Shared Blood

[madimpossibledreamer]

Like most of the plot (i.e. Ghosts in Ultraviolet) in this universe, I didn't expect this to happen.

Main Points:
Buffy/Devil May Cry/Resident Evil/Background NCIS Crossover (though this one is mostly DMC)
Chapter Summary: Lady brings something else Dante might want to look into.
Word Count: 1322
Rating: Teen

         It starts, as most things do, with Lady complaining to him about her latest job. Dante’s learned to try to tune her out, mostly because, well, she has a habit of roping him into her jobs and then not paying him. He kicks himself later for not cluing in that she’s more purposeful about trying to intrigue him than normal this time, but then, she’d been playing that game deliberately and she’s better than him at the social kind of stuff any day.
         “It’s not like you to admit a mark’s giving you a hard time,” he remarks, hands behind his head and feet on his desk (which all the ladies in his life like to lecture him about, but what’re they going to do, it’s his office).
         As expected, she glares at him. “Dante, I would outright pay you to deal with them instead. This Scarlet Order is a pain in my ass and I want them gone.”
         He hates to admit it, but this is the point at which he really starts paying attention, because she’s never, not once, given him that offer. An offer to share the profits, maybe.
         “But they’re just humans dabbling in the occult, right? I don’t do humans,” he counters cautiously, sure there has to be some kind of catch.
         She looks annoyed, probably having realized that he was tuning her out, but doesn’t scold him. Instead, she keeps on track. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. These creeps are collecting vampires, harvesting their blood, and drinking it, and they certainly didn’t feel human to me, so I doubt they stopped there.”
         He blinks. His knowledge of vampires is kind of limited, considering most have the sense to stay out of his way, but… “...Isn’t vamp blood just...repurposed human blood they’ve drunk from some poor sap?” Vergil’s the one that goes seeking more power, so maybe it’s just his lack of knowledge, but that doesn’t seem like it should have any effect.
         Lady shrugs, but she still looks frustrated. “You’d think, but they swear by it, and something they’re doing is making them stronger than a human. I’m not talking out my ass when I’m saying fighting them is like fighting a demon. Some of them might even give you a workout.”
         Idly, she tosses a book his way, and he catches it one-handed. Even if she’d given him no warning, he’s pretty good at grabbing stuff thrown at his head.
         He starts flipping idly through the book, and it’s pretty average cuckoo-occult stuff until he runs across a phrase that makes him sit up straight in alarm. “Lady, is Nero in danger?”
         She’s smirking at him in triumph, because she once again has managed to maneuver him into getting involved in something he didn’t want to get involved in (she might be human, but he has a huge respect for her ability to get things done, or he’d be more annoyed by it), before she quickly moves on to the point. “Last time I checked, no, and you should keep reading. I’ve read three distinct phrases related to your family in there, which is the whole reason I came to you in the first place, and if I thought he was in danger I would’ve started with that.”
         Dante doesn’t need to breathe as often as a human, but realizes abruptly that what he’s doing now isn’t enough and gasps in a breath.
         “The first is ‘Sons of Sparda’. I think you’ll agree with me that phrase is pretty clear.” Yeah, okay, but—
         “The second, that you read, is the ‘bastard Son of Sparda.’ Yeah, it could refer to Nero, but I don’t think it does, because there’s a third entry.” ...Huh. Wait. Does that mean his family is even bigger than he’d thought?
         “The third is ‘the blood of Sparda’. Which is what you told me Sanctus called Nero on the island. Combined that with notations about ‘an island’ and ‘working with one of the Sons of Sparda’, I’m pretty sure that’s how they refer to Nero.”
         When he’d found out about Nero, Dante hadn’t really been ready to learn he had more family, and he’d been...hopeful? Nervous? Excited? He’d done his best to play it cool, but at the time, at least, it’d only served to make his nephew write him off as an asshole. He doesn’t feel any more prepared now. Is it too late to be having a midlife crisis, given his human heritage, or is it too early on the devil’s side?
         He’s gotta cool down and use his head. He’s still no Vergil, but he’s gotten better at it, as time goes by.
         He’s given the old man all sorts of crap. Never worshiped the man’s feet, like Verg. But everything says he died shortly after running away to try to keep them safe, and he’s not inclined to disagree on that account. He still has a lot of deep-seated anger he hasn’t worked through, and he might not agree with Sparda’s decisions, and he might’ve even, when he was an angsty teen, doubted whether Sparda loved them at all, but these days he doesn’t question that. He might’ve been ridiculous about expressing it and made decisions that frankly just didn’t make sense when trying to protect his family (although that hits a lot closer to home, these days, than Dante would like), but he did love them.
         So, not a younger bro, bastard son. Sparda’s always been intrigued by humanity, only it wasn’t until Eva that he found an answer to the question of ‘why are humans like this’, and he’s not inclined to discount that explanation either, if only because his mom was awesome—
         But, wait. That might not have been the first time he’d attempted to ask it. The question had to have been nagging at the old man for literal millennia, and just because he hadn’t found a worthwhile answer at that time doesn’t mean that he might not have done the same thing as Vergil, years later.
         “Damn, Dad, you sure know how to pick ‘em,” he mutters, relaxing back even if he doesn’t just put his feet on the table again. So he might have an older bro, one who might not even know his heritage, or if he does, probably thinks they want him dead, because while Sparda probably wouldn’t have just killed his kid or the mother, might not have stepped in to keep them safe, either—hell, he might not even have remembered, because at that point the woman didn’t matter to him. Probably one that stayed on the run. He might be a little hostile at first, but that’s all right. So had Nero, and Dante had handled that one okay.
         “Anything about where he might be?” he asks, trying not to sound too eager and failing, probably, given the sympathetic look Lady’s giving him.
         “There was a notation about him being associated with something called ‘Slayers’, but they didn’t bother explaining what that meant and it’s ridiculously generic. Something else to keep in mind, though, Dante: while they’ve got pretty clear ‘stay away from the Sons of Sparda’ and ‘the blood of Sparda’ orders, they don’t have those about this ‘bastard Son of Sparda’. In fact, they’re hunting the guy, with orders to kill.” Lady’s smile is downright predatory. “So: you keep on the trail of this creepy cult, you might run into him sooner or later. Still want to pass on taking this job off my hands?”
         Her asking, he’s pretty sure, is just formal, at this point, because they both know the answer. Still, “...I wouldn’t mind the company of a beautiful lady on this one, though,” he tells her, and she shakes her head.
         “Fine, but I’m taking the next one off. I’ve had too much of these skin-crawling occultists.” She starts cleaning her guns as she waits for him to arm up.