Naturally, I do not own Hellsing, Devil May Cry or their characters. I stole them. Yes, stole them, and am now in possession of the two most unstoppable supernatural forces in existence. Me FTW!

A Twisted Mirror

Chapter 1

The rain was still coming down hard as Detective Paul Harper stepped out of the abandoned apartment complex on the outskirts of London. Three hours ago, the police had received a call reporting gunshots and explosions being heard from inside the building. The SAS had arrived on scene five minutes later, but it quickly became clear that whoever had been there was already gone. What they had left in their aftermath however, had been enough to make even several of the hardened SAS troopers sick to the stomach.

Harper stepped under awning of a tent the London Metropolitan Police had erected on site and tried to light a cigarette, hands shaking involuntarily. One of the officers, PC Fletcher, according to his badge, walked over to him, looking equally unsettled.

"You saw what it's like in there, right?" The constable asked. Harper gave a halting nod. "Jesus Christ," Fletcher continued, "I've never seen anything like it. All that blood… that writing on the walls, and those creepy piles of sand…" The officer paused again to swallow. "You have any idea what happened?"

Harper shook his head. "I don't even think I want to know."

"This case is a nightmare," Fletcher muttered. "Scotland Yard just told us that they're handing over jurisdiction. I though it might be Torchwood, but apparently it's something called the Hellsing Organisation that's taking over.

"Hellsing…?" Harper repeated. "I've never heard of them."

The constable shrugged. "Me neither. They'll be here soon. We've been ordered to wait for their instructions."

As they stood under the cover of the tent, the rain outside seemed only to get worse. Eventually, two sets of headlights emerged out of the gloom. The first vehicle was a silver Rolls Royce with blackened windows, the second was a large unmarked armoured truck.

The vehicles pulled to a halt, and the truck began to disgorge a troop of what looked like Special Forces soldiers. They wore full body armour and carried MP5 submachine-guns. Each had a logo embossed on the right breast of the armour – a shield divided into four black and red squares.

The passenger door of the Rolls opened and a woman climbed out. She had waist-length blonde hair, wore a long, dark-green coat, and her eyes were hidden behind a pair of tinted round-lens spectacles.

Another woman appeared out of the armoured truck after the last of the troopers. She wore a blue uniform, and had short, ginger hair, but it was her eyes that caught Harper's attention. Even through the rain, he could clearly see that they were red.

The detective watched as the first woman called out to the second.

"Seras."

"Yes M'am!" She answered, hurrying over.

"Secure the perimeter," The blonde woman ordered, "But tell your men not to go inside."

"Right, M'am." The one called Seras responded, turning to go.

"Have you seen Alucard?" The other woman asked.

"No." Seras shook her head. "But knowing him, that doesn't mean he's not here."

The ghost of a smile appeared on the blonde woman's lips. Finally, she nodded, and Seras hurried off to join the troops. The woman then walked into the tent where Harper and the constable were standing.

"Who's in charge here?" She enquired, taking a thin cigar from a case in her coat and lighting it.

Harper hesitated. He found her darkened glasses a bit disconcerting. Her eyes weren't visible through them, and he wondered how she could see out. "I guess I am," He eventually said, fumbling to get his police ID out. "I'm Detective Paul Harper."

"Integra Wingates Hellsing." She didn't offer any ID of her own. "Tell me the situation in there."

"Frankly, it's a mess," He told her. "Blood everywhere; on the floor, on the walls, even on the ceilings, but not a single body to be found. Then there's the writing on the walls, it's not any language I recognise, some sort of hieroglyphics. Weird shit, and if that wasn't weird enough, there's sand all over the place. It's like someone dumped half of Brighton beach in there."

"Is that all?" Integra asked, cigar smoke curling around her.

"Well, there's no sign of the assailants," Constable Fletcher added. "Plenty of shell casings, but other than that, nothing."

"Fine, I won't keep you any longer," Integra dismissed, walking away. Harper and Fletcher shared a knowing look, neither one of them was going to question the orders of a heavily-armed military organisation.

Integra stepped into the run-down building, the tip of her cigar the only point of light in the darkness. Seras followed her inside, carrying a torch. Vampires could see in the dark, but without any light at all, making out detail became difficult.

They were standing in the lobby of the structure. A staircase spiralled up to three floors above them. Rainwater was leaking down from a hole in roof, pattering noisily on the floor. The whole place stank of damp, rot and blood. A lot of blood. Seras had never smelled such a concentrated scent before, it was almost overwhelming, yet there was something wrong with it. It didn't smell like human blood at all.

As she panned the torch across the hallway, the reason for the smell became obvious. Not a single flat surface in the place remained that wasn't covered with bloodstains. The stairs had acted like a macabre cascade, blood from the upper floors dripping down them.

Scattered here and there, rising out of the blood like islands, were piles of grey sand. Each pile was quite dense, and clearly separate from the others, almost as if each had been a solid mass before disintegrating.

"What do you think, M'am?" Seras asked, scanning the torch over the sand. "Ghouls?"

Integra shook her head, annoyed. "Ghouls turn to dust, not sand. This is something else."

Seras squatted down and picked up one of the many shell casings that blanketed the floor. ".45 calibre." She held it to her nose and sniffed. "Nothing special about them, just ordinary rounds."

Integra was uninterested, instead she was intently studying a large gash in one of the walls. It looked as if it had been made by a blade, and it must have had considerable force behind it, because it had cut right through brick and into the next room.

Seras stood up and followed Integra through an open doorway. The door itself had been smashed off its hinges. The room they found themselves in had at one point been an apartment, but in its current state, it looked more like the asylum cell of a madman. Someone had scrawled all over the walls in blood, the language was unreadable, but due to the sheer amount written down, it seemed that person had something to say.

One symbol stood out from all the others, it was drawn larger than the rest, and didn't seem to be part of any sentence. It was a simple design – three dots, forming a triangle. It had been printed again and again, on every spare bit of wall.

"Alucard!" Integra called out, tired of waiting for him to show himself.

The darkness in the room seemed to thicken, then coalesce into a solid form. Alucard stepped out of the shadows, coat swirling around him. "You called, Master?"

Integra gave him a cold glare. "What took you so long?"

The vampire smiled, flashing his teeth. "I've been right here the whole time."

Seras would have smiled too, if not for Integra's disapproving look. Alucard seemed to have developed a twisted sense of humour recently, it was a refreshing change from his usual coldness, but she wondered what had brought it on.

"Alucard," Integra pointed impatiently to the writing on the walls, "Does this mean anything to you?"

Alucard barely gave the symbols a glance. "I can't read it. It's not any language from recorded history."

"This is… frustrating." Integra started pacing back and forth. "This isn't the work of vampires, yet it clearly wasn't done by human hands either. Damn it…" With that, she turned and walked away, leaving Alucard and Seras standing in the dark.

"Master, is something bothering her?" Seras asked. "She's been acting differently since the incident at the Tower of London."

"I believe she's having adjustment problems," Alucard stated, cryptically.

Seras frowned. "Adjustment problems…?"

"Never mind, police girl." And with that, he disappeared back into the darkness, leaving Seras on her own.

"No one ever explains anything to me…" Seras said to no one in particular. She sighed, and headed for the exit. The smell in this place was really starting to bother her.

Now off-duty, Detective Harper was sitting in his favourite pub, nursing a scotch. After leaving the crime scene, he had just wanted to have a quiet drink without any bothers, but his peace was being disturbed by three noisy Americans who were sitting in a booth near the wall. There were two women and a man, dressed ridiculously, as only Americans would be.

The first woman had long blonde hair and was clad in tight, black leather trousers and a corset with a lightning bolt-shaped split down the front. The second woman had short black hair and was wearing a white blouse, a short tartan skirt and most strikingly, bright red boots. However, it was the man who was turning the most heads in the pub. He was over 6ft tall, was wearing a long red leather coat, and had pure white hair.

They had been drinking, talking and arguing non-stop since Harper had walked in, and it didn't seem like they were planning to stop anytime soon. Currently, the man was complaining about the weather.

"Why does always have to rain in England?" He groaned. "I got up this morning, thinking 'it can't possibly rain for another whole day, can it?' and what do I get? Rain! I mean, come on! Can't the weather in this country be more original for once?"

"It doesn't always rain here," The leather-clad blonde told him, "There was a day this year when it was hotter here than in Spain."

"Heh, I woulda' liked to have seen that!" The man scoffed. "I think when this over, I might go and live in a desert."

"How are you going to get your beer and pizza then, stupid?" The black-haired woman asked him sarcastically.

Instead of answering back immediately, the man picked up his glass and downed the remaining half-pint, before waving it in the woman's face. "Your round, Lady."

"Fuck you." She retorted, sipping her own drink.

The man threw his arm around her shoulders, his other hand resting on her thigh, and slowly creeping higher. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" He whispered in her ear.

"Jerk." The woman replied, but she didn't look as if she was hating the attention entirely.

"Ahem!" The blonde coughed pointedly.

"Y'know Trish, there's always room for one more…" The man grinned.

The woman called Trish sighed. "Could you not do that in public, at least? This is England. People here are a little more reserved."

"Oh." A look of sincerity appeared on the man's face. He stood up and loudly addressed the other patrons. "My apologies, folks! Me and my eight inch hard-on will save it 'til we get back to the hotel."

The black-haired woman snorted with laughter, choking on her drink.

"Jesus Christ, Dante!" Trish growled, pulling him down by his sleeve. "Can't you just grow up?!"

"You know me, Trish," Dante shrugged. "I'm like a horny version of Peter Pan."

Over at the bar, Harper found himself wondering whether he could fabricate enough evidence to get them deported, though in the end, he gave up on the idea and just ordered another scotch.

To be continued…