"It's your decision, Master," his dark voice crooned out of the shadows. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was there.
I had been locked up in a private prison facility off the coast of England for three months. It is not unpleasant, just sparse and barren. The castle is rather unkempt, moss creeps in through cracks in the walls and many of the windows don't have glass panes. Fortunately, my bedroom does, though the cold still seeps in at night. The shadows were darker than usual, and I couldn't hear the sea beneath the island. Alucard's magic.
"You know I never intended to join you," I said quietly, despite the fact I knew the guards outside the door couldn't hear us.
I hooked my legs over the side of the bed. I had become considerably stronger since my detainment. My green silk pyjamas hovered around my ankles, doing little to warm my feet. My hair fell around my shoulders in a straggling curtain, and my surroundings were blurred.
I groped for my spectacles from the bedside table. I pushed them on my nose and looked closely at the room. A tall mahogany wardrobe stood against the east wall, next to a floor length mirror in a matching frame. A dressing table, bought to match but wasn't quite the same colour, stood opposite that. My bed was a grand old four-poster, the purple silky sheets dripping off it like water. The walls had been plastered and had gold and cream wallpaper laid over them, but it didn't subtract enough from the fact that the room was really just one in a predominantly ruined castle in the middle of the English Channel. Of course, when they'd locked me up here, they hadn't accounted for Alucard. He could have gotten me out of here any time I wished, except I was rather enjoying the lack of responsibility.
"It seems like I'm going to have to take matters into my own hands, Master Integra," he said. He emerged from the shadows. He was dressed in his usual attire, as always. He floated forward in a way that only he can do, and grasped my hand with his gloved fingers. He turned my hand over and brought my wrist to his mouth.
"What are you doing?" I spoke sharply.
"Do you know what this smells like, Sir Integra?"
"Please, enlighten me, Alucard,"
"Poison." He said it so calmly I didn't understand what he meant for a minute.
"Poison?" I said, trying to keep the shock out of my voice.
"Most likely a cyanide compound,"
There was a long pause.
"It's still your decision, Master Integra," his voice called through my reverie.
I couldn't. It went against everything I had ever stood for, my entire life. Against everything my father ever taught me. But I was the last descendant of the Hellsing family, and no one could continue the organization without me. Alucard would no longer have a master, and that was a terrifying prospect, considering his nature. I'd seen his true nature unbound once, and that was more than enough to let me guess who he truly was.
"Yes, I am Dracula. Vlad the Impaler. Nosferatu. Call me whatever you like, I'm still the same monster underneath," his mouth twisted up in a grim smile, baring his pointed teeth.
"Yes," I whispered. I wasn't going to die here like a poisoned rat.
"What was that, Master? I couldn't quite hear you," he mocked.
"Yes, Alucard. Turn me, I won't die here!" I half-shouted. "How dare you mock me?"