Undertow : Part 6

    "What the fuck...?" Dante whispered as Remus nudged him into one of the rooms on the top floor of the club.  

    "Perhaps you feel a little safe now?" Remus said with a smile as he closed the door behind him.

    Dante found the room unsettling.  There were pictures and paintings of the angels with wings and demons with hooved feet spread out along the red walls. The vaulted ceiling were painted with naked cherubs flying through the blue sky, staring down at them.  In the four corners of the room stood eight-feet tall alabaster statues of the Archangels with their weapons raised and their wings spread.  The furniture were decidedly antique but plain and sparse.  A four-poster bed made from black iron at one side of the room.  The other side of the room had two high-back arm chairs and a small round oak table between them.  

    "I don't particular find this room interesting but I am only a visitor here," Remus said with a shrug.  He ran his hand along the stone wing of the Archangel Uriel.  "My human host seemed to think the existence of this room in this wretched building would somehow...curb the appetites of the demons that came through the portal below."

    Remus laughed and kissed the cheek of the statue.

    "It used to be a Cathedral here over a thousand years ago," Remus said.  "A grand Cathedral where the humans came to praise God and sang to him.  It held for centuries but after many fires that ravaged it, the humans decided to abandon it.  Surrender it to the fires that kept claiming it, instead of spending years mending the burnt building, only to have hell's fire destroy it again."

    Dante walked to one of the chairs and sat down.  He didn't want to but he felt his legs would give out on him soon.  The feeling of unclean and intimate hurt made it difficult for him to listen to Remus' words.

    "The human owner of this place made this room after he discovered the portal and learned what came through it.  A little sanctuary.  It did him no good, of course."

    "You said you would talk to me about Vergil," Dante interrupted.  

    "Of course," Remus said, the smile on his face remained.  "Dear dear brother that you have lost so tragically as a child then suddenly appeared right before you by some miracle."

    "Who is he?"

    "He..." Remus said, walking toward Dante in measured steps.  "Or rather, it is a Salamander."

    Dante felt his belly tighten in a knot.  He had known about that breed of demons from the Dark Book.  Like the goatlings, they were suppose to be made extinct centuries ago.

    "I am quite certain you knew about these mischievous demons," Remus said softly.  "The shape-changers.  Body snatchers."

    Remus bent down slightly to cup Dante's face in his hands.  The blue eyes looked up but they stared through him.

    "The shape-changers that can become anything you longed for.  Once you spread yourself open..." Remus whispered and kissed the slightly parted mouth.  "...they will just drive themselves deep inside.  Mentally fuck you until there's nothing left of you.  Until there's nothing but a pretty little carcass without a mind or a soul.  Then you would be bound to it for eternity."

    Another kiss.  Dante squeezed his eyes shut and shoved Remus away.

    "You're lying..."

    Remus laughed and straightened.

    "Am I? Have you had interesting dreams since your brother came back to your life?" Remus said and backed away.  He spread his arms open.  "I'll tell you what...I'll let you walk out of this place right now.  Go back to your dear brother and find out for yourself what he is."

    Dante's hands tightened on the arms of the chair.  The knot in his belly drew tighter.

    "You are letting me go?"

    "I have little doubt you will be back, precious," Remus said.  "Because you still need to know who orchestrated all of this, no?  I want you to go back and realize I had told you the truth."

    "You assume too much."

    "Not at all," Remus said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver key in the shape of the intertwined snakes.  He tossed it onto the table next to Dante.  It clatter on the polished surface.  "I just have a good understanding of you."

    "You know nothing about me."

    "Precious," Remus said.  "I didn't say I know anything about you.  Creatures like you are just...predicable.  So deliciously human."

    Remus nodded at the key.

    "Take the third floor elevator and slide it into the left panel.  It will bring you here," Remus said as he turned to walk toward the door.  "Be with your brother...say your good-byes."

    Remus opened the door, looking over his shoulder to Dante once more and smiled brilliantly.

    "Then come back to me." 

    Then he was gone.  Dante stared at the door that Remus had left ajar then glanced down at the silver key on the table beside him.

    "Salamander..." he whispered and picked up the key. "Sonvubitch..."

    His office was empty when he entered it.  Might as well, Dante reasoned as he walked up the stairs, taking off his jacket as he did so.  He still didn't know what to say or what to do.  It was rare that he didn't.  He flung the clothing into a pile and decided he should shower first.  He need to wash the filth that Remus had left on and in him.  

    After he stepped out of the hot shower that left his skin a shade of pink and red, he felt better.  He slipped into a terry-cloth bathrobe and went downstairs to his study.  It was not a room he went into often.  He felt a cold breeze rush out as soon as he opened the door.  Then came the crisp smell of the age of the things he had kept there.  He clicked on the light and glanced around the glass cabinets full of old, tattered books and memento he had kept.  Anything that gave him a piece of the past - no matter how trivial.  He had spent most of his life looking for anything about his demonic bloodline.  His father or the creatures that made his father.  Anything.  But with a room full of books and old things that he hadn't names for, he still didn't know much about himself or about his past.  He had hoped one day, he could turn over a yellowed page of the book and that would be everything he wanted to know.  That day had not come.

    Dante walked along the wall of shelves, a fine layer of dust clung onto the glass surface.  He hadn't been in that room for nearly a year.  He stopped at the last unit.  Carefully, he turned the antique handles and opened the glass door. Thick scent of the aged book that had been mildewed by air greeted him.  The shelf only sat one book. One tall black book with its cover nearly torn off. The pages inside were frayed and yellowed.  The Dark Book, Dante called it.  Those were the only words he could make out from its ruined black cover.  

    He took the book into his arm and walked it to the desk and laid it down.  The usual regret came to him when he opened the book, careful not to stress the fragile pages inside, that he could not read the language written inside easily.  What little he knew were self-taught or his distant memories of what his father taught him.  Never enough to learn what he needed to know.

   Dante slid into the leather chair and turned the page, one by one slowly.  Half an hour went by before he came to the page he had searched for.  

    Salamander.

    There were no pictures of the creature.  What was in the faded ink, Dante couldn't read. Except for the line that described the demon race being completely destroyed during the dark raid over two thousand years ago.  The same war that should have taken the goatling clan.  His fingers ran over the yellowed page.  He could feel frustration work its way up again and he felt like crumpling the paper in his fist just to watch it turn to dust.  He cursed again and pushed the book away from him, leaned back on the chair and stared at the wall.  

    He might have drifted off into a light sleep or he was simply not aware.  It took him a few seconds to register the smell of fresh leather and an arm slip around him neck.  A warm mouth kissed at his cheek and said his name.

    "What are you --" Vergil's voice faded.  Dante knew he had seen the page that was laid open on the desk.  He waited for Vergil's reaction to come first.  It did not come.  

    "Is it true?" Dante said finally.

    Vergil loosened his arm around Dante's neck and spun his chair around to look at him at eye level.

    "Does it matter?"

    A burst of anger came over Dante and he pushed Vergil away.

    "Get the fuck out of here now..."

    Vergil shook his head.

    "It's not that easy."

    "I should fucking kill you with my bare hands..."

    "You can't," Vergil said.  He straightened.  "Not because I have your brother or your father's face.  But because I have yours."

    "Shut up!"

    "Do you really know what a Salamander is?" Vergil said softly.  "What we really are?"

    "Shape-changers... " Dante said.

    "We are," Vergil said.  "We really have no true shape.  That is why you do not see a picture of one chronicled in that book.  We seek the dead and take their bodies.  Some called it reincarnation.  Some called it life after death.  The rebirth for the dead.  We take their memories and live them.  We can be the lover or brother or father or mother who never died.  In the Dark Raid, we were herded and used to give life back to the warring demons who had perished.  Let them be reborn so they can fight again.  Unlike the dead who receive us, we simply die when they died again."

    "You've taken Vergil's body and come back here to fuck with me?"

    Vergil laced his arms across his chest.  His blue eyes shined brilliantly.

    "It was given to me," Vergil said.  "I do not know by whom.  I do not question a gift, when it was given to me.  It took me ten years to understand the memory that was in my mind, and to find you to complete it."

    Dante felt his mouth go dry.  

    "You don't need me to complete anything.  Who sent you?"

    Vergil cocked his head, puzzled.

    "This is a gift for you as well," Vergil said softly.  "Do not question it."

    "A gift?"

    Vergil spread his arms, gesturing at the cabinets of books.

    "All of this old books stolen from the demons lairs would have meaning to you now," he said.  "You are a Sparda and deep inside you, you hold the secrets Sparda has.  The same secrets I have."

    "Are you mad?"

    Vergil walked closer to Dante again.  He bent down to look at Dante in his eyes - so close that their noses nearly touched.

    "You, like Vergil...and like hundreds of halfling children Sparda had spawned with human wives, were only mirrors of him.  You have inside you, his powers, his passions and his memories.  However, his memories did not unlock for you."

    Vergil stood upright.

    "Demons regenerate by making copies of themselves," Vergil said.  "Passing to the copies, their everything.  Halflings do lot live long because of the weaker human blood...but they still inherit the characteristics from the father.  You have never questioned why you and Vergil looked exactly like your father but took nothing from your mother?"

    Dante said nothing.  The world he knew had started to break into pieces beneath him.

    "You have a different name...but you are Sparda.  Your instincts are his instincts.  Do you not want to understand what drove you to do what you do?"

    "No..." Dante whispered.

    "Dante...really do not exist," Vergil said.  "Just as I do not exist.  Only Sparda does."

    "No," Dante said again.  

    "You bore arms and took fight against the demons...your own kind.  Do you know why? Revenge? That had been satisfied years ago when you destroyed Mundus. What drives you now?"

    "I am not a clone...." Dante said numbly.

    Vergil smiled.  

    "You would tell me that you are your own person?" Vergil laughed.  "No more than me, who crawls into the body of the dead.  We were all forced to take the memory that came with the wretched bodies and live the way they lived.  Here and now, I could not run away, even if I wanted to.  I am always compelled to do something that I do not understand or even feared.  I do not understand why I love some things and instantly hate another.  This, I am certain, was what you also lived with."

    "Shut up!" Dante screamed.  "Just get out of my house now!"

    Vergil's smile softened.

    "This is one of the things I am compelled to do, my dear brother," Vergil said.  "I cannot leave you, until I am dead."

    Dante stood up, his fists clenched at his sides.

    "You are not my brother," Dante said.

    Dante walked briskly past Vergil toward the door.  He wanted to be out of the house.  He wanted to be anywhere else but there.  Vergil caught Dante by his arm and held it.

    "Saying it won't make it any less true."

    "Let go - " Dante growled, trying to twist his arm from Vergil's grip.

    "It's about time I show you what you refuse to acknowledge," Vergil said and threw Dante down on the floor, then quickly held him between his knees before Dante could get up.  "The Sparda memory that's hiding deep deep inside you."

    "Get off me!"

    Vergil gathered Dante's wrists into his hands and pinned it over Dante's head.

    "Your father...rather, our father...was a selfish man," Vergil said.  "You know why he made his children with mortal women instead of with his own kind?"

    Dante stilled, half-exhausted from his struggles.

    "He was content with the thought that halflings like us will die long before he will.  The thought of his own death preceding our own was inconceivable to him.  We were toys to him.  Something he made with dozens of human wives he had in his time.  It was the most fascinating thing for him to see images of himself being born, then grew to be like him.  None of the halflings would ever be a threat to him.  Nor can we simply run away and as you think "to be our own persons".  Our human blood made sure of it.  Halflings like us also cannot breed.  Our demon blood suffocates anything human and too weak to sustain anything stronger."

    "If he lived with that ego, then he would not have allowed himself to die without an heir."

    "That was his ego, dear brother," Vergil said with a laugh.  "He could not bear his own legacy to be reborn without him.  If he cannot have it in his hands in that instant, then he does not want it.  The same kind of madness that made him think he could be a savior for the same humans he had been slaughtering only centuries before.  He was an irony."

    Dante shook his head.

    "I know you won't believe me.  You were the lucky one.  The one who had not had the memories splayed open in your mind.  You might have been the only Sparda that was truly free," Vergil said and leaned down to kiss him on the forehead.  "I also think you've been taken hard on the human blood inside you...and that sealed the memories you were meant to have."

    "Was that what you were trying to do to me? In my dreams?"

    Vergil kissed Dante on his mouth lightly.

    "You needed to know."

    "Why should I know?" Dante hissed.  "So I can be your companion?"

    "Partially," Vergil said.  He released Dante's wrists and moved down to cup Dante's face in his hands.  "But also, I know you've wanted it.  You've been searching for your identity all your life.  You want to know what motivated you.  What kind of blood ran in your veins. What kind of destinies were you made for... you can't find it, being trapped in the human body with the human blood.  And you can't find it alone."

    Dante was quiet, unmoved, even as Vergil kissed his mouth.  

    "I will find the answers for you...with you."

    The words were like sweet wine, smooth and intoxicating.  He had forgotten the anger that had been brewing inside him.  He had forgotten the hatred.  He forgot everything, as he wound his arms around Vergil's neck and sank into the kiss.  

End Part 6

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