"What the hell are you doing
here?" I hissed as I scrubbed at the remains of his wet kiss from my mouth.
He frowned.
"You shouldn't talk to me
like that."
I said nothing and straightened
my clothing, buying time for the uneasiness inside me to subside. It was very
slow to do so.
"I do not have time for
this," I said quietly. "I am in middle of an
investigation."
A corner of his mouth dipped
further down -- a sign of his displeasure that was bordering anger.
"You fucking run away from
me without a goddamn word how many fucking years ago...and this is all you've
got to say to me?"
"I've got nothing to say to you."
He rose from the
chair and cursed at me. He called me an ungrateful child he should
have left to die.
"I loved you - " he
said. "I loved you more than anything --"
"Shut up!"
"Why did you run
away?" His voice was calmer but his seething anger was still
there. "Why did you hide from me?"
"I don't know..." I said,
although I knew. I've always
known.
I have little memory of the day
mother and Vergil were murdered. The only vivid recollections of a single
scene that had been imprinted into my mind like a short film that ran over and
over again, when I think of their deaths. Demons with browned skin drawn
tightly over their bony frame feasted on the blood and innards of mother and
Vergil's bodies. They huddled over the bodies that had been split open and
washed with in dark red. Mother's long blonde hair was matted with pieces
of flesh and soaked with the blood. I could not see Vergil -- only the
hints of his right hand that had curled into a fist.
That was the first time I had
seen demons, although I have always known it existed. It was the most
terrible thing, to know those creatures and I shared bloodlines. Someday,
I would be like them, knelt over some dead thing and feed on them.
I crawled out of the small space
mother had pushed Vergil and I into, when the demons came. Vergil had gone
out after hearing mother's scream but made me promise to stay. And now, I
would meet their fate as I stared at the hunched backs of the demons and watched
one turn to look at me. His mouth dripped a piece of flesh and after he
swallowed, a smile formed on his thin lips.
He spoke in a language I didn't
understand and beckoned for others to look at me. I froze as I was, on my
hands and knees, staring at the hideous creatures without comprehension of what
was about to happen to me.
"Perhaps we should save this
one for tomorrow," one of them said, gesturing at me with a bone.
"Cook him slowly over a fire."
They laughed. The sounds
they made hurt my ears.
"Yes, it would be a shame to
eat him whole."
I stared at them dumbly, not even
frightened enough to attempt an escape.
"I think we should tether
him to a stake and eat him a little sliver at the time," another said as he
stood. The hard pads of his foot made tapping sounds as he walked toward
me. "Carve a little piece of him so we can hear how wonderfully he
scream as we eat."
The others cackled and
laughed. I finally willed myself to move, crawling backwards away as the
demon came closer -- the stench of death strong on him.
"No fear, little one --
" he said as he reached out. I scrambled backwards away faster but
the door was still two rooms away.
"We'll -- " He said but
didn't say another word. My clothes were suddenly wet with the cold demon
blood. I stared incoherently at the severed hand of the demon near my
foot.
Then the room was silent until
the demon howled out in pain and stumble backwards. Fear and realization
struck me then, as I gather my legs together and stood. I ran toward the
door but I didn't go very far.
I ran into someone's arms that
held to me, enclosing me in his cloak. His embrace was warm, nearly
familiar.
"Don't look," he said
to me as he held me closer.
The wet sounds of flesh being
torn from their bones were as loud as the demons' screams. I was trembling
so hard that I could barely stand.
"It's okay," I was told
when the room silenced. "It's over now."
I was swept up into the
stranger's arms with my head carefully pressed against his chest so I could not
see the carnage that was left in what was my home.
"Don't be scared," I
was told as the body that held me changed. It had been a demon that held
me in his arms. I wasn't scared. I was sad. The realization of
the loss came to me then, when I finally fully understood what it meant to lose
the only two person I had in this world. I cried as I was cradled against
the hard, broad chest and taken to flight. The night air cutting through
the cloak that had wrapped around me.
"Which one of the twins are
you?"
I didn't answer.
"My name is Cody," the
demon said softly. "I will take care of you."
The name was familiar but I
didn't know it.
"You may cry all you
like," Cody said. "But you have to be strong...because now, you
are the last Sparda."
Those words were meaningless to
me. It meant nothing to me then, and it didn't mean anything to me now.
We said nothing to each other for
awhile - staring at each other and waited for the other to speak. Finally,
he threw up his hands and gave me a smile. I didn't know how to read it.
"I can see that you are a
little...inebriated," he said. "I don't think it's good to talk
now. Words might come out wrong."
I drew in a breath and held it to
refrain myself from saying what I wanted to say.
"We will talk another day,"
he said and leaned forward to kiss me. I turned away and his mouth pressed
against my cheek instead. He made an indignant sound but he said
nothing. He embraced me again. I let him. I finally let out my
breath, when he walked past me and through the door.
I moved into a hotel next morning, even
though I knew Cody would find me again. The West Coast had always been his
territory. For nearly three days, Anderson had nothing to report.
Then on the early morning of the fourth day, he called for me to meet him by the
Wharf.
"Sorry about getting you up so
goddamn early," he said. He shoved a cup of coffee in a styrofoam cup
into my hand. "But I think you might wanna see this shit."
He led me through a cordon that had
been made from portable steel fences with the SFPD placards. Although it
was only seven in the morning, there's already a small group of tourists
gathered, straddling near the cordon and hope to grasp a glimpse of the police
activity behind it.
"Why did you leave the safe
house?"
I shrugged and took a sip of the
coffee. It was hot but it was terrible.
"No reason," I said and threw
the full cup of coffee into the first garbage bin we walked by.
He didn't say another word until we
came to the docks. On a gurney, there was a black body bag. A couple
of police officers with notepads and cameras stood near it, sipping their coffee
from the styrofoam cups.
"It's the smugglers,"
Anderson said as we came to the gurney. "The imbeciles that we'd set
free."
"Found one of them in the
water?"
"More like, we found parts of all
three of them," Anderson said and unzipped the bag. The putrid smell
of the rotted flesh and sewer-like smell of the water spilled out.
"They were all bundled in a
garbage bag and tossed into waters. From the decomposition - they might
have been floating around for at least a day."
Anderson slipped on a rubber glove and
used it to open the already torn garbage bag. In it were two male torsos,
an arm and a bloated head with an eye missing. On forehead of the head, a
third eye was crudely carved into it. On the torsos, there appeared to be
writing that I could not recognize, carved into the flesh that was made white
and soft by the water.
"What do you think?" Anderson
asked, touching the cuts on the torso gingerly. "Somehow, this was a
cult thing after all?"
I shook my head.
"Can you give me pictures of these
cuts?"
"They mean something to you?"
I shook my head again.
"But I think I might know someone
who may know."
He had lost count of the days.
He was only aware the passing of the time by the change in the color of the sky
he can see from the window. Most of the time, he was left alone. The growing pain deep inside his belly was the only thing that reminded him that
he was alive, existing in the surreal surrounding that was made of gray stone.
His captors slid through the bottom of the door trays of food and
dishes of water. He ignore them most of the time - laying on the cold
stone table wondering how much sooner will he die if he refused food and water.
The pain grew worse by day. He
had even clawed at his belly with his finger nails, hoping to cut into himself
and pull out the damned thing that was eating him alive from the inside.
His screams were often ignored or unheard. Once, he had
screamed so loudly that the door rattled and goatlings in human bodies came
in. Knives had been one of them.
"Get this fucking thing out of
me!" Dante screamed, clutching at his bloodied belly. His nails had cut thin
lines into his flesh but the wound had healed too quickly, only allowing the
cuts to bleed and nothing more.
"Don't --" Knives
whispered. "If you continue to hurt yourself, I cannot protect
you."
A growl came from the pit of Dante's
throat and he lunged forward, his fist was easily caught by Knives.
"You can endure it,"
Knives said, his voice low - nearly a whisper. "It will only be a few
more days."
"Fuck you..."
Knives tightened his fist on Dante's
hand until the bone made the slight cracking sound.
"I want to give Remus
his wish," Knives said softly. "Although I disagreed with his decision to make his heir with a
halfling."
"If you don't
kill me now," Dante said, a laugh working its way up from his throat as he
spoke. "I will come back and fucking kill all of you..."
Knives grimaced. His grip on
Dante's hand loosened.
"So be it."
I sent the pictures off to Tony
to be analyzed. I had a suspicion of what it was but I didn't have the
resources to match the writing. I returned to the hotel, nearly midnight
after drinking with Anderson and his staff. The desk clerk handed me a
non-descript white envelope when he handed me my room key.
"This came in through a messenger
service, sir," he said.
"Which one?"
"I don't know sir," he
said. "It came in before my shift."
I shoved the envelope into my pocket and didn't open it until I was
in my room with my coat and boots off and reclined back on the bed. I tore
it open from the end and shook out its content. It was a color flyer
folded into a flatten shape of a crane. I unraveled it. My heart
bottomed out for a moment when I read the name of the artist whose exhibit
the flyer was advertising.
Alphonse Alexander.
The human artist who had painted the picture that was being held in
the police warehouse. The flyer announced an one-day exhibit of
Alexander's
work in the grand ballroom in Hotel Nikko in two days. There were no
mention of names of the owners of the paintings being shown. I tossed the
paper onto the nightstand and decided to go to sleep instead of thinking what
the direct invitation of this art show meant. It didn't matter what it
meant. I just knew I need to be there.
They had moved him to another part
of the tower, although the chamber did not look any different. One of the
guards had raped him, he remembered numbly, after his wrists were secured to the
ledge of the stone table in the center of the room. He was raped as the
others watched. The pain was distant to him somehow, only feeling the
motion of the heavy body on top of him - grinding against his insides.
They had burned incense and opium in the braziers set in the corners. He
was grateful for it, although it made him mindless.
They kept him drugged and
chained. For how long, he did not know. The hours stretched into
what felt like months. Until a score of the hooded goatlings in human
forms filed into the room, forming circles around the table.
"It's time," one of them
said to him as a hand was laid on his belly.
Dante's eyes fluttered, the opium in
the air was stronger. His consciousness was slipping away quickly.
It came back quickly, when a pain that was nothing like the kind that had been
in his belly came. He was screaming, even before he realized why. He
lifted his head, panting hard to keep his bearing. A jeweled dagger was
driven to the hilt into his sternum. Dante threw his head back and
screamed louder, as the knife sliced downwards toward his navel. The cut
was made slow, deliberate. When it was completed, Dante was barely alive.
"Soon, all of this will be
over," the one who had bore the knife said to him.
He heard the knife clatter on the
ground and a hand with sharp nails move between the cut in his belly, working
in circles until it was wrist deep inside. Dante's chest rose, choking on
the blood that was rising from his stomach up toward his throat. He could
no longer breathe. He felt the pain in its full measure, but he could no
longer make a single sound. Thoughts of praying for death to come soon
filled his mind. Then as he felt his innards being pulled out in a quick
draw, he caught a glimpse of something pale and egg-shaped that had been wrapped
around his drawn-out intestines.
'I can't die yet....' he said
to himself in his mind. 'Not when a damn thing like that lived.'
Then he felt nothing. And he
welcomed it.
