess,” he said.
“Would you prefer I apologize?”
He glanced back at her. “Would you mean it?”
“Not even slightly.”
He laughed again.
“Alright. Say what you have to say and name your price.”
She walked to the center of the room, all black leather and grace, but the stiffness in her shoulders made her nerves obvious. She took one breath, then spoke.
“Your brother, Vergil of Sparda, has been defeated by Mundus. I’ve come to—”
She didn’t get to finish.
One blink, and she was across the room, her back slammed into the opposite wall hard enough to split the plaster. Dante’s hand was around her throat, not crushing, but holding her in a stone grip.
The whole apartment seemed to recoil from him.
His easygoing mood vanished completely, like someone had cut the music mid-note. But what replaced it wasn’t clean anger. It was worse than that. Desperation, dressed up as violence.
His jaw clenched hard enough to jump beneath his skin. His breathing had gone too quiet, too controlled, every muscle pulled taut with the effort of not shaking her through the wall. His eyes searched her face from behind the dark lenses, frantic and furious all at once, like he could drag the truth out of her if he stared hard enough.
“How do you know this?” he demanded.
His voice came out low and rough, but it cracked at the edges. “How the hell do you know this?”
No one knew what had happened on the other side of the barrier. No one knew Vergil had renounced his connection to the human realm and chosen to stay in the hell that had kept him captive for years. No one knew he had chosen ambition, chosen power, over…
Over Dante himself.
No one knew the pure sorrow in Vergil’s eyes as he forced Dante away from him, separating them across the barrier.
Dante had told no one.
This stranger stood before him with hell under her pale skin and sunglasses hiding her eyes.
She twisted in his grip, sharp and quick, but Dante didn’t budge. Her shoulder hit the cracked wall. Her glasses slipped, then fell, revealing her blue eyes and the rest of her face.
Dante’s eyes widened, and his world went numb.
His heartbeat kicked hard against his ribs, suddenly too fast, too loud, too alive. His fingers loosened before he decided to let go. The woman dropped to the floor, one hand flying to her throat as she coughed, but Dante barely heard it.
She looked like his mother.
Something deep in him ached and caught fire.
Dante shook his head. His mouth stretched into a smile.
Then he laughed.
Loud and harsh. Almost delighted.
The woman froze on the floor, one hand braced against the boards, staring up at him.
Dante laughed harder.
“Wow,” he said, voice bright and shaking. “That’s good. That’s really good.”
He looked at her face again, and something in him cracked open.
He chuckled.
“How dare you?” His smile trembled at the edges. “No, seriously. How dare you wear my mother’s face to tell me my brother’s gone?”
She looked stunned, which amused him even more. Another laugh dragged out of him like broken glass against stone.
“Was this Mundus’ idea? Or did you come up with this little stand-up routine yourself? Because I gotta say, it’s sick. Twisted. Real commitment to the bit.”
“This isn’t—”
“Isn’t what?” His voice cut sharper.
Suddenly his eyes turned red, twisted glee overtaken by anger.
“This isn’t personal?” His red eyes narrowed. “Yeah. I bet it isn’t. Nothing’s ever personal to you demons, is it?”
The woman rose slowly, both hands raised. The careful poise of someone approaching a wounded animal with bared teeth.
“Neither,” she said. “Mundus did not send me. And Vergil is alive.”
Dante stared at her.
“What?”
“I said he was defeated,” she said carefully. “Not killed.”
The words hit him badly.
Relief came first, brutal and humiliating. It went through his knees before he could stop it. Dante dropped hard to the floor, one hand covering his mouth, his breath caught somewhere between a laugh and something worse.
Not dead.
Not dead.
Then his eyes lifted to her, his gaze cold.
Cold again.
“You better be telling the truth.” His voice was rough. “Because I haven’t been known for generosity toward demons.”
The woman went still.
“You are a demon, aren’t you?”
She hesitated.
Then, slowly, she nodded.
“I… believe so.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed. “You believe so, but you don’t know so?”
Her gaze dropped to her hands.
“I know names,” she said quietly. “I know what things are called, what they are. Sapiens. Makaians. Mundus. Sparda. I know good and evil as concepts. I know pain. I know fear.” Her fingers curled, then opened again, like she did not fully trust them to belong to her. “I know there was a battle, and that Vergil of Sparda stood against Mundus and fell.”
Her voice remained elegant, controlled, but something beneath it trembled.
“But I do not remember myself.”
Dante said nothing.
“As far as I know, I woke with no life behind me. Only memories of a battlefield, of your brother, of Mundus’ plan. And your name.”
He should have called bullshit. Put a bullet through the wall beside her head and told her to try the story on someone dumber.
The story was absurd. Shallow and full of holes big enough to drive his bike through.
And yet.
There was a fragile stiffness to her now, like composure was the only thing holding her upright. Her hands stayed open at her sides. Her face — his mother’s face, damn her — was pale with exhaustion and something painfully close to fear.
She looked like someone telling the truth because she had nothing else to offer.
She stepped closer, and Dante watched her, but didn’t move away.
She lowered herself to her knees in front of him, graceful even there, leather pants creaking softly as she settled onto the dusty floorboards. Her hand lifted, careful and hesitant, reaching for his arm. Her fingers rested lightly against his sleeve.
“I remember knowing I had to find you. I cannot explain what I am, or why I carry these memories, or why your name was the only clear thing left to me.”
Her blue eyes held his.
“But this knowledge is all I have. So I am asking you, please. Listen.”
Dante looked down at her hand on his arm.
The anger was still there. So was the suspicion, sharp and ready. But her openness kept him collected.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then Dante’s gaze lifted back to her face.
“So,” he said, voice rough. “What do I call you?”
She blinked, as if the question had reached somewhere deeper than memory.
“Trish,” she said at last. The name came slowly, carefully. “Trish feels… right.”
Dante exhaled through his nose.
He reached for her hand and eased it off his arm. Not gently, but not cruelly either.
“Alright, then.” His eyes stayed on hers. “Start from the beginning, Trish.”