Die Schachfiguren

by Herrmitts

It is sometimes hard to discern who is more monstrous the one by choice or the one by order. And sometimes harder to decide which is which. A young knight with bloodstained hands. An ageless vampire driven for perverse thrills. MangaBased WxR

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TITLE: DIE SCHACHFIGUREN
AUTHOR: The Talented Mr. Mitts
RATING: R
CONTENT: Violence, Adult Situations, Sexual Situations
GENRE: Action / Pseudo-Romance / Psychological
DISCLAIMER: Hellsing is owned by Kouta Hirano and Gonzo productions.

History has a funny habit of repeating itself, doesn't it?

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DIE SCHACHFIGUREN

Fri. 8th September 1944,
Belgium,
22:48 Zulu (GMT)
(23:48 Belgian Time)

Every few seconds the horizon lit up with a halcyon glow, a fiery hue that cut through the night's darkness. Then, as the light began to dim, there was the rumble, a deep bass rolling noise like thunder. From either side of him, the artillery continued to pound.

It had snowed the day before and lay thick on the ground, like a plush crème carpet, reaching almost up to his ankles. In the cold he waited for the next flash to illuminate the area before picking his next course of action.

Another thunderous rumble and then the pause he expected. His surroundings brightened.

Peeking over the stone wall, and in the dying embers of that split-second burst, he surveyed the scene. Forty, perhaps fifty, yards away was the farmhouse and another thirty yards beyond that the barn. Both of them seemed surprisingly untouched considering the last week or so. More interesting to him, however, were the two SS men in the shell crater that lay between the wall he was crouched behind and the house.

Neither had seen him. In fact, they seemed oblivious to the world. That was hardly surprising; he was well hidden, and so were they. In fact, he had only spotted them from the sudden glint of shell-fire that had reflected off their coal-scuttle helmets.

Distance? He sat back on his haunches and waited for the next brilliant flash.

Thirty-two yards. Give or take a foot. There was no one else as far as he could see, and that was understandable. Hardly enough German troops for the frontline without having them guard Sonderkommando-H's pets as well.

There would be no enjoyment here, he could tell. Humans made such weak kills.

He hopped over the wall and ran, his feet coming down softly on the hard-packed snow. The two soldiers were still sitting in their shell-made foxhole. The watch was looking in the wrong direction, his partner -wrapped in his rainproof Zeltbahn poncho- was asleep, a lit cigarette glowing between his teeth.

The sky lit up yet again as he was only halfway towards his goal, and it was just at that moment that the soldier on watch turned in his direction. He saw the surprise written across the SS-Mann's features... and from the look on the poor man's face he must have been lit up like a Christmas tree!

"Hans! Wachen Sie auf! HALT ODER ICH SCHIEßE!"

He kept running. His feet not bothering to keep quiet now as he picked up the pace, beginning to zigzag, to weave with his body weight from the left-to-right. And it was then he realised that it was not just two riflemen, as the pair dragged the cloth from the machinegun that rested on the lip of the crater and span it to face him.

The light vanished. The thunder growled.

Then the MG42 opened up. A roaring chatter of gunfire that rent apart both the darkness and the night's near silence. The first man swept the gun from side to side, his partner resting the belt of ammunition on his upturned palms, as if as Rosary Beads.

With a morose smile Walter whipped his hand through the air ahead of him, gossamer threads shimmering in the muzzle-flash. Spinning fragments of bullets exploded past him, shorn down their middles. Tiny metallic stars in the darkness. In the epicentre of their V-shaped wake he continued to run, his black gloved right hand flicking out again in a curve, the left one grabbing at what came back.

With a hiss of steam, and a sudden twang as the last bullet fired found it had nothing to travel down, the machinegun's barrel fell to the ground; as if someone had diced it like a carrot. Each ring, each cylindrical slice of metal, collapsed with dull crunches to the snow beneath it.

The loader was up and running, clambering from the crater, as his partner cursed his cowardice. And the Angel Of Death struck out again. In the pale glow of the artillery, silhouetted against the skyline, the loader's top half tumbled sideways. His legs took two more steps before following.

Now only a foot away the gunner stood up, eyes wide, bayonet clenched in one sweaty palm, preparing to thrust at his assailant. But Walter was faster; he flicked his hand at the wrist, feeling the coils wind around like a string knuckle-duster, and punched out. There was a sound like egg-shells being cracked, a grunt and the SS man's head snapped back with a spray of ichor. In the darkness Walter felt the warm spots hit his face, burning in the Belgian winter.

The crater smelled of cheap cigarettes and gun-oil and cordite and blood and sweat. He knelt in it, waiting for the lights in the farmhouse to turn on, waiting for a shout or some sign. There was no way that they could have misheard the noise.

Walter Cumm Ddollneazz grinned.

The war was coming to an end; he could feel it in his bones. Paris had been liberated. The newsreels showed the Soviets sweeping in from the East like some great red ink-blot, their tanks grinding the Germans down like wheat under a millstone. The Vaterland itself was within the Allies grasp now. Field-Marshall Montgomery had called it "The beginning of the end."

Oh, yes. This would be one most impressive finale. The Jerry's resuscitated casualties were always fun to play with.

He flexed his fingers in the night's chill, thankful for the great-coat he was wearing. His waistcoat and shirt were hardly what could be considered suitable apparel for such weather, especially considering the stark Belgian winter. The warrant officer badge and Hellsing crest sewn onto his jacket's arm rubbed painfully through the material of his over-coat and cotton shirt.

One of these days he'd have to find someone to teach him how to sew the damn things on properly.

The coils of filament wrapped taut around his palm pressed through his glove, digging lightly into his flesh. Britain was so boring nowadays; barely a handful of vampires a year. At a time when everyone was busy keeping an eye out for the strange, a heightened state of alert, it was only understandable that they should go to ground. But where was the enjoyment in that?

The excitement wasn't in the hunt. It was in the execution.

Alucard could enjoy himself seeking that great thrill of finding the one true opponent, but not he. No, no. There was nothing more wonderful than the crash of blood in one's ears, the adrenaline pounding through one's veins and then, only then, the shuddering finality of winning. To bring death to the dead; to destroy the destroyer; to take blood from those who take blood; to stalk the stalker; to terrorise terror... To see the fear in the dark, dark eyes of a vampire being baptised in its last death.

To be the bloody top of the food chain.

Nothing moved. The artillery batteries continued their tirade, and in their light Walter stood and waited, his breath condensing into nothing more than little white clouds. The snow, stained red, steamed lightly. And still nothing moved, just the tired flapping of his great coat and the dead SS-Mann's Zeltbahn in the breeze.

It was unimaginable. No alarms, no shouts, no cries, no gunshots. Not even the illumination of a candle, or even a light-bulb, from the farmhouse. Even more strange, there wasn't even the noises that usually came about from a Sonderkommando Hexen staging post. Ghouls were notoriously loud and their handlers were usually louder in their attempts to keep them quiet. Yet there was nothing.

He reached up and rubbed the blood from his face with the back of his hand. They should have smelled him by now. Or rather they should have smelled the thin coating of blood across his cheek and forehead.

Then he realised what it was that was so strange, that niggling worry in the back of his mind. There was something wrong here... the farmhouse, the barn, the regular patrols along the edge of no-man's land had all been correct. Of course, the machine-gun nest was something unexpected and -dare he say it?- interesting.

But...

"Oh bollocks," he muttered vehemently through half-clenched teeth. There were no trucks. There were meant to be at least two of them. Had they left for the night? Were they already out, crews pitch-forking the emaciated bodies of the fallen from the backs of the vehicles and herding them towards some unsuspecting battle-line? Or had they gone for good, pressing back towards Germany like the last two? Was this even an SKH post?

No trucks. He sighed a very long and drawn out sigh, his shoulders sagging as he did so. How embarrassing this would be, to return and explain that he had been too late to catch Jerry with his trousers flagging around his ankles. Damn Alucard and his tip-offs. It was obvious that his interrogations were far too brutal to relinquish anything of real value.

From far off in the distance, out across the rolling plains of fields, between the invisible banks of trees, he saw headlights blink and then disappear into the night. God, he could murder a cigarette. The packet in his great-coat felt reassuringly heavy, but he knew better than to light up on the battlefield.

He turned to look at the barn.

Unsanded, unpainted wood, tarnished and weathered from past seasons. Walter stood within the timber construct's centre and listened intently. It was a two level thing, the ground floor large enough to hold one of those tractor contraptions and a good few horses, or cows, or whatever it was that Belgian farmers kept in barns. He wasn't too sure. The first floor was the hay-loft, jutting out over a quarter of the barn's space some thirty feet up, reachable only by the crudely fashioned ladder propped against one of the walls. There was no breeze in here.

Someone had obviously been up to the loft at some point as a large red flag, swastika emblazed, had been unfurled and pinned from the wall at the back of the barn, opposite the door. It hung, creased and still, like some unmoving blemish against the shadows of planks. He wondered for a second whether he should climb up there and remove it, perhaps as a souvenir, but decided against it. He'd wasted enough time already.

Whereas outside the snow had built up into banks and drifts, in here the hay had fallen from the loft to gather and coalesce itself across the floor. By the corners of the room it had formed hills.

A heater had been set up under the hay-loft, pressed against the wall, its metal door shut tight so that the embers from the fire didn't set alight to the rest of the surroundings.

Compared to outside the barn felt like a furnace, and Walter felt the slow ache spread across his face from the pins-and-needles caused by the change in temperature.

Apart from that there was nothing. No trucks, no ghouls, no people. Just the even quieter pounding of the guns far off in the distance and the creaking of the old building's wooden frame in the cold.

He rubbed his hands together grimly. This had been a pointless endeavour. They had moved on and he had come out here for nothing. Perhaps next time he would attempt his own questi-

The flag on the wall fluttered slightly and his great coat shifted about his legs, almost imperceivably. A few stray strands of straw tumbled over his boots. Behind him the barn door slammed to.

"Wenn alle untreu werden,
So bleiben wir doch treu,
Daß immer noch auf Erden
Für euch ein Fähnlein sei."

He froze as the softly sung song drifted off into a quiet chuckle. "Ein Kleine Amerikaner." There was the rustle of fabric, audible above the crackling of the fire and the soft pounding of the guns in the distance, and then he heard the distinct click of a weapon being cocked.

Walter span around, weaving to his side and throwing out the coils of wire wound about his palm.

There was a squeal of metal on metal and the woman's musket jerked aside, thin slivers of steel and wood spitting from the length of its ornate barrel as his wires whipped across it. The woman's finger slipped on the trigger and the hammer crashed down, throwing out sparks and the roar of the shot disappeared under the thunder from outside. Without its aim the musket's ball gave him a wide berth, cutting through one of the hay-loft's wooden props and blowing timber across the floor.

"Verdammt," she said almost non-commitedly, and Walter stopped just long enough to size up the situation.

Bedecked in the uniform of the Waffen-SS, field green and yet somehow almost pristine even with the mud and snow outside, the woman stood in front of the barn door. The tightly sewn costume almost clung to her lithe form, and the angular cut of her face was accentuated even more so by the black hair that cascaded down the back of the Felduniform, a soft cloth cap of the SS Specialist perched atop it. Walter hadn't even realised they made Waffen-SS uniforms for women. Yet it was not that which caused him to stop, albeit momentarily.

She was standing legs apart and slightly off-balance from where he had knocked her, but it seemed as if she had already been bracing herself for the recoil of the weapon that she held in hand. A musket, the length of her, clenched in her hold, and even with his blow it could only have been in one hand when she aimed it at him. An impossible task for anyone to even lift, let alone fire like a pistol!

Her eyes looked at him, ice boring into his own and then she let her gaze slide up and down his front, investigating him even as he had done her. Her flesh was pale, even in the firelight, and then he recognised what she... IT... was.

"Vampire," he hissed, surprising himself.

"Natüralich," she said. And she smiled.

There was no way in Hell he was going to let her get the upper-hand for a second time. Walter swept ahead, quickly closing the ground between them, the woman turning to meet him as he did so. Her gun swung upwards to pass over his head where he ducked, the carved handle and trigger-guard brushing against his hair. And then she was jumping backwards. He stretched the steel-wires out, gripped and entwined around his fingers and thumbs.

The musket came back in a second arc, and there was a whip-like CRACK as the cords lashed around the barrel, biting grooves into the metal. The woman wrenched the weapon to her, dragging him with it. One of his wires gave a piano-like twang as it was plucked from his glove.

He careened towards her, dragged by his hands as his feet tried to slow the rest of him, heels digging into the dirt and hay of the barn's floor. The joints of his fingers blazed with pain.

And then he was in front of her, her face directly in front of his. She stared at him through the thin glass of the pince-nez spectacles, pale, hooded eyes almost fluorescent in her face, and her lips curled upwards in mocking amusement. Again he felt as though she was staring right through him and into the depths of his soul, as if he was held in an unbreakable gaze. Warmth flooded into his cheeks as they reddened and his pulse quickened, adrenaline tearing through him. Excitement tainted with combat terror and... something else.

The musket's butt swung around again.

Pain imploded in his cheek. It lanced upwards through his eye, like a bomb had exploded behind it, and carried down under his jaw. Both snapped shut at the force. Head twisted sideways, vertebra of the spine crashing against one another as his neck jerked from the blow, Walter felt himself flying through crimson. His wires unlatched themselves from the woman's weapon, the four strands flailing wildly where his arm pointed.

There was a great rending noise and the hay-loft prop nearest the barn door suddenly dropped a few feet from its usual standing, tipping forwards as it did so. The air fell heavy with straw.

A pure vampire! Through the haze of pain he tried to massage his thoughts into some semblance of understanding. Not just a pawn. This creature wasn't just a pawn. He had fought enough of them in England and in France and they had hardly lain a finger on him. Could it be this was one of the queens of Germany's little game? He opened his eyes.

He lay sprawled on the barn's floor, the itch of hay tickling at his face and the back of his neck. Sitting up carefully, preparing to roll away at the slightest hint of...

He stopped moving.

His left eye was blurred, like he was looking through the bottom of a milk-bottle, a dull throbbing ache running around the socket. Even so, he could still see well enough to feel the first pang of proper fear in his gut. The woman was blocking the barn door, a heavy lead musket ball clenched between incredibly sharp teeth in almost perverse enjoyment, her gun's barrel resting against her lower lip. She watched him for a long moment, then tipped her head forward. There was a deadened metallic clang, the sound of the shot dropping to the black-powder at the gun's base. Then the head lifted back up, stray curl of hair bobbing from the fringe that cut out under her cloth cap.

"I am the Huntress Rip Van Winkle. Are you prepared to die, Amerikaner?"

In one languid movement she swung the musket around. Her eyes scoped down its length, and Walter felt them moving up and down his front, relishing the line-up of the kill. Then her eyes narrowed, fixated upon a single spot on his body. He followed the gaze to the rank-badge on his arm.

"Nein." There was the click of the musket's hammer against its pan. "Ein Engländer."

Walter nodded. The pain in his cheek was dying now, however the blurriness of his eye remained. He reached up and touched just under it, pressing gently against the slight ridge of the eye-socket. Something shifted under his gloved finger-tips and a stab of fire caused him to grit his teeth.

"Amazing that you're still able to move, Engländer." She reached up with her free hand and brushed aside those few strands of hair that jutted out in front of her eyes. "Hardier than I imagined, for such a slip of a boy."

Stupid woman. Walter allowed himself a smirk. She thought that a simple vampire, no matter how thick that might run through her undead body, would be able to put down one of Hellsing's operatives? He pushed himself to his feet, coiling the remaining wires about his fist in preparation.

The woman, Rip Van Winkle, watched him stand, her jaw opening slightly in surprise. "So you want to continue, kleine Junge?"

"It would be a pleasure to kill you, Vampire." He swept the lengths of hay that clung to his great-coat's arms and shoulders to the floor, flicking a few imaginary pieces of dust from its drab khaki also, and let the wires in his hand follow them, to drag the ground in a parody of what he had seen in the cinema once. The cowboy letting his whip trail the dust, ready to snap out at a moment's notice.

"Wunderbar!" She threw back her head and laughed. Her chest heaved. "Oh, it's been too long. Oh, yes!" The gun wavered slightly, then went back to rest on her shoulder as she leant forward. The sleepy, half-lidded eyes burned with ferocious intent, peering over the small lenses of her glasses. "YES! Hurry! Hurry! Attack, Junge! Attack me! Hurry up and show me what you're made of! Schnell!"

How could he turn down such an invitation? With a cry he charged.

She picked the tri-legged milking-stool up from the floor under the collapsed hay-loft and, with slow deliberation, set it down in the middle of the barn. Her musket was held in the crook of her armpit, its inhuman weight supported with perfect ease. The black gloves in her hand made a heavy thwack each time she slapped them into the other hand's open palm. Walter watched her from the back of the barn, the corner of his mouth aching where she had punched him. His ribs felt bruised. Even so, he stood there as calmly as outwardly possible.

There was another thwack as the gloves came down on her soft flesh, then she split the pair, one in each hand. She tossed the one in her left hand towards the barn door. It bounced off the doorjamb to flop into the hay like some large, black spider. There it lay, the coils of wire still wrapped around it forcing the fingers to point upwards like legs.

Her eyes never moving to look at him, as if that were somehow beneath her, she sat down on the stool. The gun lay gently on her lap.

Long, flickering shadows ran the room.

Rip toyed with the glove idly, running her fingers along the embroided edge of the name-tag across its back. "A name I recognise, mein kleiner Soldat." She stared up at him, the thin face, the high cheek-bones, made harsher by the almost sneer. Her glasses' lenses caught the firelight. "That excuse of a Deutsche Doktor pawing to English nobles, as he Anglicises a perfectly acceptable Germanic name."

She grasped the musket across her knees and turned it to point vertically. The barrel gripped between her thighs. Her hands, one still holding the glove, resting on the butt which towered above her head. She watched from either side of the metal that seemed to bisect her face. "And why would someone want to do that, Engländer?"

"Perhaps," Walter hazarded, "he went off Germans."

The cold blue eyes watched him from behind the curl of black hair that poked out from under her Feldmütze. The metal skull badge pinned to it leered at him.

"Sehr komisch."

She grinned, a very hungry and amused smile, the incisors visible either side of the weapon. Her mouth opened slightly, pink tongue sliding out to rub carefully at her right canine, tapping at its sharpened point with delicate precision. Both glinted wetly in the light. "The Hellsing Organisation, so renowned for their adorable English wit."

Her arms dropped from the gun's stock, tossing the glove over her shoulder to join its partner at the front of the barn as they did so. The musket still clasped upright, she leant back on the milking stool, arms now gripping the seat. Her uniform tightened across her waist and breasts, the pockets on her chest pulling where they had been sewn so that the shape of her bosom pressed through the fabric.

"Do you know what the basis of any sort of power is, mein Soldat?" She stared down her nose at him.

Walter clenched his fists a little more tightly. The feeling of helplessness beginning to press down on him, more than just a worry at the back of his mind now, but a full torrent of fear crashing upon him. She had beaten him, and without his gloves he was naked. He couldn't do a blessed thing against her and it was obvious that she knew it, the toying bitch.

"No," he said finally.

The woman grinned her toothful grin and raised her left leg, curling it around the gun and resting the ankle of its boot on her other knee. "Power, Junge, is the ability to control. To bend and shape anything to your will. Triumph die Willenskraft, no?" Her tongue darted out to lick at her lips, moistening them.

"You had power when you entered here and I now have that power." She sat forward again, one hand pressing the gun aside at angle so that he could see her unconstrained by the barrel, the other hand held out languidly, the palm raised, pointing at him. Almost intimidatingly so. "You stripped your armament all too quickly, you subservient limey. Five minutes? You classify five minutes as combat? You could have tried again. Yet you threw away your weapon and surrendered to me, and now you stand there pretending to be a soldier?"

Her freckles glowed on the pale flesh under her eyes as she looked over her pince-nez spectacles. "Mitleiderregend Narr."

She stood from her seat. "Do you realise how many of your human kin I have killed, Junge? In Stalingrad and the outskirts of Moscow my warhead shredded dozens of Boleshevik filth at a time. Slav-piloted flying machines collapsed under my sights. In Cherbourg I feasted upon the still breathing remnants of your Canadian allies, and in Italy I tore Commandos apart with my bare hands and teeth. At Bourdeaux I laughed in the face of the U.S. Army. Amerikanisch blood is a disgusting mongrel travesty, and so I spilt it without having to taste its fetidity. I hunted them in the dark like the dogs they were and I struck terror into their hearts. Compared to that, removing you would be nothing." She gave a short sharp laugh, fangs displayed prominently, jutting down beyond her lips. "A Hellsing member, after all your hassle, would be a blessing. Turning that badge on your arm over to my superiors would make me a very... liked... girl.
"However, to shoot you would be a waste of good metal."

Walter waited, arms folded in a manner that he hoped gave across imperious contempt and hid his shaking.

She cocked her head. "You still stand there as if a King."

Uncrossing his arms and letting them drop to his sides, Walter spoke, trying to keep the casualness in his voice. "A knight of the Hellsing Household actually. Unlike you, pawn."

"Ein Bauer? Me?" Something flickered through her dead eyes. "Oh, this is so wonderful. So much fire..." The head righted again, and she reached up to cup her chin thoughtfully. Seeming to ponder for a moment. Then; "I want you to call me 'mistress'."

If he could have laughed, Walter would have done so. He blinked, left eye burning slightly. "Then you're sorely mistaken."

However, she wasn't listening. The musket tapped a rhythm against the button on her epaulette. "And we're going to sing a little song. You don't mind doing that, do you?"

"I am not."

The musket beat a metallic tattoo, uneasily loud above the gunfire from outside. "Das Lied Der Deutschen. I'm sure you know it, Schüler:"

"Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
über alles in der Welt,
wenn es stets zu Schutz und Trutze
brüderlich zusammenhält!"

First verse finished, Rip Van Winkle paused, waiting for him to repeat it. However, there was nothing. Even her own tinny backing-beat had stopped. Her fangs appeared yet again, however this time not in amusement. They bit down gently on her lower lip.

"Sing it."

"No."

Silence.

Even the battle roar from outside stopped in a most sudden manner. The vampire's eyebrows raised themselves in questioning. "Are you mistaking where you are, Warrant Officer? An NCO must listen to those who outrank him." She pressed a slender finger to the rank badge on her collar, to the three tiny white squares on a black cloth background. Under that fingertip, under the cloth and the uniform, was the point where a pulse should have beat, where on any normal person there should have been the subtle movement as the jugular squeezed life down to the heart. Against his own collar, Walter felt his own blood pound uncomfortably in his throat. The artillery picked up again outside.

Her lips pursed for a moment. "Do it."

He slid his hands into his pockets in his best an impression of nonchalant uncaring as he could, hoping to act like those callous yobbos on Brighton pier that he disliked so much. "I don't care to."

Rip gave a snort of mirth. "Such an iron will." She swung the weapon over both shoulders now. Pinioned between her arms and the back of her neck, like a beam of brass in the firelight. "I am going to teach you, Schüler," she said simply. "And as that is the case, I want you to call me your teacher."

"I don't know what the word for that is."

She rolled her eyes in what seemed to be feigned annoyance. "Lehrerin."

"I won't call you it."

"You will do." And the words came out, not as if it were a statement, but as if it were a fact of life. As plain and as unadorned in its truth as if she had said 'tomorrow morning, the sun will rise'; and Walter got the district impression that she might well be correct. But he'd be damned if he was going to give her that satisfaction.

"Tell me, Schüler," she was walking about now, gun still swung across her shoulders, "Are you scared? Does it make your blood run cold to know that you are trapped in here with me?" She paced to-and-fro across the breadth of the barn, the leather boots almost silent in the hay. "Does it frighten you that I can kill you without a thought?"

Walter's heart froze as the realisation of his predicament finally reaching him. The threat of death was not so terrifying... but rather, the threat of her being the killer. When a bullet was too much a waste, then what else could be used? And there was more than death if held in her embrace, especially for one such as him. Cold sweat rolled down the curve of his back, his shirt beginning to cling uncomfortably.

"I think you are." She stopped and looked at him. "But one can never be too sure. One can feign such things, just as well as hide them." Her head twitched at something. Like she had heard a sound, beyond the artillery, that only she could hear. The lips pressed into a barely visible line. "They are dying out there, Schüler. I can smell it from here. Moerbrugge is burning..."

Her steely gaze returned to him. "Death, Schüler. Fear of death is man's most primordial dread. The most tantalising of terrors. Schreck der Götter. One has only two methods by which to suppress it. The first lesson is to gain exterior-" She paused, searching for a word. "Hardness. To present a shield of command to those watching. Only then can internal strength be built up, fear of death being quashed under self-confidence."

Walter's leather elbow-straps creaked beneath his coat as he re-folded his arms. "Lessons on fear of death from a Prussian vampire? I'd have thought you surrendered any sort of humanity about that long ago."

"Ah, solch ein schneller Anfänger." She turned her back to him. "To know one's death is coming and still spit barbs. So Wagnerian. Everyone else who started such games broke down and wept for a quick death far more quickly than this, you realise. Those that could still speak, anyway." The gun across her shoulders was swung back down, to be leant upon. One finely manicured hand closed around the carved wood of the barrel's support. "You have learnt the first lesson, but could you even pretend to master the second, Kind?" The last word was spat out like a curse. With a flourish of hair she looked over her shoulder at him. The white flash-reflection of light on her spectacles hid her eyes. "You want to play games? I will play your games, Schüler. But I'll show you ways of playing them that you couldn't even imagine."

There was a grim pause for thought as Walter thought that over. Games? The knot of fear in his stomach was loosening now, understanding beginning to illuminate within his mind. She had the upper-hand. She could kill him with barely a thought. She had said so. Yet there was no enjoyment in that. She had proved so. But what did it mean? He wracked his brain, trying to comprehend, yet knowing the answer was so close.
She wanted to break him.

He blinked away the pain that was welling up again in his eye and looked at her. She was still turned away from him, almost as if waiting for a comment. The aim of the game is not to win, but to savour the challenge. She was tempting providence... and for some reason he suddenly thought of Alucard. But there the similarities ended. The hunter did not want a foe. The hunter wanted prey.

"A fixed game? How obviously German." He sniffed derisively. The first move. "I doubt you'd have the skill."

There was a long, drawn out sigh from the vampire before him. It was a perfectly calculated move from something that no longer needed to breathe, the sharp intake of air and the slow exhalation prepared from the moment she had turned her back on him. Then she walked forward, to the jamb of the barn's doors. She propped her musket against it and turned back to him.

Rip Van Winkle sat back down on her stool and crossed her legs demurely, hands resting gently on her knee as she leant forward to give him a bland look. "You are going to die, Schüler. No matter how much you amuse me, you will die before the night is out. Would you like me to explain how?" She smiled an insultingly polite smile. "You have no problem being called Schüler, do you?"

"A name is as good as any other." He stood impassively, trying to stay poker-faced.

The vampire clapped. "Wonderfully put. Understanding beyond one's years." The skin under her eyes crinkled appreciatively as she smiled, the two tiny points of her fangs poking from behind pale pink lips.

"A name is simply a handle. Isn't it, Bauer?"

The clapping slowed and stopped. "And why would I be that?"

"Many reasons. Why would someone want to be a servant to a system of insanity, which is already losing its grip on something it took only five years ago? Or perhaps why someone would surrender themselves to their own fear of mortality and embrace the bondage of vampirism? The only answer would be that the person is already seeking to be controlled-"

"Power is never given, Schüler. It is taken. You think that to surrender yourself is losing power?" The smile which had begun to fade from her face was resurfacing. "If that was the case; why would a boy want to surrender his life to an organisation that seeks to do the impossible?"

"Let's keep with my question, shall we?" Walter was feeling calmer now, the situation becoming more easily handled. "You say that surrendering yourself to a higher power doesn't mean that you surrender your own power. If that's the case, why did you say I lost my power by surrendering to you?"

"You surrendered yourself to me in body, but not in mind, simply because you were forced to. If you had done it in full you'd recognise you're going to die and you wouldn't be playing at this foolishness. You would surrender, you would die, I would leave. I surrendered everything by my own free will." She took off her Feldmütze and slid it between her backside and the wood of the stool. "I embraced it, Schüler. You pretended to surrender to save your skin."

"That means nothing. If I surrender to you, you would have killed me."

"You fear your death?"

"No." He sensed the trip-wires of her speech even as he said it. "Yes. Yes, I do fear my death. However, I accept that. Which, by your admission, means that I don't lose power from it."

"No. You have to want it. Not accept it." She gripped her hands as if in prayer, and rested her chin on them. "Acceptance means nothing, Schüler. All animals accept death. I grabbed it with both hands and walked away. Isn't that power? To fight one's fear and take it?"

"And working for the insane? Apart from, of course, the fact you are insane."

"Power joined does not destroy power... even if it keeps it reined and checked. The freedom of power can only be measured by those who control you. Without masters I would be nothing and, more importantly, they would be nothing. Power, Schüler! Otherwise why would you slave for your Hellsing?"

"For what I believe in."

"Loyalty? Meine Ehre Heißt Treue, Schüler. And obviously so is yours." She grinned. "Belief is power, otherwise what is willpower? Thoughts become deeds, nein? And if that is the case, one must surrender oneself to their thoughts to constitute a movement from subconscious to action. Power of the mind becomes power of reaction to stimulus. Only by surrendering to what is thrust upon us can we take power."

"So you're saying that to surrender in full, to want it fully, doesn't constitute a loss?" He scoffed and looked away.

"Take off your jacket," said Rip Van Winkle. Walter turned back to her. That smile on her face had widened. Widened to almost cover the entirety of her face, an enormous grin of enamel and ivory-white that was like some kind of grotesque shark. He took a faltering step backwards, pressing against the wall of the barn in sudden and unequivocal terror. "Take off your jacket," she said again, although he wasn't too sure if the voice had come from her or from inside his head.

He looked down at himself and tried to undo the buttons on his great-coat, his trembling fingers having difficulty pushing the heavy khaki-coloured plastic discs through their eyes. It took him a few tries to undo the last button, but eventually he finished, and without looking up he peeled off the garment and put it over his arm.

"Ausgezeichnet..." She chuckled.

Walter finally raised his head to look at her. The shark's grin had vanished, returned to that, delicate, single, tight-lipped line. "Do you want me to demonstrate the lesson further?" She reached down, loosening her boot-laces so that they were slack. Her hands worked at pulling the tight material a little further apart so that it would be easier to remove. She stood up, sliding the now trailing laces into the tongue slot. "My boots are dirty."

And Walter no longer felt any sort of strength or sense of control, simply a mixture of wonder and terror. Wasted. Like when the film ran out in a reel-projector and it span around on its pivot, still there, still running, but not being fed through the lens.

The shuffle of hay being ground beneath thick-soled boots grew louder as she drew towards him. And he dug up the last reserves of strength. "STAY BACK!" He took a step forwards, the coat-draped arm pointing at her, the entire act perhaps to try and catch her off guard, perhaps a foolish attempt at demonstrating strength, he didn't know. Her hand slapped his arm aside, his coat flying off towards the side of the barn and under the partially collapsed hay-loft. Pain shot through his wrist, first from the blow and then from the fingernails that dug into it. Her other hand grabbed at his tie's knot, gripping it in iron and threatening to choke him with the red silk.

"Stay back?" She had pulled him into her, so that her chin rested on his shoulder and her voice lilted in his ear. "Stay back? Is that all you can summon up?" Without the sound of her breathing, nothing held back the pounding of blood in his own head. It exploded all around him, his heart beating in his chest so fast that he was sure that he was going to have a stroke. "Do you fear me now?"

"No." Nothing more than a gasp.

"I want you to lick my boots clean." She let her hand slide down his tie, smoothing the fabric until the end where she let it go, to cup his chin and turn his face to look at her. Her eyes were soft, he thought. And beautiful and kind. He began to nod. Then he squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could. Vampiric tricks would not sap him... He repeated it in his head like a mantra.

"No," he whispered, "you have to say 'please'."

The vampire couldn't suppress the laughter that spilt out from between her lips. "Oh, you are an intolerable creature, Schüler. Bitte?"

"Danke." He smiled back, sarcastically. "But I'm not doing it."

"Ja." There was only her voice, resoundingly clear. "Yes. You are." The hand that was holding his face slid upwards, stroking his cheek. Her fingertips teased where they touched, finally coming to rest on top of his head. They ruffled his hair almost tenderly. He grunted as a booted foot kicked out at his shins, the hand on his head pressing down firmly, so that he fell forward to his knees. His unconstrained arm buckled as it took his weight, his other wrist screamed with pain as she continued to hold it above him. Now, head bent forward, on hand and knees, he was face-to-face with the calf-length leather boots of her, the SS officer. Die Jäger. The pressure on his head had vanished when he had collapsed, and now too did Rip's hold on his right hand.

"Are you going to be a good boy, Schüler?" The dark-green trousers tucked into the top of the boots refolded themselves into a new pattern of creases as she moved into a more comfortable position in which to stand. "It goes without saying that I have the strength to put this boot through your face if you try anything foolish."

Walter's brain ran through a hundred different things. A hundred different plans, a hundred different thoughts, a hundred different solutions to his situation. He thought about how he was going to kill her; he was going to trip her. Even a vampire had human balance when off-guard. He would trip her, and then he would get his gloves and get outside. That would even the odds. Then he would garrote her. Slowly...

He licked her boot, wetting the leathern. The taste of polish and hide brought him almost to gag as he dragged his tongue across its wrinkled top, and he stopped to spit a gob of brown to the floor next to it. The tang of boot-polish hung heavy at the back of his throat. Why did he do that? Another one of his lulling her into a false sense of security? He prayed it was.

The next lick was less caustic, the thick feeling and taste of the colouring having been removed the first time. The slow fuse of wrath burnt deep within him. And something else. Something that burned less fiercely, and far more slowly, but burnt nonetheless. And so it continued, his disgust hidden from her eyes.

She squatted, her knees jutting just above him. His chance. A single chink of light. If he were to stand sharply she would be forced over onto her back. Yes, in a second he would leap up, push her backwards. He scratched the tip of his tongue across the seam where the lace's patch joined the main bulk of the boot. With a single thrust of his hands...

"Schüler." He felt her hand touch the top of his head. "You are a good actor. But you are not good enough." He exhaled through his teeth, realising she had forced escape to slip through his fingers. Or had it been her? Rip's fingers scratched his head appreciatively, as you might pat a good dog. "There is something I know about you, mein Kleine Schüler, that will upset you. Do you want to know what that is?" Barely more than a whisper.

Closing his eyes, Walter took a few deep breaths, feeling the tightness in his chest beginning to subside. Oh God, he needed a cigarette. "Nothing you could say would cause me fear or upset." His eyes opened. "Because you know nothing about me."

"Oh. Really?" And he knew, rather than saw the grin that spread across her face.

His head jerked in a nod.

"Kiss my boot."

Walter stayed on his hands and knees, immobile. "I wouldn't give you any more pleasure if I don't get the chance of escaping because of it."

"Do you want to know what it is?" she whispered again, this time so close to his ear that he thought he could feel the cold emanating from her lips. Almost seductively said. The slow burning ignited.

Curiosity caught up with him. He reached forward, and he felt like he was parodying supplication as he did so, to press his lips to the mottled, dead flesh. Finished he lifted his head back up and looked down at his act.

"Jesus." A second blasphemy, the word spilling out as he stared: Against the now slick ochre there was the impression of his lips, wetter and darker than the rest of the leather that surrounded it. And mixed with the spittle, glowing in the fire-light, was the bright red of his blood. Where it had coated his lips from an unknown wound and bled when pressed against her foot. "No."

"Do you know how long I've been biting my tongue since we started, Schüler?" Her hands lifted his unsteady body, whose eyes were fixed on that bloodied point of her shoe in silent and all encompassing fear.

She was pinning him against the slats of the barn wall, her hands keeping his wrists pushed into his sides with inhuman strength. The rough planes of wood pushed through against his waist-coat, forcing against his sweat-slicked back. He was sure a large splinter was teasing at the base of his spine, poking painfully into the flesh. All it would take would be for her to press him back and that spike of wood would pierce his skin. However, there was no movement. Her body squeezed against his in froward abandon, she simply stood there keeping him fixed in his position.

She was actually rather tall, he noticed. It wasn't very often that he met a woman of his height. He quashed that thought mentally. Hardly the time to be thinking like that! He couldn't be done for yet, not while he was still breathing... not while the game continued. Then he wondered if she was still entertaining that 'game' or whether she had tired of it.

The chill from her body cut through where their bodies touched, which he had to admit, was practically everywhere. It was only now that he could appreciate her face, eyes level. The border-line between cute and beautiful. Strident and cruel. Hooded eyes, seeming as if to perpetually half-asleep, and the youthful sprinkle of freckles across the top of the cheeks seemed to emphasise the sharpness of the chin and the tight line of the mouth. A condescending, almost obscene, mockery of innocence.

Headsman masquerading as guiltlessness.

Her head craned forward, so that her hair tickled his nose, that long curled strand squashed against his chin. Then, very slowly, he felt the damp of her tongue run upwards along his neck. The rest of her body keeping perfectly still, she travelled up from the opening of his shirt, tracing his jugular with the tip of her tongue, tickling the flesh as she did so. She stopped as his pulse increased, her tongue resting on the point where his flesh beat most obviously. Her forehead, somehow not as cold, pressed forward to rest on his chin. Out of sight, he felt the tiny pin-pricks of teeth touching around the spot that her tongue had rested on, to surround it.

Walter held his breath, waiting for the moment when they would clamp down on his exposed neck, to cut through and let his life-blood stain the hay-swept floor. Another exploratory lick.

He shuddered.

The pressure on his chin disappeared as the vampire raised her head to look him square in the face. "There's an old saying," she said, "that only a virgin shivers at the touch of a woman when it's not cold." She grinned. "Unless of course, I am mistaking how cold it is in here, Schüler?"

Walter's lip curled at the corner. The anger welled up inside him. "A frigid bitch like yourself would cause anyone to shiver."

"Frigid?" Creases furrowed her brow for a moment. "Oh, die englisch Sprache is so ambiguous. Frostig or frigide?" She pouted in mock annoyance, relishing his inability to complain. "Well, it is not me who has problems with their sexuality." Head bent forward yet again.

This time, however, she did not lower herself to his neck. Rather her tongue arced out to dance across the flesh at the edge of his lip. The point, he realised, where he was cut. She had not ducked down so low that he couldn't see her face, however, and by looking down he could see it in its act. Her eyes were closed, like a baby's while suckling, the cheeks beginning to glow red. The feel of her tongue rubbed against his flesh was soothing, almost like a balm.

Somewhere, deep inside himself, he felt something begin to give. He could only liken it to an elastic band being stretched, continually growing weaker and thinner as it reached towards breaking point. Then just as suddenly he felt that band being loosened again, as her eyelids snapped open. His chest tightened in fear as her eyes suddenly whipped up to stare into his own. The blush had faded from her cheeks, which had flushed far paler than she had been before. "Mein Gott." She stood tall. "How wonderful. A Jungfrau." On the corner of her mouth, Walter spotted a single spot of blood -his blood- linger like a tiny ruby. He glowered at her.

"Forty-four years and three months," she said, the flush beginning to spread, the vampire equivalent of excitement, "since I have tasted such as that at its most fresh." She threw back her head, displaying her neck. Raven hair cascaded down her back and draped itself across her shoulders. "When your Doktor Van Helsing and his assistant caught me." She gripped him more tightly, pushing her head forward so that they nearly touched. "And held me down." The cold eyes gazed through him again, and Walter wondered for a moment whether she was reading his mind. Then he realised that she was looking past him, staring at something outside his own life-time. "The foolish boy cut himself on a splinter from his stake. A last drop before they buried me beneath the Dresden mausoleum." The eyes flickered yet again, and this time focused on him.

"Mein Schüler. A virgin." And now she pressed against him even tighter, her fingers' strength increasing around his wrists. "That changes everything, doesn't it?" An almost grin plucked at the thin lips. "I'm not too sure if I'm ready to sire my own thrall." Then, behind those permanently sleepy eyes, there was a look of sudden realisation. "Ah, so that's why you were so scared. Not the fear of death... but Untoten. Or perhaps that was your aim, eh?"

"My God, you're mad." The words rolled off his tongue before he knew what he was saying.

The vampire's face became deadly serious. "And what does God have to do with this? You think that he will protect you? He is dead."

"Nietzsche was wrong."

"Nietzsche was a better conversationalist than a philosopher." Rip Van Winkle bowed her head back down, to rest her chin on his shoulder yet again. "I am one of the Übermensch, Schüler. They say we bear the gift of Thule's legacy. Even if not, how can Hellsing hope to create extinct an entire history? By human hands?" She snorted. Her hair smelt of lemons. That was the only way to wash the smell of rotting flesh off one's body, Walter know. He'd used lemons as a shampoo before.

It smelt very nice.

He clenched his fists, trying to throw off the shackles of her hands and his own mind, but to no avail. "Do you know why Germany will win, in the end?" she asked quietly. "It's because the enlisted soldier has the name of God inscribed on his belt-buckle." He was sure her tongue teased at his earlobe for a moment, delicately so, but it might have been his imagination. "I scratched it off mine. Who would want to be watched in battle by someone who's betting against you?"

This time her tongue did dance across his skin, at the flesh of his ear and then working onto the side of his neck. "How old are you, Schüler? Twenty?"

He grimaced in silence. Her fingernails dug into the soft flesh of his wrists.. "Eighteen."

"And still a virgin?" She wrenched his arms upwards above his head, bringing them together so that she could grip both his wrists in one hand. The other reached down for her own neck, to pry at the dark green tie, to loosen its half-Windsor and tug it from the slack buttoned collar. Her undoing of the top button of her shirt was far easier than it had taken him to undo his coat. "And still a virgin." Not a question now, but a fact. "Is there a woman, Schüler? A girl, at home, in England, waiting?" Her tie slapped against the wall where she threw it, to snake into the hay. "Someone to fuck? Nein? Or are you waiting? Marriage, Schüler? Is that what you're waiting for? Marriage?"

She pulled back to stare at him straight in the face, sincerity written on her features. Softly now, the drop of blood on her lip still clinging; "Do you, Schüler?"

"No." A literal whisper.

"No one, Schüler?" Her forehead pressed against his, their noses barely a hair's breadth from touching. She wasn't as cold now, having nearly reached room-temperature, but it was still enough to allow the sensation, like that of a summer's breeze, to seep into his skull. "You give your soul for them, your Hellsing, and for what? To die on some wind-swept moor, in some country far from your home, for an impossible cause.
"You've killed ghouls, haven't you, Schüler? Is that why you stay pure?"

"No. It's not like that-" And he wanted to just shout out something, anything, that would end this... end it quickly.

'For God's sake, just kill me and get it over with!'

"To be trapped inside a corpse, mind broken but still living. For ever screaming, Schüler. Is it that fear which drives you? The fear of being without control? Hmmm?"

She waited for an answer that Walter knew would never come.

"Your silence speaks," she said finally. "Do you enjoy killing, Schüler?"

"What?" The sudden change of topic snapped him out of his silence. His heart felt like it was drumming as a Guardsman at the Trooping Of The Colour. Blurred. Unreal. The pain that coursed through his side and eye seemed like they were on another planet, far away and somehow inconsequential. Was she right? Was that why he hadn't bothered? Subconsciously he had wanted to be... "No." He shook his head, throwing aside the thoughts. "I don't enjoy killing."

"The Schützes' names were Hans Thalberg and Erik Rauschning from SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 2 of the 1st SS-Panzer Division 'Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler'. I have no personal interest in them besides their names, Schüler. However, their blood was more than worthy of the SS." Rip's lips twitched. "You smell of it, Schüler, all over you. Was it enjoyable?"

"I don't enjoy killing," he said again, the lie tasting worse than the boot-polish, which now was nothing but what seemed a bitter memory. "I kill because I have to," -a half truth- "not because of the need to feel all-powerful. You do it because you're just a... A monster." It sounded childish, he knew, but it was the only word that would come to him.

She reached out and pushed the fringe back from his eyes, staring intently at him. "You think I'm a monster, Schüler? Because I am a Vampir? Because I am inhuman?" The hand, almost pleasurable where it touched, continued to hold his hair from his forehead. "What does that make you, Junge, as a man who kills men for fun?" A scornful laugh. "And you call me a monster!"

He hawked loudly and spat. The gob hit her cheek with a watery smack.

She didn't flinch.

Slowly, the smile drifted off into impassivity, the eyes continuing to drill into his own. Her hand reached down, the index finger dabbing at the splotch and pulled away, her gaze moving to fix on the wet at the tip of that one pale finger. Then her thumb moved up to dapple against it slightly, so that it too was moistened. Both digits shined slickly.

Rip raised the hand, barely opening her mouth as the pad of her thumb slid in between the pale, pink lips. She glanced off thoughtfully, cheeks dimpling as she sucked. Walter, still locked in anger-laced fright, watched in silence. How any woman -anyone!- could even contemplate doing that was beyond sanity.

Finally she stopped, and, with provocative finality, swallowed. The thumb withdrew to be wiped against the top of her uniform, and she looked back at him. "Blood, tea and polish, mein Schüler. What more could I expect?"

A languid flick of the hair. "When you kill them, you don't even let them feel as if they're worth anything. Where is the dignity in your methods? At least I give them a chance for hope." Her hand reached toward him, index finger still outstretched. "They welcome it, Schüler. In the end, we all do." She smiled, not her usual sarcastic leer but a sympathetic one, and for once Walter couldn't tell whether the joke was on him or her.

Her thumb, still damp from her earlier performance, rubbed at the side of his mouth. It came away bloody. The pale skin heightening the difference in colour, making it look almost blindingly bright. Her finger returned to just in front of his mouth. "What you give is what you receive, Schüler."

"Piss off." He leant forward in his constraints, and now it was his gaze that was withering. "Even if I do it, it's not because I want to do it, it's through necessity. So you haven't won."

"Then do it or I'll kill you."

Inside his mind, Walter felt the real ire begin to stir; resentment and, above all, indignation. How could there be any chance against this, when she held all the cards? When she had all the time in the world to brow-beat, and he had nothing. Could he really have believed there was any means of 'winning'? He wasn't even sure if this... being was still playing; maybe she really was seeing how far he would last... or perhaps the enjoyment was simply from the fact that in a moment she'd reach out and unscrew his head at the neck. To die on the battlefield, but... Oh God, not like that... The only means would be to find a chink in her armour. An Achilles' Heel. He would act as he had to until he found it and then he would strike, and he would win.

He kept telling himself that, even as he opened his mouth.

Her finger was kept rigid throughout, so that initially he only took it to the first joint. She had pianist's fingers. And it came as no surprise when he thought about it, had to think about to draw his mind away from his own indiscretions. That sort of grace, the accent, the jibes, especially the looks, could only have come through blue-blood. She'd probably been just as pale before she died! That almost managed to raise a chuckle, would have done if it weren't for the sudden rush to reality as the finger was pushed in a bit harder.

"Come now, Schüler. I know you men expect a lot from a Fraulein's mouth, but you could at least put some effort into yours." She moved closer to him, so that her arm was bent, sandwiched between her front and his chest. He stared at her through eyes of willful retribution, and she returned that gaze, cocking her head as she did so. The knuckle stopped against his teeth.

Ice rested on his tongue.

The vampire waited, head still tilted. From far away, there was the sound of a massive explosion. The walls of the barn shook slightly, straw on the hay-loft drifting down from the force to cloud those remaining parts of the dirt floor that remained to be seen. When the shock-wave passed, Rip Van Winkle's head returned to its rightful position. "It is hard to tell who is dead in here," she said eventually. Something behind those words, perhaps the way they were said, seeming almost cryptic to Walter.

"Is this what Hellsing does to its soldiers, Schüler? Reduces them to shells?" The sliver of ice wriggled, moving in an arc across the nerves at the back of his tongue. He gagged, half-retching at the touch, as it shifted across the width of his throat. Freezing cold curled so that it reached down, past the rear-most point of his tongue, to stroke against the last spot before his mouth ended and his throat began. This time he did retch properly, his mouth opening involuntarily as he did so. Eyes, already watering through his left cheek's earlier pain, scrunched closed.

And then the inquisition stopped. The finger pulled back to the second joint, and Walter's wave of nausea passed. Her voice was in his ear. "You say that I can't win because you won't pray for death. That's because of what they've done. Think, Schüler... Think about that. Your Hellsing wanted to create a killer of killers; one who would not acknowledge their ferocity. Ja?"

Without waiting for an answer, she continued. "You are already dead, Schüler. Before and when and after I kill you."

Eyes still squeezed tight, Walter counted to three in his head. The nerves of his tongue danced with wondrous pain... yet completely unlike pain. This wasn't pleasurable, no matter what baser instincts said. He counted again, and as he did so the finger began to make tiny circular motions along the stippled muscle.

For a split-second he imagined bringing his teeth together... to snap down on that digit with all his strength. To sever it.

"Be careful, Schüler," Rip's voice returned, amused, "you wouldn't want to make me bleed now, would you?" And it was with that, Walter realised that he had pressed his teeth down a little more tightly. Her flesh, growing less cold by the moment, pressed against his lips.

The finger pulled away, the cold softness vanishing from his mouth. He clenched his teeth, preparation for a sudden return, then slowly opened his eyes. Rip Van Winkle was still pressed against him (the feeling had become so muted now, he realised, so normal, that he didn't notice it as anything unnatural), that innocently horrible face looking at him so sincerely that he was shaken internally by it. It was blank... perfectly blank. Not the slightest trace of satisfaction, nor amusement or enjoyment.

Her bloody thumb was rested with its back pressed against her cheek, so that he could see his own fluids spread across it. Then, clench-fisted, only the thumb standing tall, she pressed it against his lips which opened, barely, as she did so. He resisted the urge to splutter, still taken aback by this sudden and quite terrifying change in persona. The coppery tang and smell lingered on his teeth.

It pressed against her lips now. Bright-red, like lipstick, born against the pale thin lips. Except she didn't keep it there, rather her tongue darted out to wipe it off and also to clean away that single drop that had clung from before. The thumb was licked clean next. Only a single splash of colour, a line across the top lip, running diagonally and barely noticeable, still remained.

"Earlier I said that you would die, Schüler." Her hand was undoing his tie. "I asked if you wanted to know how. But now I give you a choice: in a casket or on your own two feet." The hand gave up with its task, having loosened it a little more than it was before, but still leaving it hanging around his neck. "Your tongue, please. Stick out your tongue."

It wasn't her usual statement of fact, or an order, but was simply said. Dead blue eyes, clouded in vapidity, protected behind thin glass, drilled into his own. Accept the fact, but don't do any more than that... the voice in Walter's head said, creeping terror already clutching, the absurdity of it all reaching him finally. He opened his mouth and poked his tongue out. As he did so, he was hit by a sudden image; of standing in an oak-adorned hospital office, sticking his tongue out to a bespectacled Obersturmführer Rip Van Winkle, who was bedecked in nurse's uniform. A stethoscope hanging around the starched, pale-blue collar. "Say 'ahhh', mein Schüler, and tell me where it hurts."

His shoulders ached from the tension of his constraint, and he was sure the blood wasn't flowing there properly. Except that didn't mean very much now, as she craned her head forward those last few inches between them and her hand reached around to grip the back of his neck in gentle, cold steel. Her teeth, white and shiny in the fire-light, grinned and then split. To clamp down on his outstretched tongue.

"What about here? Does it hurt here?"

The points of her incisors bit down gently into his flesh, digging gentle grooves. Her lips were so close to his own that he could feel practically feel them, but even so they didn't touch. Their noses did however, side-by-side. With tight control she brought the rest of her teeth down, to hold his tongue within her mouth. She was going to bite his tongue off. He saw that now.

Her teeth tightened and loosened alternately, one moment holding him like a vise and the next giving him almost enough room to pull away if he so wanted. Almost, but not quite enough. Her mouth was cold, not as cold as the rest of her had been before, but he made no move to explore this facet. Walter closed his eyes and waited for that decisive blow. The teeth shifted slightly, moving away from him... along the length of his tongue. Barely even recognisable to him, but he knew they were. An electric tingle as they cut a swathe through the saliva. Dragging along the flesh, not hard enough to cut, but to send messages of pleasure into his head. Impossible to ignore.

As the teeth reached the half-way mark her tongue came into play. It teased the tip of his own, freezing cold and causing him to shiver uncontrollably. Then it carried on to trace the underside, lapping gently at the lessening area under her control. Her teeth stopped moving, finishing to grip the last half-inch of his tongue as hers ended its ministrations and finished to lay atop it.

Walter, breath caught in his throat from the beginning, opened his eyes, realising that if she were going to bite off his tongue it probably wouldn't be at the moment. It was the queerest thing to see, he thought. To see someone, their teeth clamped onto your tongue, sharpened pearls holding it in inhuman strength, staring into your eyes from barely a few inches away, staying carefully affixed to the flickers and movements you make. He stared into her eyes for a long time. She was... No. Yes. She was a mad, vampire, Nazi killer. A travesty of humanity. A disgusting dead thing, masquerading as life. That hadn't had anything to do with the game, had it? How could it?

Flames reared inside him.

Her head pulled back, releasing his now taut muscle. Shifting it uncomfortably, he reeled it back in.

Rip Van Winkle's voice returned with biting sarcasm. "The fear of your death has made you fear yourself. And fear of Vampir has made you fear what you could be."

"Yes," he said. "I fear I would become a monster."

She still cradled his head within her hand, and now her fingers stroked the back of his neck. "You still call me a monster, Schüler. You base me on your own morality, your own Sittlichkeit. Only man can be a monster.
"Look about you at the world and you see what mankind can do. You've fought for it for four years, and longer, yet you do nothing. In fact you pursue it, you instigate it... You LIVE it. What is that motto?..." Her eyes shifted in thought. "Search and Destroy. Ja, Search and Destroy. An errand boy sent to kill errand boys. Such simple pleasures.
"And what can Hellsing offer you apart from that, mein Schüler? Short-term power and humanity, at the price of your death. Are you not already dead? Don't you wish to be who you should be rather than what you are told to be? I offer you death now and pure power for the price of that humanity... and what is the point of living in fear of the dark? Power joined does not destroy power... even if it keeps it reined and checked." The last part had been whispered as she bent forward, to hiss it at him in luxuriant, drawn-out syllables.

Walter managed a strangled laugh. "You're a pathetic No-Life-Queen, if ever there was one, if you think to get me to surrender by offering that. Do you really think I'd want to be a slave to you?"

"See, Schüler, you aren't worried about embracing it, you worry about being mine. There is no salvation in drawing this out; I will win and I will kill you. But it doesn't have to mean that you get nothing from it. I would not offer otherwise."

Half-embarrassed at her deduction, he snapped back. "Then why don't you just bleed me? Or does the vampire have blunt teeth?"

She shook her head methodically, like an actress, the coil of hair bouncing as she did so. "You know full well, Schüler, that it can only be of your own free-will." Her hand let go of his neck, to return to her face. With slow deliberation she held her open palm towards her mouth, bringing it up to her teeth. Hidden from Walter's view there was simply a noise, like tearing silk. The hand turned towards him. Four wide gouges, running from the third-finger-joints to the wrist traversed the chalk skin of her palm. They bled profusely, life running from them in thick, scarlet rivers.

Her hand was held out to him.

"Es ist nicht tot was ewig liegt, bis das der Tod die Zeit besiegt, Schüler."

This was all part of the game. There was no possible way she would offer him herself in such a manner. A vampire did not sire thralls lightly or without due course; their 'seed', as it were, was their power. Even so, she was holding it out to him right now. It trickled down her wrist, collecting into rivulets that stained the dark-green sleeve of her uniform to a pitch-black.

"Keine Bauer, keine Helsing Ritter... vielleicht ein König... ein Untotenkönig."

Of course, chastity was a virtue within the Hellsing Institute. Everyone knew the threat he faced, especially with ghouldom... and there had been those unfortunates who had become ghouls, even people that he had known. How many? Four... perhaps five. But never a vampire. Never a thrall.
And he had to ask himself, wasn't what all this had been in aid of? The final counter-measure had been born through fear, not only of death, but also of life?

"Sich beeilen, mein rätselhaft Haustier."

Hellsing wouldn't take him back. Would he be even given the chance to go back if he wanted to? Unlikely, at best. But would that all be for the worst? He had turned himself over to the Institute, to the King, to the country and he had gained nothing. Would never gain anything. Was being dead to the world at large -at Hellsing's beck and call- better or worse than being dead to the world literally?...

"Erkennen Sie Ihre Stärken. Entfernen Sie Ihre Schwächen."

He couldn't say.

"Nehmen Sie Es!"

He looked at her. That macabre beauty of death watched back, through the thin spectacle lenses perched on top of her nose. Why did a vampire need glasses when they had perfect vision? He mused on that. Her mouth, which had remained that perfect line throughout, dropped at each corner as she saw him look away, deep in thought.

And then it hit him like a thunder-bolt. For all the hate... for all the pain and the suffering and the lies... for all the fastidiousness and the evil... all because they were more human than human. Was evil something you are, or something you do?

"No," he said. Then again. "No."

The vampire's mouth twitched at the corner, ashen cheek rising so that one of those sleepy eyes seemed to close entirely. "Was?"

"No."

"Nein?" Her lips rose into a tightly-wound smile. "Is that your choice, Schüler, of your free-will?"

"Meine Ehre Heißt Treue," Walter said. He licked at his dry lips, and found them still to be caked in blood. He meant it, he was sure. And almost as he said it, he felt all the strength drain from him, as if that was the only thing that had been holding him up for so long. His arms and cheek burned with forgotten pain. Slowly, Walter raised his eyes proper. "I'm not going to turn my back on them. You want me to think I'm something I'm not, and I'm not going to give you that-"

Rip Van Winkle interrupted. "That what, Schüler? Satisfaction?" Her weeping hand clenched over, fingers digging into the red-slicked flesh. Blood seeped through the cracks of, staining the hay with red. Then, with deliberation she re-opened her hand. The blood still remained but the cuts had healed. "Zauber, nein?" Without thinking, she ran her palm down her trouser leg, leaving a great sticky-black streak. "I thought you interesting, Schüler. Now I see you for what you are; a little boy trying to play chess against a grand-master. Pushing the pieces about and thinking that because you're still alive you're winning. Now, I have played your game... let us play mine."

As if by some wild thought, she put her head back to his shoulder and rested it there.

Cold fingers plucked at his clothes. "I said I would break you and you will beg me to, in the end." Her hand was scrabbling at the buttons of his waistcoat, pushing the brass buttons through their holes, working her way down. As she did so, her chin pressed firmly to the interior of his shoulder, nuzzling at the side of his neck. "Stand on my boot. The right one."

Walter faltered, tried to move away from her, and pain rocketed through his arm as she twisted his wrist. The bones knotted against one another, giving a grind of protest. Teeth gritted, he raised his foot and brought it down hard on her boot. The silent gasp that left her mouth, a snatch of air that merely tickled his ear, was felt rather than heard. Driven by it, and as a second act of defiance, he ground his heel into the brown leather, the thing within it shifting under his sole. A low groan followed. "Your fear is enticing, Schüler. And that makes me feel good, it gives me my pleasure."

Her glasses, freezing discs, squeezed into his neck as she licked across the nape of his throat, passing across his Adam's apple. Beneath his foot he felt her wriggle, the boot creaking, her earlier untying of the laces helping in its removal. There was a final squeak and the foot came free, sweeping back to kick the boot away from her. Walter wondered whether he should attempt to stamp on her unprotected appendage and then thought better of it, as he felt her finally close the last few inches of the gap between them. And even more so, he felt that something, that indefinable something that had lingered within him, beginning to stretch and become tauter and tauter. Reaching breaking-point.

She had been speaking to him, and he only realised it when she gave a second painful twist of his arm. "Schüler. Mein andere Stiefel." Hissed between languid travels of her tongue. Understanding her intent, he put his foot down on her other boot. There was a repeat of the removal of the first one, this time the boot was kicked with such force that it banged loudly against the far wall.
She was still tall.

Revulsion hit him. A strong, almost tangible feeling, and the Rip Van Winkle nurse was hefting a hypodermic syringe in one well-bred hand, while the other unbuttoned her blouse.

He hung his head in shame as emotions, drained and muted in hatred and fear welled up within him, as if she had suddenly flipped a switch inside his mind. And could well she have, he realised. That was a vampire's trick... mental smoke and mirrors. The stirring within him continued unabated however, and those embers of lust, rekindled earlier, flared like a bonfire. If only for a second.

A second was all that was necessary, however. The tongue pressed against his neck quivered for a moment, and he felt her chest swell, her breasts pressing hard against the thin white cotton of his shirt. That single burst of internal emotion must have shone in her mind like a beacon, pure and strong even if passing so quickly. He crushed it as surely as he could beneath his anguish, but it was obvious that she had sensed it.

"Ah." It was a quiet word. "Not the little boy I thought." Walter took a sharp breath, cold sweat beginning to break properly on his brow, as the monster continued. "You want to take me, Schüler? Is that your little fear? That you enjoy this?" Cold air whistled against his neck as she sniggered. "Oh, that is too rich... I was right when I said you feared being alive."

He had to get away from her. Walter's mouth began to move of its own decision.

She brought her ear close to his mouth, craning to hear the words being murmured. It was nearly nothing more than shallow breaths, lips shaping bare sounds, but beneath it she could hear something. "What?" she whispered, almost on his scale. Then she tuned to Walter's hardly legible speech:

"I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me."

Her head turned to look at him as he tapered off, her grin over-bearing in its victory. And then he brought his forehead crashing down onto the bridge of her nose with monumental force.

There was a sound like a gunshot, audible above even the sounds of war from outside, and her grip loosened as her glasses spun off and her hands reached for her broken nose. Blood exploded down the front of her uniform and across Water's shirt, sticking it to his flesh. The sharp pain that shot through his head blinded him for a moment, sending him into a spinning sense of void that passed as quickly as it came. In front of him, the vampire was half-turned away, bent-double, hands covering her face. She made no noise. He paused, wondering whether he had actually hurt her...

Drawing his gaze away he caught sight of his gloves laying in the hay next to the door. Her gun was still propped up nearby. Wobbling from the blurriness that coursed behind his eyes, he broke into a run toward them.

Thirty-feet... The world shifted drunkenly about him. His left eye wasn't working properly... and he was suddenly taken by the thought that he'd done something to himself when he headbutted her.

Twenty-five-feet... Over-balanced, everything suddenly shot-away from him. Like looking through a fish-eye lens. His feet scraped against the dirt floor beneath him, scuffing the hay aside and he tripped. His feet seemed to zoom off a thousand miles away when he looked at them, and behind him he heard a soft shuffling. The clink of something touching glass.

Twenty-feet...? He couldn't tell anymore. He shut his left eye and found that everything swam back into focus... a fractured kaleidoscope removed. With a shake of his head, he reopened his eye. It was better, if blurry. He could hear footfalls behind him, heavy and rapid, and he tried to speed up, working his aching legs. He passed the milking-stool.

Something crashed into him from behind, inhumanly strong. An arm looped around his waist, claws digging into the flesh of his hip, another gripped his leg, dragging it down with dead-weight and then another locking itself about his neck. He collapsed, legs buckling beneath him, so that he skidded along the floor. Knees scuffed the dirt as he finally fell onto his front.

The hands released their grip as he toppled, and now one of them grabbed at his shoulder, rolling him over onto his back. With a last burst of courage he swung his fist around as he turned, striking out blindly at the black shape that towered over him. It connected with the thing's head, all his force centred on that final blow, and he saw the shadow snap to the side under the momentum.

Slowly it turned to him, and stooped, so that it's face came down towards him, becoming viewable as it did so. "I take it you're not enjoying yourself, Schüler," it hissed sibilantly. Rip Van Winkle's now illuminated features bared its teeth in feral animosity. "You asked me to play. Or did you really expect to win?"

In the firelight her uniform's creases danced alternately between darkness and visibility. Yet somehow that slowed, the flicker of flames continuing to illuminate, but dulling even as it did so. As if someone was pulling a blanket across the barn, and as Walter watched, across the woman in front of him. The shadows grew darker. Her hand reached up to her face and put the pair of pince-nez spectacles back on the crown of her nose. She waggled them provocatively for a moment. "I am going to make you my Leiche, kleine Schüler. You're going to beg me to make you a ghoul..."

Her weight pinned him down, left arm held across his chest like an iron-bar. "It's a comedy. It's a tragedy." She slid down him; retreating from his view, the arm remaining in place. All of her but the pale limb now swathed in the black that permeated the entirety of the barn. Walter felt her shuffle further down his body, the point of her chin trailing his body, finally coming to rest just below his belly-button. Something stroked along his shirt. Something damp and long.

"So fein."

There was only the crack of gunfire from outside, beyond the trees and the quiet, near silent, sound of a belt being undone. The clink of metal made Walter turn his head away, to stare at the ceiling. Even though the room was drenched in gloom he could see well-enough to pick out the slats and structure. Out of sight, he heard rough material being removed, felt the wriggling as she tried to pin him down and do whatever it was she was doing at the same time.

And then she returned, crawling up to hold herself above him. Her face was thrust into his vision, a wicked grin working across it. With preternatural lasciviousness, she licked along her bottom lip, seeming to savour the image of despair beneath her. Her mouth yawned open revealing the dagger teeth and that snake-like tongue in full, and then she ducked down, dipping its saliva and blood soaked muscle to his flesh and running it from his chin, up and around and along until it reached just under his eye. A long and bloody tear. It was only when she raised it again that Walter discovered that it looked black not through its own design. Spots of her own cold blood dripped to splash against his cheek and skin.

A thick thread of red spittle drooped precariously from her tongue's tip, and she hung it over his unbloodied, but still injured cheek. He closed his eyes, and turned his head away, just before it reached him. There was a pause and then freezing liquid pattered against his cheek, sticking to his flesh for a moment and then trickling to follow the contour of the bone. The pool of his eye-socket filled with blood, eyelashes collapsing against one another, congealing into a mass. And more still came, overflowing to run down the side of his face.

For what seemed like an age, he lay there, until her tongue came back to clean the blood away. It twisted this way and that, running along the crease of his closed eyelids, taking its time to fill the socket with its heavy flesh. Stray drops pattered against his face. He felt her thumb wipe out the last remnants from his eye-socket, then pry his eye open, so that he could look upon her in blurry half-pain.

The tip of Rip's tongue, crimson and pink, was nipped between two rows of barbed teeth. Slowly it slid out, to hang above his mouth. Red-flecked eyes, unblinking, tore at him. He could see the blood staining her tongue and the shininess it gave off, a near incandescent brightness.

"Just lie back and think of England."

She vanished again.

His breath and pulse quickened as he felt something tug at his flies. Twitchy movements that seemed to heighten the terrible exhilaration that wracked his mind. There was a moment where she seemed to flounder at the buttons of his under-garments, and for a blest moment he thought that she might simply give up. Then cold-air hit his skin and an even colder hand touched him fleetingly. He gasped at the sensation, thrown back head cracking against the straw-swept floor in his surprise.

Rip Van Winkle sat up, rising again into his vision, and pushed herself forward to straddle his waist. Her hand left him, and Walter's face burned in embarrassment at the fact his body reacted to this vicious kink.

The long under-shirt and Felduniform covered her down to mid-thigh, hiding her at the same time as she sat astride him. As if to complete the image of wantonness, her hair had swept forward to hang and coalesce in front of her shoulders, framing her face. That single smear of blood on her lips still remained, and he was reminded of a picture in a book he had seen once of Oriental courtesans. They'd been pale too... and beautiful in their strange, inhuman way. Geeshees? Guyshu?

He looked up at her eyes.

She was staring down at him, one hand pressing down on his chest, the other resting beside his arousal. But it was her face that caught his attention. For a split second she looked different. It was like all the rancour that been stripped away. Her eyes, still hard and half-lidded, the thin mouth, the angular features, all remained as before but it was as if the general outline of personality had changed. The hungry, permanently amused and unmerciful gloat was gone, replaced by something that seemed nearly pure. Not the cruel, mocking innoxiousness of Obersturmführer Rip Van Winkle, but someone else entirely. How old could she have been when perverted? His own age? A little younger? A tad older?

And then her lips pulled back into a exhilarated smirk, finally taking him in that frosted hand which had lay on his inner thigh. Walter drew in a sharp breath, nerves that he'd barely thought about or realised were there suddenly freezing cold and boiling at the same time. Overtaken by some awareness of his own position, he closed his eyes.

"Look at me," said the vampire. Her hands tugged more forcefully on his flesh, threatening, and he returned his gaze to her face. She was biting her lower lip in amusement, or apprehension or some foul mixture between. Then, realising that he was watching, she pushed down almost self-consciously. Her back arched, and involuntarily so did Walter's, head tilted to continue the curvature the rest of her body followed. Lips drawn in a silent, shuddering gasp as she tensed, and all Walter could do was shiver and wait and stare at the ceiling's wooden slats. A hundred-thousand shameful thoughts, of enjoyment and anger and lust and fear coursed through him, as he too gasped.

Her body sagged, shoulder's drooping first as the rest of her followed on. The hand that fed him into her reached out, to press down on his breast and keep her from falling. It was damp and its stickiness seeped through the material of his shirt, mingling with the mess of blood that clotted it already. Leaning forward now, head bowed down so that raven curtain of hair cascaded down, pooling and draping across his body. He clenched his eyes tightly shut.

Multi-coloured squiggles danced in the darkness, followed by a lightning stab of pain through the side of his face. A wet, ringing slap, that left her moisture clinging to his cheek. It was half-hearted for a vampire's blow, but it was enough to cause despairing tears to collect behind his eyes. "You wanted this, Schüler. At least have some dignity."

He grimaced and -for what could be the last time- opened his eyes fully, and spoke:

"I hate you."

Risen once again to her seated position, it was Rip Van Winkle who now looked as if she'd been slapped. She had paled even more, the flush that spread across her cheeks one he had never seen before on a vampire. Her face, that unearthly, perfect, exquisite, loathsome face, twitched and the claw-fingers tightened involuntarily to pinch the chilled flesh of his chest. Finally, she smiled. "Then there's no love lost, Schüler." That wry grin still locked across her face, she ran her hands up his chest, spreading her fingers to close around his neck and shoulders.

She began to move.

It was a sensation that was not a sensation. A burning torrent within himself that seemed to be swayed and countermanded by the freezing that gripped him from the outside. She was rocking herself slowly upon him, chalk-white thighs squeezing him pleasurably, her hands moving to rest around his throat, the thumbs pressing hard against the carotid arteries. Even as she did so, she made no sound. There was only the steady rhythm of their bodies and the sound of Walter's quiet, sad, intakes of breath.

She was an expert, in his eyes. The most exquisite torture he could possibly imagine. Her movements were short and jerky, terse little moments of activity where she thrust herself down on him. Pressing him into the ground, and then releasing him. It was a torture where the captivity was better than being free.

And she was beautiful. Beautiful and evil. Hideous. A dreadful, devilish monstrosity. A wonder. Looking down at him with eyes that made him want to scream in fear, yet a sleepy kind of lust burning within them also. She had no interest in him now, beyond the things she was making him do and the prospect of his calling out for her, for it, and the subsequent embracement.

Yet there was no sensation. Although he could feel himself, he felt as though it was far off. An unnecessary distraction that would only get him killed. And as his body surrendered itself to its whims, his mind raged against itself.

He wanted to kill her.

He wanted her.

He was going to die.

Rip Van Winkle was speeding up now, not enough to incite anything more laboured from either parties' lips, but enough to force sharper stabs of excitement coursing through Walter's body. He wanted it so badly, needed it... or was it her? ... or did he simply need the act itself? He didn't know. Firelight danced.

The huntress threw back her head as some untouched nerve was finally hit, her thrusting suddenly becoming slower again. It was then that Walter nearly made his mistake; his mouth opened, almost gasping out a pleading for her to hurry up... not to stop. Instead he smacked his head hard against the floor again. A pained grunt managing to hide his indiscretion.
He wondered how he could have come so close?

Quite easily, in fact, as she finally made a noise; a sigh that was forced out through gritted, pointed teeth. The tips of her hair had matted together, congealed with blood from were it had swayed and bounced across her front and Walter's shirt. A handful of dark spots spattered across their faces.

She was going to win. He was going to kill her though. That was the only way he could win...

The pressure tightened around his neck, thumbs forcing themselves onto the arteries at the sides of his neck. Almost instantly the thrumming in his head grew slower, more melodic. His mouth opened and shut rapidly, sucking in air, as the world began to blur behind a sea of shimmering black. His head began to spin. And as the real world disappeared, and darkness began to grow deeper, swirling in iridescent hues, he saw something that he hadn't seen before.

He might well love her.

Of course, he was being starved of oxygen. Strangled, as compared to choked. The oxygenated blood failing to enrich his now wilting brain. And it was without a doubt that his six-seconds of emergency oxygen was vanishing, as the steel-coloured clouds began to drift down to meet him. Some part of him knew this with crystal clarity, and he couldn't be sure if it was that part which had reached the other deduction. But it was there.

She was a horror, he knew. And he didn't love her; not in the way that he thought of love, not in any normal sort of way. But there was something there. Something that went deep below everything else. Far beyond any sort of primitive lust, or any sort of interest in the fact that she was something deeply twisted and... even now... unattainable. It was a very real and very dark feeling within himself, and not one that he could readily understand.

Unconsciousness began to slip over him.

Sister Winkle in her sky-blue medical smock grinned impishly just beyond the edge of sight. "Kill or cure, mein Schüler."

And then he felt his head practically scream as the weight on his neck suddenly lifted. Oxygen exploded in his mind, awakening him almost instantly. He took a choking, ragged gasp, filling his lungs with air, and then lay back. The feeling from his groin, nearly -but not quite- pleasurable rushed towards him like a sea-wave. With almost the same ferocity also.

In that second of momentary understanding, he realised what he had to do. Only an attack could act as a defence against her and her acts. Above him Rip Van Winkle still rocked her slow, subtle movements... eyes seeming to be glazed over in unholy rapture... and he reached up to her face. The firm grip; one hand cupping her chin, the other holding her stone-cold neck tentatively, seemed to awaken her. He leant forward and upwards, pulling her slightly (and she fought against that, her spine straight and strong as a steel bar) towards him as he did so. As he did so, he could see her eyes. They had snapped open quite fearfully. That non-vocal gasp of what he hoped was pure terror on her part was something he couldn't help but feel raise his spirits.

She was inhuman. But not invincible.

He kissed her. Lips brushed. Subtly. A feather-light, fearful touch; more nervous than he had meant it to be, and he hoped that had gone unnoticed. It surprised him that her skin, although cold, was still soft. His lips lingered for a moment more than was necessary, perhaps; he couldn't be sure. Didn't know how it was meant to go anyway. Pulling away again, he could feel the still-warmth of the blood that had remained on her lip now traced his own.

"Check..."

He had made the gambit.

Rip Van Winkle watched him draw back, her eyes drooping back to that near-permanent dreamy gaze. Walter felt the hands on his neck tighten slightly, and she leant forward, staring at him... into him. The tiny scarlet pinpricks on her face seemed grotesquely other-worldly as she bowed. Pince-nez spectacles glittered like fire, and she half-pulled him to her. Her head tilted, and Walter felt his own begin to swim again. However, this wasn't like when he was being strangled. It was something different; something less dangerous, but altogether far more frightening. Beyond the edge of perception, he could feel icy tendrils reach into his mind, teasing at the fabric of his instincts and knowledge. Not stripping away, but touching almost gently at his thoughts...

His thoughts!

He shrank back mentally, the only thing he could see being those large, inviting blue eyes and a mouth that could swallow the world, and she dove in further. Chasing that morsel, that singular plan that he had invoked. As she did so, he drew back further. An ever-increasing, ever-faster circle of cat-and-mouse that he knew would end badly. If she found it, read it, recognised it... it would fail. He would fail, because who in their right mind would willingly turn themselves over to losing?

And then, even as he began to pull away from her physically... a subconscious movement made flesh, there was an intangible realisation in his mind that she was drawing away from him. That mental tentacle wiggled its way outwards, backwards, faster and faster, whipping this way and that as it went and he could feel it slapping, almost wetly, against his internal senses. Then, with a feeling like a weight had suddenly been lifted from his brain, it was gone.

Walter roused himself, to stare into the slightly opened maw. Rip seemed far-away, emotionally. That ominously bland look had crept across her face once again, her SS uniform's collar hanging loosely about her neck making it look even more dire. Finally her eyes met his, and the flames from the heater made them flicker red for a moment behind the lenses of her spectacles. Something passed between them, although for the life of him he didn't know what it was. A taunt. Or a threat. Some kind of glittering, frenzied assault on their senses as they goaded one another to make the first move. She sniffed, still staring off at somewhere -or some-when- before her hands unlatched themselves from about his neck. One moved down to press on his chest, keeping him from rising. The other went to her own throat, and to the top-most button. It popped easily from its rest.

Then the next four silver-blue buttons slipped undone, and the Felduniform was open. Tightness alleviated, it fell of its own accord, the green rayon hanging loose. The light-green undershirt, neck opened wide, limp collared, could be seen through the open crack.

And that was her counter-offensive, Walter thought.

Or perhaps not.

He waited, for what seemed like an age, the only sound his heartbeat. Then, his throat suddenly feeling parched, he drew the blouse aside like a pair of curtains, and reached up to the buttons of her undershirt. They suddenly seemed the most complex things in the world, clinging to their positions with dreadful complacency. After a moment of fumbling, he skipped the second one down, returning to it only when the others were finally done with.

All concentration lingered on that last plastic button. The shirt's fabric was pulled taut across it, creasing. Yet he paid no attention to that fact, rather just staring at the final barrier. That point of no return. He couldn't do it. There was no way that he could continue this; he didn't want to. Of course, that dark terrible part of his soul was willing to continue, if only for the sake that it would mean victory -at least in some sense- but at the same time... why would he want to? There was no love in this, no enjoyment, he felt nothing but fear; a deep rooted dread.
He licked at his lips once again, coming away once again with the taste of blood and dirt.

Still she waited.

And why not? She had all the time in the world.

Walter hesitated again. He clenched his right hand convulsively, trying to wipe away the clamminess, rubbing the fingers against his palm. Damn her. Damn her! He'd loathe himself for this. But he'd kill her.

The button slipped between his fingers a couple of times before he finally pushed it through its eye. The clothes fell open much like the blouse, the angle of her leaning, the fact that it had been sewn in such a manner, pushing it outwards to that it fled back to peek out from behind the Felduniform.

The vampire's teeth gritted.

He wanted to look away then. Stomaching this sort of debauchery was harder than anything else he had ever done.

He continued anyway.

With the shirt and uniform undone, Rip Van Winkle was now practically open to him. Naked from the waist down and in such a despairing position with himself, he declined to lower his gaze, preferring to tilt his head back and let his eyes tunnel the top half of her. The skin was pale, an off-white hue, however not so much the post-mortal colour of the cadaver, but rather a much for flagrant sign of the recluse. If there had been imperfections in life, time and the unnatural flesh of the damned had ironed them out, as far as the light could show. On first meeting he had thought her gaunt and now he saw that she truly was, but not totally and unnaturally so. It was accentuated somewhat by the narrow hips and wide-shoulders. The knobs of collarbone were pronounced beneath the pale, unblemished flesh. Yet there was none of the peaking ribs and slight bloat of the stomach found in the emaciated. She was thin by design, not by necessity.

By that regard, it should have been understandable to Walter that she would be wearing a bra. Yet he hadn't, or couldn't have, thought of that. The final barrier of her shirt may well have been of a sort, but he hadn't taken into account for the next step... hadn't even thought it possible that she -of all things- would. But it was there even so. A thin, tight, cotton thing, elegant in its blunt simplicity, hiding her breasts all but for a pale crescent that rose slightly from its confines. A dull metal clasp rested between the cups.

He fixated upon it. Eyes digging into that alien engineering as if by force of will alone he might manage to remove it, without having to taint himself further. It didn't work, just as he knew it wouldn't. But he tried anyway.

He sucked in a shuddering breath, ignoring the sparking of nerves in his groin, and wondered what to do. Very carefully he reached out, his flesh crawling across his hand like it was alive, and hovered it over the clasp. It caught the light, even so dulled, and danced in the firelight like her eyes. It seemed almost to glow red hot. His fingertips brushed it and then snapped back as if it were electric.

He hadn't meant to touch it.

Uncomfortably he wondered why he did so. And the more he thought about it, the more Rip Van Winkle's face remained calmly intrigued.

He couldn't do it. Not now or ever. The very thought was repulsive, the idea a monstrosity to have even got this far. No man could sink to the level of a daemon and even contemplate succeeding at it! He was a fool... and worse yet, she was right. He was a little boy playing games outside his own reach.

And even as that thought passed through his mind, he could see the sly grin write itself across the vampire's face. A look of triumph and smugness and perhaps something else there, something that he couldn't quite place, but certainly something that he abhorred. Something mocking.

His fingers curled uncomfortably, before finally dropping to his sides.

The vampire's mouth tightened at the corners as she leant toward him, her hair released again to unfurl like an ebony waterfall; washing downwards about her shoulders and around her breasts and the cotton surrounding them; and she stopped most suddenly as his hands gripped her waist to halt her, the cold under his palm obscenely pleasurable and he bit his lip until the pain numbed and then...

She was nothing.

No tenderness or arousal elicited his hands to move and he grappled with the clasp like a madman. His fingers slipping on the smooth rectangle, sometimes pressing against her flesh, flicking at the white material about it without rhyme or reason. No emotion but the most base, and even that smothered by something far darker and defiled. The pads of his fingers scratched against the cold metal. Blood pulsed through his veins. Hot and heady and wondrous...

His right hand flew to his mouth. He raised his eyes to God.

But her face got in the way.

She stared at him. Bloody-faced and chalk white, and wonderfully pure; crimson splattered cheeks and chin. Dark curl of hair still jutting outwards. One lens of her spectacles specked with red. Her mouth was open, barely -slightly- teeth bared. And her eyes.

Far away, far far away, the pulse of artillery rolled and ebbed.

His hand rubbed about his mouth nervously, feeling sticky in the twilight. He took it away and looked at it; the blood which coated it looking almost black. An inky void. It was cold. It wasn't his.

A silence so loud that he was sure that he was dead. Nothing moved.

And then she grabbed the lapels of his shirt and rolled over onto her back, dragging him with her - legs hooking about his backside and

"... Mate."

He didn't know what he was doing and those couple of pornographic books he'd exchanged for cigarettes amongst the men in 3 Platoon were so different; and although they said about 'instinct overtaking reason' he realised now that it was a load of rubbish because he knew what he was doing was all his decision and hadn't left anything to chance. And there was nothing innate or natural in what he was doing anyway... the books hadn't said anything about this or that or the other, and he doubted there were any writings on what he was (or had been) doing. And would anyone want to read it anyway?

This was so very wrong.

And his mind was a whirl... a vortex of strange and otherworldly thoughts.

The girl looked different. Younger. Freckles burning like dark stars and skin flushed paler and less like chalk, more like milk... which was a stupid bloody metaphor anyway. He inhaled. When he'd seen bodies before, dead ones, the veins were pronounced and he half expected as he looked at her properly that he would see a road-map of thick, blue varicose lines tracing her flesh. But there wasn't. A lot, anyway: there were a few; thin, tiny and delicate ink etchings here and there, but only where they seemed like they should be, only where he thought they should be. Apart from that, it was just white. Just pale. Her glasses had slipped to the tip of her nose.

Walter felt his throat constrict. His chest tightened, his lungs feeling like lumps of hot coal and he pulled away, trying desperately to leave.

She pulled him forward again by his collar, her legs pushing -helping- and Walter fell back to her, landing on his elbows. His arm straps groaned as much as he did, and Rip's mouth flicked open.

No! God, no! He braced himself against the floor, feeling like an idiot the way he was bent and offended, deeply, by his sudden realisation that this wasn't the end. Not even nearly. He shifted his weight so as not to fall forward on top of her and grabbed at her hands, which were still clasped tightly to his collar. He wrestled with them for a moment, and there was a tearing sound. His neck felt colder.

Fingers still wrapped around her wrists, he pushed them above her head and to the ground... pinning them there. He had to lean forward to do it, and now his head was above and next to hers, hovering over her shoulder. The rank-board's button sparkled. Waffen-SS Obersturmführer Rip Van Winkle. He turned his head to look at her. Obersturmführer Rip Van Winkle. She bared her fangs at him.

Walter just stared.

Then he pushed his hips forward.

He had to win. Couldn't leave until he'd won, and he'd go that extra mile if she made him and there wasn't going to be a thing she could do about it. Not if he had a say in it at all. And he thrust into her, his hands holding her wrists and his eyes boring into hers and the roar of life exploding in his ears which he knew wasn't happening to her, except through her knowledge -the preternatural sense- of hearing the flow through his arteries like the tides on the shore.

She was so cold.

Their chests heaved. His through exertion, and hers... hers through instinct. She no more needed air in her lungs than Walter needed to drink blood, but she gasped beneath him anyway. Her legs knotted about his bottom, but her coaxing was no longer there. Just enough to stop him from pulling away and leaving.

The girl's hair had splayed out about her head in a dark corona, picking up hay as it did so. It rippled and shimmered in the firelight and Walter released Rip's right hand so that he could reach for her forehead, to brush aside the hair that had fallen across it and see her. She could at least look at him. Her loose hand reached up and rested on his shoulder-blade, digging in. Her other hand broke free from Walter's grasp and grabbed the other shoulder-blade. Walter tottered slightly, and collapsed onto his elbows again. He blinked, trying to recollect his thoughts.

And then his left hand was pushing aside the bra which had fallen back over her breast and...

His hand jerked away and back to its original spot. He could feel himself rising in a crescendo of frenzy. Deep and nearly unconscious emotions. Feeling the woman's fingernails rake his shirt, the fervent panting from beneath him. It was her face though, that set it off however. Summer of '41; just outside Felixstowe, that little port town with the barbed-wire fences and the disguised machinegun nests and cubbyholes, he'd been standing in a copse of trees near a farm. In the moonlight, that vampire had the same look in his eyes... when Walter had tugged on the wires and its head had come off.

It was funny, really.

He shivered, unintentionally, and then to hide it, he licked hungrily at her chin. She still smelled of lemons. That tangy scent of citrons lingered, above the smell of blood and sweat and sex.

He squeezed her more tightly, and he suddenly felt guilty. A horrible yearning chasm.

He was speeding up, racing towards fatigue and a terrible form of release and he didn't know how long this had been going on, but now he thought about it, he knew it wasn't far off. But he had to hold it off... he had to win... had to. He sat up slightly, his hands pulling away from her to rest above her shoulders and prop him up. Except she would have nothing of it. Her hands grabbed his, and guided him to her breasts as one might guide a shy lover. The bra had been tight, and they were not as small as they had seemed; the flesh was smooth and pale, like the rest of her. The protuberant nipples rubbed against his palms. He left a bloody handprint across her right breast, glistening wetly.

He blinked and his hands were back above her shoulders, her breasts bare but untouched, the feeling as if something had been rooting around in his mind lingering like cigarette smoke. His breathing caught in his throat and he knew he was going to lose... He ducked his head to hers, swallowing his fear. Her hand pressed against his head, keeping him there as his teeth nipped at her flesh. Not enough to break the skin, but to make her move her head towards and away and now he finally did reach down and cup her breast. It amazed him how coarse his skin was compared to hers.

She was close too, he knew. Her mental shield teetered and dropped again. She was VERY close. But not close enough, because she was what she was. Not bound by his petty little conventions...

DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!

He was dead.

Unless...

His thumb playing with the taut nipple beneath it felt the hardening become more prominent, felt the swell of her breath reach a height... and then he sank his fangs into the fleshy underside of her neck. The soft skin broke beneath his sharpness and she bucked, rising up. A deep, ragged gasp tore at her and he licked the wound, tasting the freezing blood on his tongue
(by God they were right when they said it tasted exquisite)
and then dragged his head away; still rutting.

And she was groaning like a woman, and he was sounding like some kind of horrible beast as he pounded into her, and her grip on his back and the knot of her legs pulled him tightly... so very tightly... and she climaxed. He got one last look at her face before the barn's fire suddenly went out. No lolling tongue or drooling lust or eyes rolled back to the whites, or anything else he'd read about... just a half-smile.

And then everything went black, and for the first time in his life he -finally- allowed himself to come second.

Walter lay on his side, the shroud of night like a blanket. He rested his head on the hard floor, the straw strewn across it tickled his scalp and ear. It was getting cold now. From outside the sound of life went on, no different from any other time in the last half-decade. Through the cracks in the old barn's planks he could see the flashes of artillery, where they suddenly lit up the sky and shone through the knots like spotlights on the packed earth.
He should have been smoking a cigarette now. But it didn't really matter anymore.

He crossed his arms tighter across his body, forcing the warmth back in to him. The sweat had dried his shirt to his back and his hair was plastered to his forehead. He wasn't too sure if that were due to sweat or something else.

Life felt... whimsical... today.

She was still there. Behind him, laying just as silently. He couldn't hear her, or see her, but he could feel her in his mind like a weight or, more accurately, an electric current. Alucard did it sometimes. Except when he did it was reassuringly obnoxious.

Walter wasn't sure why she was doing it.

As in response, Rip Van Winkle rolled over in the darkness. He heard the slow shuffle of hay and fabric and a faint murmur, nearly inaudible but not quite. It sounded like "Hear". He sniffed and put his chin to his chest. Was she asleep? Unlikely. It was dark. Now was her time.

"I'm sorry," he said, as he raised his head to stare more fully at the barn door ahead of him.

From high above there was the drone of propellers, a heavy base thrumming that hinted at size and number. Big ones. A lot. Were they Allies, he wondered absently. On their way, or just returning? Then, almost instantly, there was the 'pop' of flak, like fireworks on Guy Fawke's night. He listened to the aeroplanes until they passed overhead and their noise and welcoming barrage drifted away.

"It..." He faltered, wondering what he was supposed to say. His mind fixed on the fleeting image of that near sad grin. "It couldn't have been very good for you."

Nothing came back. His shoulders sagged, and he felt guilt twist in his gut. Wondered what the fuck he was doing talking to her like this for. "Compared to others," he said eventually.

The hay rustled. "Others?" The voice paused for a moment as if the word was somehow unfamiliar and the speaker was going through their vocabulary in search of this strange word, and then lapsed into silence.

He'd bitten her, thought Walter. He'd thought he had fangs. Why? Why had he done that? Couldn't he have just- Just what? He was no better. But-

Oh, things were so complicated.

The night was so quiet now. Very quiet. Just his breathing and the sound of blood in his ears to tell him that he really was there amongst the pitch dark. That was what had scared him most. Not his own actions... nor her own really... but the little things. The lack of breath on his face, no heartbeat when he had rested his head to her breast, spent and breathless. It scared him. Because she was beyond anything logical or human, contrary to his own feelings before. His dislike of her.

Self-consciousness gnawed at his stomach again.

"I lied, you know." He stroked his arms, trying to warm them up through the thin, blood-specked shirt.

Mortar fire 'krump'ed in the middle distance.

"Don't we all, Schüler?" He felt the dead-weight on his mind fluctuate.

Opening his mouth dryly, he spoke again; the noise phenomenally loud. "You didn't."

"Ja. Even me," she said. Then; "I was going to kill you all along. There was no game, Schüler."

Walter nodded at this lie. A wan smile growing on his lips as he closed his eyes and, for the first time in his life he was sure, he fell into a deep and untroubled sleep.

He was groggy.

Very carefully he opened one eye, letting the eyelid roll back slightly to give himself a blurred vision of his surroundings. His mind was rocking from side to side as he did so. It was still dark, but the barn was bright. Opposite him, under the now severely listing hay-loft was the fire-heater. It had been relit, the flames consigned behind its stove-like door. Flickering shadows swept across the barn. Walter shifted his gaze down to himself. He was propped against the wall, his back against the planks and the hay swept around him in what would have been a drift if made from snow. His coat had been draped over him, from ankles to chin. The bulge in the pocket showed his packet of cigs were still there. Even so, the rain-proof material was soaked with red. He opened his other eye, and his stomach heaved as his head tumbled. The plates of bone under his eye shifted and rubbed against each other horrendously. It had got worse. Just his luck, really.

In the middle of the barn was the stool. His gloves rested on it, thin ringlets of silver wrapped about the fingers. So close, but yet so far.

Quite fitting for an execution.

He turned his head slowly, so as not to upset his injuries, and stopped.

Rip Van Winkle was staring at the large swastika-motif flag pinned to the back wall. Her pristine uniform shone green and then black in the firelight. Her hair, however, glittered red and black. Gripping her musket in one pale hand, she hummed a tune he recognised but couldn't place and then, with a flick of the head, looked over her shoulder at him.

She turned to him, and he saw that she really was fully dressed. Perfectly dressed, like when he'd first met her. The half-Windsor of her tie was exact. He smiled inwardly at that, because that was what he was meant to do. But he didn't know why.

Her steps were quick, and she was before him in what seemed an instant. He stared at her knees and then looked at her boots. They were very clean. She kneeled in front of him, face-to-face. "Mein kleine Schüler." She grinned and then reached out for him with the hand not holding her gun. He let her, feeling how she tilted back his head and rolled it slightly to the left. Her thumb traced his carotid artery. Out of the corner of his eye, his good eye, he saw her open her mouth and lick her lips.

He closed his eyes.

He'd wondered what it'd be like. It was meant to be pleasurable, but it couldn't really be. He'd never liked needles anyway. He'd dreamed of fighting it off, continuing to fight-back even as they tried. But real-life never was as heroic.

The tiny pinpricks of teeth touched his skin, and he felt the pulsing flesh covering his artery rub across them ever so gently... and that was how it ended. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. A silent one.

At least he'd keep his dignity over it.

His chest grew tighter and he felt everything slowly grow colder and more distant. Except...

He opened his eyes with the last ounce of strength he had remaining, to get one last look at that ignorant, cheating, German, Nazi bitch. And she was sitting there staring back at him, through blood-encrusted pince-nez spectacles and icy-blue eyes above delicate freckles.

She sneered. "Engländer make pathetic ghouls." Then, without another word, she stood up and walked out; swinging her musket about her shoulders as she did so.

The darkness outside swallowed her up.

Walter sat there for a while longer, blunted and lost. And then he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

END(GAME)

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A/N: What would drive a man to such a despicable act? The act of writing this, I mean. ^_^

I'd like to thank my (friend/acquaintance/latest enemy) BobR, without whose help, ideas and involvement this fic would never have even been thought up, let alone written. Read his works and thank him for being such a great guy. I'm sure he now enjoys Rip Van Winkle far more than he did originally.

So who did win?

Walter? Rip? Both? Neither?

Is there an acceptable answer?

But then; Was any of it... real?

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"Friendship is disinterested commerce between equals; love an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves."
- Oliver Goldsmith