Originally posted to LJ May 20th, 2010.
They were right in her sights, those two limey brats that had been causing so much trouble. The girl was walking slightly behind the boy, and if she calculated just right she could kill both of them in a single shot. She aimed for the back of the girl's head, just to the left of her right ear…
And she was gone.
Rip lowered the barrel of her musket and found the boy was walking alone.
"Impossible!" she said under her breath.
"Sneaky girl, aren't you?"
Rip spun around at the voice in her ear and only managed to catch of glimpse of white gloves and red eyes before she was punched in the face. She went down hard, her head connecting with the tiled floor. She saw spots for a moment and heard footsteps coming toward her. She would not, could not die like this.
She scrambled to retrieve her gun, swinging the long barrel up just as a boot planted itself squarely on her chest. She pointed her gun at the girl's chest and pulled the trigger.
The girl did not fall. In fact, she smiled. Even with blood pouring from her chest, she smiled.
The girl stomped down on Rip, knocking the wind out of her. Rip gagged as she was taken by the throat, and when she opened her eyes it was not the face of a young girl she was looking into. She was staring into the smiling eyes of a madman. In his eyes she saw thousands of souls writhing, and in her head she could hear the screams.
"Monster!" she yelled as fear gripped her, and he laughed as punched her again.
She screamed and he threw her like a rag doll across the hall. She heard his footsteps coming closer, and closer, and her last thought before she lost consciousness was of him putting a bullet in her head with her own musket.
His eyes were a window into the depths of insanity, an abyss that she thought she would never again be forced to look into. He was a ghost from fifty years past, a bad memory, a nightmare. He was Zamiel come to drag Kaspar to Hell, the black huntsman who killed and devoured with a smile on his face, the only being that could catch the magic bullet.
"Why…." she choked, and Alucard's hold on her throat loosened ever so slightly. "Why did you let me live?"
He smirked, and she could see it so much more clearly now with her vampire's eyes. How many lives were there inside of him? She couldn't even begin to imagine the chaos of his mind, all of those familiar souls trapped together in the darkness within him as slaves to his will. But she knew this would not be like the last time they met. This time she would know firsthand just how deeply his madness went.
"Hunting the huntress is just too much fun. I'm almost sorry I won't have a chance to do it a third time," he said and twisted her musket, driving it deeper into her chest. It was the same spot were she had shot him over fifty years ago. "I have my orders, Rip Van Winkle."
The barrel ripped through her body and the metal hull behind her, pinning her to it. She coughed up a fountain of blood, and Alucard licked some of it from her lips before sinking his teeth into her throat.
There was pain, but there was also a sense of losing herself. She tried to resist, to pull herself up and out of the darkness that was creeping in, but her will was no match for his. Her soul was dragged down into the pit of madness with the rest of them.
