Title: The Devils Cry Part 2
Category: Devil May Cry
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Devil May Cry and it’s characters and situations are the sole property of Capcom. I am making no money or profit off of this fanfiction and no copyright infringement is intended. On the other hand all original characters and situations are mine so please don’t run off with them without my knowledge or consent.
Summary: A year after the events in “The Devils Cry”, things in the Sparda family have calmed down, well, as much as possible with them at any rate. But when strange things start happening, including a reappearance of Alastair's dreams of the unknown castle, they realized that they still have a long way to go.
SPOILER WARNING!!!: Spoilers for all three Devil May Cry games.
( The Devils Cry Ch 2-2 )2.
They were coming for him. They were going to hurt him. He hung there, suspended from chains locked around his wrists, unable to get away, as they came into the room, carrying implements of torture. He closed his eyes and averted his head, not wanting to see what he knew was coming. He heard the clinking of knife blades, and the uncoiling of a long leather whip. He began to shake despite his attempts to hide his fear. “Open up your eyes, nephew.” came a mocking voice, making him sick with revulsion. He did not want to see him... He did not want to see him...
“Open your eyes, nephew.” the voice was no longer mocking. Now it was angry, and if he didn’t obey it, things would become much more painful for him.
I will not look at him.
I will not look at him.
I will NOT look at him.
“Open your eyes, NOW!” He didn’t want to look, he didn’t want to obey, but his eyelids began to open against his will. They cracked open and...
...Vergil Sparda sat straight up in bed, gasping in fear, his eyes clamped shut. He shakily ran his fingers through his gradually thickening hair, trying to bring the shivers that were wracking his still thin frame under control. He had to look around, he had to make sure that he was still in his brother’s house, not in the Underworld again, but he was too scared to open his eyes. Taking a deep breath, chastising himself for continuously giving into the fear every time a nightmare came, he warily opened his ice blue eyes and looked around. Seeing only his darkened bedroom, he opened his eyes the rest of the way and breathed a sigh of relief. He looked down at his hands, lying limply on the bed covers, and saw them shaking.
He clenched them into fists, angry with himself. It had been a year, an entire year, since he had escaped the Underworld with the help of the demon Zenedris Sarcesti, and he still was plagued by nightmares every night. It had long ago gotten to the point that he dreaded going to sleep, and he stayed up as late as possible, until he just couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer before surrendering to the inevitable. He had considered asking his godmother, Rachel Areceli - who in reality is actually Atalia Sarcesti, Zenedris Saracesti’s granddaughter - if there was anything she could give him, but she had already done so much for him, that he couldn’t bring himself to ask for more.
So he suffered through the insomnia, if one could call it that since he didn’t really have any trouble falling and staying asleep as long as he wasn’t dreaming. He had dark circles under his eyes as a result, and his health was only just barely improving. A year after he had gotten himself free of the demon world, he was in only slightly better shape than what he had been when the spell cast by the Sarcesti Matriarch had dumped him in the middle of his godmother’s living room. He was still thin, bordering on emaciated, and most of his strength had not returned, despite the removal of the power suppressing leather collar that he had worn around his neck for over two decades. Rachel had said that since he had worn it for so long that his powers may never be able to completely return, though she had been confident that they would be able to come back to some degree. Despite her confidence, he worried as it had been a year since the collar’s removal, and he had not felt any stirrings of power within his soul and body that signaled the return of his demon side. He feared that it was gone forever.
Swiping at a stray tear that suddenly decided to make an appearance, he glanced out the window and saw that it was nearly morning. A look at his clock confirmed this, showing the time as 6:02 AM. He would not be getting any more sleep. Though his brother, son, and niece were not morning people, he decided to go downstairs and start breakfast anyway. The smell of food would soon rouse them from their beds. Kicking the blankets away, he picked his robe up from the foot of the bed and put it on before leaving the room and going downstairs to the kitchen
Unlike his brother, Vergil did know how to cook, though he wasn’t sure where he had learned it from. He assumed that his mother had taught him, but he wasn’t sure. He got a pan of bacon going and set the hash browns to frying, then he started the coffee pot. A few minutes later, he poured himself a cup and took the hash browns out of the skillet. He had just started frying the eggs in the bacon grease when Dante staggered in, followed closely by Alastair, who was rubbing her eyes and yawning.
“What’s for breakfast?” Dante asked, flopping down into a chair at the table.
“Bacon, eggs, and hash browns from the smell of things.” the younger Vergil replied as he walked in.
Vergil had to correct himself. His brother and niece were not morning people. His son, on the other hand, was a morning person and always made his first appearance in the kitchen with his clothes neat and his hair brushed back and pulled into a tail. Alastair and Dante usually showed up with their clothes on backwards and their hair looking like something had nested in it overnight.
He watched as his son, whose appearance reminded him sharply of the demon lying in stasis in Lar’cincel, sat down at the table, snagged himself a piece of toast from the stack in the center, and opened the paper.
“Anything in the news today?” Alastair asked, taking the plate that her uncle handed her and flopping down into a chair.
“Nothing really,” her adopted brother answered, thumbing through the national news “There was a small earthquake in California. So far no deaths and only minor injuries and property damage reported. There was a train derailment in Ohio. Gas prices reached six dollars a gallon in Illinois.”
“That state has the highest gas prices in the country.” Dante remarked, diving into his food. Vergil nodded in agreement, flipping to the international news.
“Oh, get a load of this.” he said, laying the newspaper out flat on the table so everyone else could read it “An entire village in the Swiss Alps was destroyed recently. Locals from other villages went to investigate after no one had heard from the other village in over a week. The party found the entire population of the village slaughtered and all of the buildings burned. Autopsies on the roughly two hundred bodies suggested that wild animals were responsible, yet this conclusion was disputed by many locals who insisted that animals were not capable of the level of damage done to the bodies. What’s more, they insisted that whatever had done this had to have been larger than any of the animals in the area.”
Vergil looked up to see his dad, father, and sister looking at him. As if following some secret signal, they each looked at the person to their left, then the person to their right, and then back to the center of the table, where the paper was lying.
“Wild animals would have eaten the bodies, not just torn them up and left.” Alastair pointed out “Not unless they were sick.”
“There is no way that it could be possible for a group of sick wild animals, not even a large group, to take out a large village, down to every last man, woman, and child.” he added.
“Those kinds of people, living on the edges of civilization like that, know the work of animals when they see it.” Dante said, taking a bite of his eggs. Just the way he liked them. It puzzled him how his brother could remember the small things like that, but not the big things, like their parents for example.
The elder Vergil nodded, saying nothing. He preferred to keep himself separate from the rest of the family’s devil hunting. His nerves for that kind of thing had long been destroyed, that and he had this fear of being recaptured and being taken back to the Underworld. Rachel had strengthened wards on the house that kept demons away, and he preferred to stay safely within the barrier, well away from any of Mundus’ little followers. It was bad enough that they haunted him in his dreams; he didn’t want to experience them during his waking hours as well.
A hand came down on his shoulder, making him nearly jump out of his chair in surprise. His heartbeat raced, and his breathing became fast and shallow as he felt the beginnings of a panic attack. He was safe, he tried to tell himself. He was safe. He was in his brother’s house, not the Underworld. More hands touched him, driving him wild with fear. He heard voices speaking to him, but he couldn’t understand what they were saying.
Don’t touch me!
Lashing out at one of the demons, he felt his fist connect solidly with a body before he realized the mistake he had made. They were going to hurt him for that. He curled up in a ball in the chair, trying to shield his body as best as he could from the blows that were going to start raining down on his any second.
Don’t hurt me...
The room began to spin, and he fell out of the chair and landed on the hard ground.
“Vergil!” Only one demon called him by his name, and if Luxian was coming... Falling back on old habits, he willed himself into unconsciousness. Things would be less painful that way. If he was quick, he would be out by the time Luxian arrived.
Vergil, Dante, and Alastair looked down at the unconscious form on the kitchen floor.
“All I did was touch his shoulder.” Dante said weakly “I keep forgetting that he doesn’t like being touched.”
“His panic attacks seem to be getting worse.” Alastair said “There has got to be something we can do about them.” Vergil knelt down and gathered his father into his arms.
“Why don’t you call Rachel, and see if there is anything that she can do?” he said, standing and holding his father securely “I’m going to put him to bed.”
Dante nodded, while Alastair reached for the phone.
******
Hours later, Vergil was sitting quietly by his father’s bed, watching the half demon sleep. Rachel had come by and forced him to drink some of that herbal tea that she had once used to keep him, the younger Vergil, unconscious while Mundus was sending all of those nightmares. She had said that he would sleep for about ten hours or so, then proceeded to lecture them all for not telling her how bad things had become for the elder Vergil. His lack of sleep was hampering his recovery, and it should have been taken care of long before. She did tell them however that they were just normal nightmares, not Mundus induced visions. She had left them with more of the herbs and instructions on how to make the tea. She warned them not to give him too much since he would build up a tolerance for it fairly quick. It was to serve only as a quick fix until she could find something a little more permanent. They had to let his body heal, then they could deal with the nightmares.
To the younger Vergil, the scent of the tea invoked some strong memories, namely of half remembered visions and seeing his father for the first time in conscious memory in one of them. He could really remember much from his first few years, though he was a little glad that that was so. He wished that he couldn’t remember any of it. He could remember a tall demon with shoulder length white hair and eyes that showed no emotion. He remembered a tower with many rooms and an enormous library, as well as another demon with long, long white hair lying cold and still on a bed. He remembered that he had screamed in horror, thinking that the demon was dead, and he also remembered the whipping that he had gotten for going into that room. The demon with the shorter hair had terrified him, and his time there had not been nice. After his dad had taken him in and adopted him, it took him months to settle down and relax. He hadn’t know how to behave, what being a child entailed. It was Alastair’s constantly dragging him off on whatever adventure that she was pursuing that finally loosened him up. But even then, he woke up screaming at least one night a week, seeing the demon’s face in his dreams, up until the age of eight. Only then did the memories fade enough to allow him some peace.
He glanced over at his father’s sleeping form. The elder Vergil was in a deep sleep, his chest rising and falling evenly, the lines of worry and pain that normally creased his face absent. From what little he had spoke of from his time in the Underworld, the vaguely remembered demon from the younger Vergil’s childhood nightmares had been the one mainly responsible for the elder’s imprisonment and torture. No, he couldn’t blame his father for refusing to speak about things. It had been seventeen years since he, himself had seen the Underworld, and he still refused to speak of it.
The door creaked open, and Dante stepped in.
“Is he still asleep?” he asked quietly.
Vergil nodded. “He’ll be out for a while.” he replied. Dante looked in the cup that his adopted son was holding in his hand and nodded.
“I remember that stuff. It kept you nice and quiet for about three hours at a stretch.”
Vergil smiled wryly. “You sound like it was a bad thing when I was awake.”
Dante didn’t smile. “It was a bad thing,” he said “and not pleasant to watch. We were afraid that you would permanently lose your voice from all of the screaming. I don’t know how your father -” He glanced over at his sleeping brother. “ - managed to break the connection between you and Mundus, but I am so glad that he did. He saved your sanity, and very likely your life as well.”
“Remember though, that he blocked the connection, he didn’t break it.”
“No, to break it, he’ll have to face and fight Mundus.”
“And win.”
“Which he is no shape to do, mentally or physically.”
“No.” Vergil hung his head, staring at the floor for a moment, before looking back up at his dad. “Would it be too much for us to ask for a break for this family? Seems like ever since Grandpa told Mundus to kiss off, no one carrying this surname has had a moment of peace.”
Dante grinned. “Well, not all of us.” Vergil looked up at his dad sharply.
“What the hell does that mean?” he demanded, his eyes narrowing in a perfect imitation of his father.
Dante grinned again. “Apparently, there is a German family that goes by the name of Sparda. There’s a bank too.”
“Are they related to us?”
“I don’t think so. Mom said something I think that they took the name to honor Dad or something like that. The bank was named that for the same reasons I believe. Dad would never say one way or another. I’ve had a suspicion for the longest time that he was the secret family guardian to them.”
“Like his was to the Redgrave family?”
“Exactly.”
“I wonder if it is normal for a demon to sort of adopt and protect a human family like that?”
Dante chuckled. “No not normal for demons, but I did hear of a vampire that did that once.”
“A vampire? So they
do exist?”
“Of course they do.”
“Then why haven’t I ever seen one?”
“Because vampires and demons traditionally don’t get along, and they try to avoid us, but Dad met this vampire that had bound himself to a family of vampire hunters to settle a debt that he had with them. Apparently he and Dad became somewhat friends.”
“Certainly an interesting thought, and hey! Can we send some of this their way? To, you know the other Spardas, to take some of the pressure off of us?”
Dante laughed. “No, I don’t think that they would appreciate it. Besides that Sparda family is all human. They wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“Damn! Too bad, I could use a vacation.”
“Tell you what, once we’ve gotten your father straightened out, we’ll all go on an extended vacation.”
“Let’s go to Hawaii or something.”
Dante smiled again. “You got it. Alastair and I are going to work now. Will you be alright with him?”
“I took care of him when he was too sick to get out of bed. I think I can handle him just fine.” Vergil waved him off. “Go on, be careful, pick up a pizza on your way home later. Better yet, make that two pizzas, with salad and breadsticks. I’m going to be hungry later.”
“From the size of that order, I would say so." Dante paused by the door and looked at his adopted son. "Be safe, Vergil.”
“I’ll be fine, Dad. Now go on, before Alastair becomes impatient and drags you off by your hair again.”
Dante rolled his eyes. “Don’t remind me. Later.”
“Later.”
With one last look at his sleeping brother, Dante walked out of the room to join his daughter.
Chapter 1 --
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