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It was a ghoulish task, but it was also a handsome payday. Otherwise, Vergil would not be caught dead out on such a cold night, lurking about the city morgue while Dante tried to jimmy the lock to an alley door, rarely used and cloaked in shadow.
Vergil sighed again and looked up as the clouds high above them lost their grip on the ghostly white moon. She was severely fat this night, totally full and almost frightfully close.
Dante stopped his work and huffed, throwing a glare over at his brother.
“You could help ya know,” he groused.
“You said we mustn’t use the Yamato, because the portal draws too much attention,” Vergil replied, not moving an inch. He was thinking, his eyes half lidded as he brought to mind the little bits of information he memorized. Wolf moon, snow moon, worm moon ..
“True,” Dante grunted, leaning all his weight down on the thin, flat metal tool he had brought with them. Something thunked, loud and metal, and he pulled the tool free, putting it in his back pocket. A few jiggles of the door handle, and it swung open with a creak. Vergil could see that the knob hung, broken in its setting. “There we go. C’mon, we don’t got a lot of time.”
Vergil hummed and followed.
Pink moon, flower moon, strawberry moon ..
Dante’s prattling cut him off.
“This is the city’s overflow morgue,” he explained. “They keep the warm stiffs over by the cop shop. The ones they need to put on ice, come here. And because it’s been around since the time of Moses, if you can tell from the wood paneling, there aren’t any security cameras. Who wants to look at Red Grave’s four day old dead?”
“So we have come to disrespect the dead?” Vergil said, voice soft and tone slightly lilting. “Ghoulish, little brother, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Har har,” Dante dead panned, rolling his eyes as he navigated them through the dark halls of the office level, finding the staircase down to the laboratory level. “Scared? I didn’t think you were squeamish?”
“You needn’t fear my stomach’s sureness,” Vergil chastised. “Rather .. I will admit curiosity here. Why are we breaking into the “over-flow” morgue in the middle of a Hunter’s Moon?”
The Hunter’s Moon. Yes, that was the name of the full moon of October. Vergil remembered mere moments before he spoke it.
Dante pushed open the double doors of the lab, and Vergil held back a shiver at the cold temperature.
His brother flipped on the lights, fluorescent bulbs coming to life with electronic buzzes and hums. Vergil’s eyes adjusted quickly, looking around.
The slab was likely behind another set of doors, at the far end of the room. There were two desks, opposite each other, covered with papers and files, an ancient looking computer on both of them. He imagined when they powered on, they sounded as loud as the lights.
Dante was already making his way across the room, checking the wall of brushed metal drawers, set into the wall itself. Vergil recognized it easily.
These were the coolers where the bodies were kept.
“We’re here to get some info,” Dante explained, plainly. He was reading the little card stuck on the front of each drawer. “I got a potential job, but before I say yes or no, I wanna know if this is the real deal or a wild goose chase.”
“Goose?” Vergil repeated, coming level with his brother, looking at the draw he settled on. Dante was strong, so pulling the body drawer out was nothing to him, though the metal made a ghastly sound, clanging and banging and screeching as it was pulled out all the way. Between him and his brother now was a kind of platform, and on that platform, was a white sheet, covering yet another something .
“A big goose,” Dante said, frankly. He wasn’t wearing his usual gloves, but rather ones that covered his whole hand, fingers and all. No traces of their presence, no clues left for the humans to get curious over. “With a lot of teeth, if I am to believe the client that came sobbin to Morrison.”
Vergil was impassive as Dante wrenched down the sheet, even as his little brother pulled a face, a deep cringe.
A human man, it seemed.
Or what was left of him.
His shoulders and head seemed alright, save for his color reminding Vergil of gray, mottled porridge. And from the hips down, he had two legs, two knees, two feet ..
It was his chest that seemed a bit out of order.
What was left of it.
Vergil had an image in his head, of someone using the edge of a cookie cuter and just .. taking this man’s entire left side, from armpit to hip, leaving his spine, some meat, but the organs of his left side were gone. The meat was a wrong color, too, much like his skin.
“Eyup,” Dante grunted, wrinkling his nose. The wound, Vergil realized upon closer inspection, was actually several midsized wounds. Not one mighty chomp, but more a prolonged gnawing .. Charming. “I think that settles it. Lucifer’s balls, I hate jobs like these.”
“What exactly am I looking at?” Vergil asked, raising an eyebrow at his brother, while he covered the corpse back up, slid Mr. No-Middle-Man back into the dark of the cooler.
“Werewolf,” Dante said, patting his hands. He sighed and looked very tired all of a sudden. “A hungry new one, too. I’d say a month, maybe two months into their usual cycles? What a pain .. Normally the packs will find stragglers like this, try to keep them company during their changes. But there are usually strays that cause damage and start to go after humans. That’s when they become pest animals and they call in hunters like me or Lady to deal with ‘em.”
“Ah,” Vergil said, enlightened. “Well. An interesting night out with you, baby brother. May we leave the very human government building we broke into now? I feel as if this venture would have been better served if you checked sources that carried less chance of us being caught.”
“Cold feet?” Dante teased, giving him a raised eyebrow.
“Cold everything,” Vergil replied, deadpan. “And I’m normally cold.”
“I could warm you up .. ?”
Vergil didn’t think anything of such a comment at first, perhaps a beat in time of a second or two, before he realized Dante’s meaning and scowled.
“You can’t be serious,” he hissed. “Here? Dante, this is a morgue.”
“And you’ve never wanted to live on the wild side?” Dante said, taking a step closer to Vergil. Vergil used the Yamato’s scabbard to push Dante away, admittedly, though, not too roughly.
“I promise you,” Vergil said, low and warning. “It has never once crossed my mind to fuck you in a morgue.”
“What about get fucked in a morgue?”
“Walk, Dante. That way.”
To his surprise, Dante was easily cowed, grinning like a fiend, his hands up. They left the morgue as they found it, broken back door and all. The newspapers would report on it, the coroners office would whine about high crime in their office’s area, but nothing would come of it.
.. Knowing there was a supposed werewolf on the loose influenced Vergil to shelf the idea of a walk home. He allowed Dante to lead them down a dark alley and then cut a portal using Yamato, depositing them out in the lobby of the shop. The difference in temperature made Vergil exhale, content. The shop was warm. A far cry from the morgue and the night air.
“I gotta call Morrison and confirm the job,” Dante said, walking around his desk, lifting the receiver to his ear. “What are you gonna do?”
“Retire,” Vergil replied, climbing the stairs as he spoke.
.. Well, mostly retire.
He ended up just sitting up in Dante’s bed, reading, changed into his pajamas, the quilt pulled up to his chest.
Dante took his sweet time to return to him.
“Job booked,” he grunted, sighing as he got undressed.
“Awwooo,” Vergil gave a mock little howl, not looking up from his book. Dante laughed and came to bed, crawling in beside his brother. It wasn’t long before Dante’s warm, rough hands were seeking to come under his night-shirt, searching for something as dangerous and scandalous as a werewolf’s victim. “Really? How could you be amorous after what we did this evening?”
“I really never took you for squeamish, babe,” Dante murmured, going to kiss his neck and shoulder. Vergil sighed, his eyes closing.
He knew he’d not finish reading that page tonight, so he marked his place as best he could, before Dante once again, got his way ..
It started as it usually did. Kisses and heavy petting. Their bodies were mirrors. Vergil could touch Dante where he knew Dante would like it, because Dante would touch Vergil where he knew Vergil would like it. They grew bolder as the touches continued, one would demure in their kisses as the other would start to bite.
How funny, actually .. That Dante, as he went to lay on Vergil, sank his teeth into the soft flesh of his neck. Vergil’s lips parted in a quiet breath, a gasp as Dante got a little rough.
Perhaps leaning into the game, Dante growled, sitting up to look Vergil the eyes, grinning with too many teeth.
“It’s a shame you wear so much blue,” he said, voice a low rumble in his chest.
“Why?” Vergil whispered back, hands on Dante’s broad shoulders.
“You’d make a yummy Red Riding Hood~”
That was all the preamble Dante gave.
Vergil found himself flipped onto his belly, gripping the pillow under his head. His knees propped his bottom half up, and Dante was making liberal use of it. He had been well prepared, a courtesy he thanked Dante for, the slick, warming lube keeping him from shivering in their loft bedroom. With what little wits he had left, as Dante fucked into him, Vergil wondered at his brothers dichotomy.
He could be both brutal and tender, often at the same time. His thrusts were purposeful and severe, but all the while, he lay kisses to Vergil’s spine.
Dante could bite, sure, but then he’d lathe the bruise with his tongue, soothing it from its sting.
Their coupling settled into a lazy sort of love-making, and Vergil turned his head on the pillow to face the window.
Still hanging, plump and bright within the sky, was the full moon, the Hunter’s Moon.
Vergil closed his eyes, breathing through parted lips as Dante rocked his hips into his ass.
He imagined, as Dante grunted and moaned along with his ministrations, he could hear a wolf howl, somewhere, out there..