Alucard stopped in front of Seras where she was sitting on the floor (collapsed after the adrenaline had left her system) near the last smear of his blood, left behind from when he had formed a message with it for her, ordering her to drink his blood.
"Oi. Why didn't you drink my blood?" he asked her coldly.
A pair of big blue eyes looked up at him then, but not with the nervous fear he had more than half-expected after her failure to obey. There was, in actual fact and to Alucard's surprise, a level of incredulity shining back at him there.
"Well?"
"Anderson was waiting for me to stick my neck out so that he could chop my head off," Seras answered plainly as she raised her first finger, as though she were counting off reasons. "You can clearly recover from that Master, glad to have you back, but I don't think I want to test my ability to imitate the feat," she pointed out reasonably. "I suspect I'd fail."
Alucard smirked darkly. He didn't confirm or deny the supposition, simply smirked in silence and inclined his head slightly in acceptance of her reasoning.
"Was that all?" he asked.
Serash shook her head and a second finger uncurled to join the first. She was counting off reasons for not having taken his blood.
"I've only been a vampire for a week," Seras continued. "I don't think I'm quite ready for whatever your blood contains, Master," she admitted.
Alucard's smirk became smug. He knew exactly how potent his blood was. Again, he inclined his head in acceptance of her answer. It was possible that she wouldn't be able to handle his blood, even if she was of his line. He had, sad to say, lost previous Childeren that way. Had been forced to kill his Childeren when they went mad from the taste of his blood.
A third finger was uncurled. "I was also terrified," she admitted frankly. "Those bayonets hurt going in, and they hurt just as much when I was pulling them out again. Your head wasn't attached to your shoulders any more – and had just melted off another bayonet," she reminded, eyes large in her face. "I'd dropped my gun, was trapped, then Sir Integra arrived and..."
"And?" Alucard prompted.
Seras lowered her hand, and averted her eyes before she bowed her head where she sat. "And..." she hesitated. "And... as well as that... I can't explain it Master... but I feel like I'd be losing something important if I drank your blood. I don't know what," she said, a hint of frustration in her voice. "Just that it's important."
Alucard's entire expression melted into a frown.
"Probably just as well," he allowed at last, though he grumbled as he looked down at her. "After all, who would think to see you walking the night?" he asked rhetorically as he turned and walked back to where Integra was waiting for them.
"Why did you bring her into your family?" Integra asked softly as he reached her.
"Why indeed," he answered, just as softly. "Possession? Whim? Foolishness or a flight of fancy?" he supposed, then scoffed at them all. "I indulged in my own nearly forgotten, fickle human nature. I felt like having someone around for a while," he explained with a slight smirk.
Alucard glanced at his Master. She was not impressed, and deeply curious as well, though she wouldn't say anything. He could tell from the way one eyebrow was arched up above the frame of her glasses. He turned his head slightly to look beyond Integra and over his shoulder to Seras. She was still on the floor with her gun across her lap.
"Don't sit around," he called. "Let's go, Police Girl."
"Woman," Seras answered as she pulled herself up. "Girls don't make it through the Academy. I was a police woman."
"Police Girl is good enough for you," Alucard answered with a smirk as he faced forward again and continued out to the door.
Seras sighed. "And all my squad called me 'kitten'," she lamented. "I suppose I'm doomed to never be respected for what I can do?" she asked as she passed Sir Integra, chasing after her master.
"Probably, Police Girl," Integra answered with a chuckle of her own as she also started to, more sedately, follow after the pair. "Getting sentimental, No-Life-King?" she mused to herself. "You who once were The Count, the Prince of Wallachia?"
~oOo~
Seras blinked when she returned to her designated bedroom. It looked a lot bigger than it had when she'd left it last. That probably had to do with the lack of her bed anywhere. Instead, Walter stood by what was clearly a coffin, which was laid where her bed had previously been.
"Walter," Seras said, as calmly as she could. "Why did you have my bed removed?"
"You are to sleep in a coffin from now on," Walter answered. "Sir Integra said 'vampires should sleep in coffins', and Alucard said that, as you had yet to drink blood, you would need to sleep in a coffin with soil of the place of your birth, or be weakened."
Seras grit her teeth. She understood that. She did. She'd actually been required to read Stoker's Dracula in high school, and though she hadn't much cared for the book, she had finished it and knew a good deal of (at least fictional) vampire lore from it. How much of it was true, she was slowly beginning to learn.
"But why," she asked, "did that necessitate the removal of my bed?"
"Um..." Walter answered, confused himself. "Well, you do need to sleep in a coffin, for your own sake, Miss Seras."
"And I will, I promise, but could I please have my bed back as well?" Seras requested as politely as she could. "Only, I don't think the coffin will be very comfortable for lounging around on while I read a book in my limited downtime, and that couch," she said with a gesture to the named piece of furniture that was in her room, "isn't comfortable. I'd also like the photograph I'd placed under my pillow returned, if it was removed along with the bed."
Walter blinked in surprise at the requests. "Of... course, Miss Seras," he agreed. "I'll have it back in for you tomorrow. As for the photograph... I did strip the sheets before removing the bed. The photograph is in the top drawer of your vanity."
"Thank you, Walter," Seras answered, and immediately moved to the drawer indicated.
"Sentimental fool," Alucard said as he appeared in the doorway. "What photograph would you keep under your pillow? You have chosen the night. You can never go back to the life you had before. Hoping for the sunlight is pointless."
"It's a photograph of my parents, Master," Seras answered softly as she lifted it out of the drawer, gloved fingers caressing the edges tenderly. It was an action they had performed hundreds of times before. "The last picture taken of the three of us as a family before they were killed."
"There's blood on that picture," Alucard noted. "Old and dried, but I can smell it still."
"It has the blood of my father, from when they shot him. My mother, from when they shot her for being a witness to their crimes..." Seras frowned. "Their blood," she added with a darkly satisfied hiss. "From when I charged out of the wardrobe where my mother hid me, armed with nothing but a fork I'd grabbed off the floor, and gouged one eye out of one of them for killing my parents. My blood is on there too, from when they shot me before I could cause them further injury. They didn't expect me to survive, but I did. Just to see them rot in prison, I made myself survive, even though it meant watching as one of them raped my mother's corpse," she finished fiercely.
Walter and Alucard both stared at her in genuine shock. Shocking either man was not an easy thing, but to shock both at once? It was practically unheard of. Yet, she had done it.
Walter had, of course, done a background check on Seras. Next of kin would have needed to be notified of her new situation, but she hadn't had any. He'd known that she was an orphan, but he hadn't known the details of the matter. Hadn't looked beyond that discovery, in all honesty.
Seras looked up at her Master, her blue eyes locked on his orange glasses. "I was four, Master," she said, as though answering a spoken question of how old she had been at the time.
A question that had not been asked either verbally or telepathically.
Walter coughed slightly and bowed to the two vampires. "Master Alucard, I was on my way to deliver this to you," he said, changing the topic as he moved to where he had set a suitcase on top of Seras' desk.
Seras moved to slip the photograph under the pillow in her new coffin, while Alucard opened the suitcase.
"What's this?" Alucard asked with a sort of wicked pleasure, and behind her, Seras heard the cocking of a gun.
"The anti-monster 13mm combat hand-gun, 'Jackal'," Walter answered pleasantly. "While the .454 Casull used modified rounds, this gun uses its own new custom rounds. Thirty-nine centimetres long, sixteen kilos, maximum of six rounds to a clip... It is something no human could wield."
"You give it to a human, if they want it enough then they'll find a way," Seras said as she closed the lid of her coffin and stood once more.
Alucard smirked at her, though just briefly. "Custom rounds?" he asked Walter.
"13mm steel explosive rounds," Walter answered.
"The casting?" Alucard pressed as he lifted the clip from the suitcase as well.
"Pure Macedonium silver," Walter supplied.
"And the tips?" Alucard purred as he twisted the gun in his hand just so. "Explosive, or mercury?"
"Pre-blessed mercury-type tips," Walter answered.
Alucard slammed the clip into place with a grin and raised the gun again. "It's perfect Walter," he praised with dark satisfaction.
"My thanks," Walter demurred with a slight bow.
"This should be enough to kill even Father Anderson," Alucard noted as he raised the gun in front of his face once more, getting a better look at it, his finger straight out past the trigger so that he wouldn't chance wasting a round into the stonework with an itchy twitch.
"It is very nice," Seras agreed as she ran her own eyes over the weapon. She'd seen a lot of guns at both the Police Academy and passing through the Station's forensics or gun registration offices.
"Miss Seras, your weapon has also been modified as well," Walter announced blandly.
She turned, hopeful. Her master's weapon was a thing of beauty, and she'd been carrying a fairly standard (though large) rifle before.
What she was confronted with, however...
"30mm anti-monster cannon, Harkonen," Walter said as he stood by the weapon. The butt of it was on the ground by his feet, and the other end was a good couple of feet above his head. "There are two types of ammo – depleted uranium shells, and explosive steel incendiary rounds. It's powerful enough to destroy all land and air targets excluding the largest of tanks."
Seras stared, stunned and jaw hanging open. "And it's a thing of beauty," she finally said. "I'd very much like two, even. But... isn't it a bit much for every day?" she asked.
The sound of rapid gunfire cut off any answer Walter might have given, and an explosion from overhead shook some of the dust out from between the stones that made up the ceiling of Seras' room.
Seras sighed. "Never mind, forget I asked," she said as she shook her head. "I think I need a new definition of 'every day'."
~oOo~
"If I still needed to breathe, I'd complain about the state of the vents," Seras said when she landed on the Round Table before quickly stepping aside so that Walter could also exit them, brushing dust off herself as she did.
For whatever reason, the Hellsing Butler had dived head-first and landed on his hands, doing a neat little flip off the table and onto the floor, rather than slipping out feet-first as Seras had done. Then again, Seras was also quick to get off the table as well when she realised that everybody (save Sir Integra) who was around the table was an ageing man, and she was herself in a very short skirt.
Seras made a mental note to ask about who the hell had designed her uniform, because really, she looked more like a showgirl who had been dressed up as a soldier to entertain the real troops, rather than someone who actually did any fighting herself.
And she missed having pockets. Her old uniform, the one she'd worn as a policewoman, had really good, deep and well-reinforced pockets.
Okay, so her master had given her a brief lesson on how to store large things in pockets that practically didn't exist just before she'd been directed to go first into the vents (like hell she'd be able to manoeuvre the Harkonen through the ventilation shafts, she'd barely managed manoeuvring her boobs), but there was just something about pockets. They were a place to put your hands, if nothing else.
"Seras! Walter!" Integra greeted with eagerness and a hint of relief.
Seras clicked her heels together and saluted. "Reporting for duty and awaiting your orders, Sir Integra," she answered sharply.
"Report, Walter," Integra requested.
"My apologies for being late," Walter said as he approached his mistress. "Our main unit has been annihilated," he continued as he lit her cigar for her. "To have ghouls work as an organised, armed group... I have no idea who thought of it, but he's clever."
"Walter," Integra said in a tone that sternly requested she be spared professional annotations. "I'll be frank; is this the end for us?"
"No," Walter answered with a smile. "Compared to what the first Sir Hellsing faced a century ago, this is hardly something I'd call a crisis."
"No one here is going to die unless they do something very stupid," Seras said plainly. "Master is in the basement, we're here, and the enemy is in between."
"From the third floor, we will deploy," Walter agreed with a nod and raised one hand up to by his face. "As my Lady commands, we will not let a single one of them leave this mansion alive. Let us teach that boy the exact cost of our tuition."
"Sir Integra, do you want a vampire for questioning, or will we just kill them all?" Seras asked.
Integra blinked, just once, behind her spectacles at the young woman. "Destroy them all," she answered. "If you are able to gather any intelligence from this vampire, that would be useful as well, but do not spare him, and do not give him a chance to escape."
Seras nodded militarily.
~oOo~
"Lil' Miss Hellsing," a voice called smugly down the hall. "I'm comin' for ya. I'm gonna rape her and kill her, and then fuck her corpse again. I'll kill every last one, and burn everything down. Then I'll go home, take a piss, and go to sleep, okay?"
Seras narrowed her eyes at the vampire as he led his shambling soldiers. For what he'd just said, she wanted to hit him, hard, but Walter had the lead on this, so she'd be taking her cue from him, and could only watch as he somehow manipulated wires, so very, very cleverly to slice and dice a few of the ghouls.
"I missed?" Walter asked as he stalked towards the enemy. "I guess I'm not as sharp as I used to be," he decided. "Walter C. Dolnez," he said, introducing himself. "Hellsing family butler, former Hellsing garbage man."
"Shoot him!" the vampire ordered the ghouls, even as Walter raised his hands – and his wires – and raced between the bullets.
"So slow," Walter noted as he weaved through the first couple of rows of ghouls, then ducked down below where they were firing. "Then again, ghouls are only ghouls. It was very clever of you to take advantage of their toughness, but it is far from being an invincible army," he critiqued. Then he pulled on his wires, and those he'd caught were turned into nothing more than chum.
He stood.
"Pissed yourself yet?" he asked as he walked calmly forward, his wires occasionally catching the light as they moved with him. "Prayed to your God yet? Gotten ready to cower in a corner and beg for mercy, okay?" he asked, grinning darkly as his wires caught the light.
The vampire, Seras noted with a disgusted frown, had the nerve to laugh.
"Now that's more like it! I was getting bored 'cause this was too easy!" the vampire said happily, a manic look in his eyes.
He snapped his fingers, and the ghouls closed rank around him, shields to the fore, and guns poking out through the gaps that had been designed into the shields.
"March!" the vampire ordered.
"Miss Seras," Walter said calmly. "Commence direct support."
Seras took a deep breath, hoped that she wouldn't be put on repair-the-mansion-duty, and fired her Harkonen. With one shot, a simple squeeze of the trigger, she took out easily as many ghouls as Walter had with his wires not long before.
"Second shot, incendiary high-explosive round, VT fuse," Walter ordered. "At the enemy's centre."
"Aye," she answered, and popped out the spent cartridge as quickly as it was possible to do with the massive cannon.
"You little shits!" the vampire yelled as Seras fired, himself jumping out of the way just barely in time. He had a large gun in each hand and charged after Walter.
With the ghouls all down from her previous shot, Seras left her post.
"You old fart!" the vampire yelled – then lost one of the piercings through his lower lip. "Die!"
Seras caught him up as he raised the guns in his hands, disarming him just the way she'd been taught at the police academy and tackling him to the ground. If she did it with a bit more prejudice than the academy would have gone for... well.
"You like fucking corpses do you?" she hissed in his ear as she pulled his body back at an unnatural angle, legs stretched out behind him and one of her arms under his throat. "After today, you'll never pull your dick out of your trousers again," she promised dangerously. "Are you alright Walter?" she asked pleasantly, quickly changing her demeanour for the elderly gentleman.
"I'm not as spry as I was in the old days," he admitted a little unhappily while the vampire protested his own pain at the grip Seras had on him. "Anyway, where did you learn a tackle like that?"
Seras blinked up at the man. "I was a policewoman, one licensed to carry a gun, before I came here Walter," she pointed out.
"Hey, whore, you're a vampire?" the vampire Seras was holding managed to gasp out past her choke-hold. "Nobody told me they had any – urk!"
Seras had one arm wrapped around his throat, as already noted. The other arm was holding one of his, and had it between his back and her front. She squeezed tighter around his neck with her arm, and used the fist wrapped around his wrist to dig painfully into his kidneys. She was no whore, and she wouldn't take any of that sort of lip from this guy.
"We'll be the ones asking the questions," Walter said firmly. "What is your purpose? Who's pulling the strings behind this operation?" he demanded.
"Talk," Seras ordered as she quickly adjusted her hold on him and slammed his face into the floor.
"The objective is here," the vampire growled out. "An attack against the Hellsing Organisation and the Council of the Round Table. Then, the complete destruction of Alucard. That is what we were told to accomplish."
"'We'?" Walter repeated. "Did you just say 'we'?"
The vampire smirked, then winced as Seras dug both of her fists – and his right along with – into his kidneys again. "Damn right!" he said, the smug, crazed grin creeping back onto his face despite the pain Seras was deliberately causing him. "Right about now, my bro will be finishing him off."
"Ha," Seras scoffed. "You over-estimate your brother, and under-estimate Alucard," she informed him. "If your 'bro' is still alive at all, it is only because Alucard is toying with him."
"We were born to kill you sods off!" the vampire objected. "So just die already!"
"What can you do in that state?" Walter asked rhetorically.
"Guess you are senile," the vampire said with a smirk.
Walter looked up, passed Seras and her captive, and his eyes widened in horror. "What have you done?" he asked, the words little more than breathed out.
"You haven't answered one important question yet," Seras hissed at the vampire, not letting her attention waver to whatever horror was behind her. "Who put you up to this?" she demanded.
"Good luck to ya bitch," the vampire answered as he caught fire from nothing.
Seras kept hold of his wrists as she quickly stood, so that she wouldn't be burned as well, but she stood on his back, ripping the arms off as she dug her boot-heel into his spine.
"I'll tell ya who," he spat as he burned. "Millen...nium..." he said as he crumbled to ash.
Seras turned to see at last what horror behind her had struck Walter dumb.
"This is why I need a smaller armament as well as the Harkonen," she said bluntly.
"You'll have it no later than tomorrow," Walter promised.
Seras sighed. "Shall we?" she asked, gesturing her hand out to the shuffling ghouls that had once been Hellsing men, as though she were inviting Walter to dance.
Walter nodded solemnly, drawing his wires between his teeth in readiness.
Then they danced death into the ghouls that had once been their comrades. Walter sliced them cleanly. Seras ripped them apart messily, or bashed their heads open on the walls. They did this until all the ghouls were dead.
"I'll take them outside to be burned," Seras offered as she dispassionately ripped the head from the shoulders of the last ghoul. "You let Sir Integra know that it's finished, and that the vampire admitted to being sent on the order of something called 'Millennium'."
"Ah, thank you, Miss Victoria," Walter said.
"And Walter?" Seras said as she started to pile up the bodies.
"Yes, Miss Seras?"
"Find me a clean uniform? With trousers, for preference," she requested.
"Uh... Certainly, Miss Seras."
~oOo~
"You're kidding us Captain," one of the mercenaries scoffed.
"It's true!" Integra announced to the mercenaries as she allowed Seras to slip into the room – Alucard hadn't taught her yet how to just disappear, fade out of a room, vanish from one place and reappear in another. Sometimes, her master was a bastard.
"Your enemies will be vampires and ghouls. Immortal monsters. We splash the little demons with holy water and stab a crucifix through their hearts. Their unclean souls fall to ash around the cross. This is what we do," Integra said with some passion. "For further information, please read the Bram Stoker novel," she added with somewhat false pleasantry.
"Are you kidding?" asked another of the mercenaries.
"There's no such thing as a 'vampire'," the first agreed, scoffing lightly.
"The truth about the existence of vampires is a closely guarded secret, strictly need-to-know," Integra informed them. "Prior to now, none of you needed to know, and as such, didn't. The Hellsing Organisation was formed a century ago. We work out of the public eye to keep the normal civilians ignorant of one secret, and one secret only: vampires do exist."
Seras almost applauded the speech. It was very well given.
But Integra wasn't done, and there was a reason Seras had come with her.
"If that is not enough, then look there!" Integra bid them, and pointed at Seras. "Hellsing is fortunate enough to have two vampires at its disposal for the hunting of other vampires. This is one of them."
Seras was in a fresh uniform. It was the same uniform as before, with the tiny skirt and very high socks. Walter had provided her with a pair of trousers, but only the one pair on such short notice, and as active as everything was right now, Seras was saving them for a job where they weren't likely to be torn to shreds – and actually a mission, rather than just being around a mostly-empty mansion. So she was still in the skirt as the mercenaries stared at her.
"What?" the leader of the mercenaries asked, incredulous, as he got up from his chair and walked over to her. "You're a vampire?"
Seras shrugged. "Yep," she said simply.
The mercenaries all laughed.
Seras looked over at Integra. "I told you they'd laugh," she informed her boss. "I'm not intimidating enough." She sighed. "It's the tiny skirt, I know it is."
"Walter is ordering more trousers for you," Integra said with a shrug. "Give them a demonstration."
"Yes Ma'am," Seras sighed, and returned her attention to the mercenary leader standing before her.
"If this little Mignonette is a vampire, then I'm Frankenstein's Monster," he said with a giggle and a leer as he raised his hands in imitation – and moved in on Seras, clearly aiming to grope her chest.
Damn it.
And damn him.
Seras smirked. Once upon a time, she'd had to really fight off his type. Now though, she could (and did) just flick him with a finger. It was enough to send him flying, and get the point across that she was not human.
"You're really a vampire, aren't you?" the mercenary leader asked, shocked, from where he'd landed, bleeding from her little flick, among his men.
"Of course she is," Alucard answered as he slowly emerged from the wall.
"I want to learn that trick," Seras grumbled as all the mercenaries flinched back from her Master.
"What a cowardly bunch of soldiers," Alucard observed. "They look utterly useless."
"So very sorry Mistress," Walter's voice came from down the hallway, and he appeared not long after at Integra's shoulder, though he used the door. "I tried to stop him," he apologised.
"These men are charged with protecting my master," Alucard said. "I wanted to see what sort of soldiers they were."
"The greedy and lustful sort," Seras answered shortly and with disgust while Walter presented Integra with a letter that had arrived for her.
~oOo~
Disaster at the museum was averted when Seras carefully and with deliberate (if false) cheer, directed a group of elderly tourists between Alucard and Anderson as they were gearing up to fight. She'd stolen them from their rightful tour guide, but she returned them quickly enough, and was back on bodyguard duty.
It was daylight, so she really should have been sleeping, as her Master had been when he heard the Italian swearing at Sir Integra even hundreds of miles away. She wanted to learn how he did that too. By the time she'd changed into something... subtle that also protected her from the sun (boots, pressed trousers, a high-collared, long-sleeved shirt, and a hat which could be justified by the rare bout of fine weather they were having), Sir Integra had a book in her hands while the Italian talked.
"They've finally begun to understand 'Millennium'," Seras heard a voice say from a short distance away.
She had been just about to leave the building behind and go out into the sun-drenched patio where Integra and the Italian were, but froze instead and moved towards the bar, keeping her ears pricked as she pretended that she had changed her mind about going outside in favour of a cool drink.
"'Begun to understand'?" another voice asked. "Oh, they've barely scratched the surface!"
Seras knew her back was to them now, and didn't turn. Rather, she tilted her head back in an appearance of reading the menu that was on display above the counter.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you Herr-Komandant?" the owner of the first voice asked.
Seras requested a glass of water – surely she'd be able to keep that down? Blood was largely water, after all. She sipped carefully and, yes, it went down without a problem. Water she could still drink. Good to know, especially in situations like this one.
"Oh yes, very much. I am enjoying this very much," the second voice agreed as Seras continued to inconspicuously sip her water. "Think about it, this was an important point! The next time we see them, there's sure to be lots of blood and death! It's wonderful! Perfect, truly perfect!"
Seras frowned to herself. So, the enemy was watching Sir Integra's meeting with the Italian. Knew about this meeting in advance enough to watch it take place without giving themselves away to those they were observing. Were pleased that Hellsing was learning about who they were. The enemy was looking forward to blood and death.
Well, they'd come to the right place if they were knocking on her Master's coffin-lid, she'd give them that.
~oOo~
Speaking of coffin-lids...
"So, because I'm new, and weak, and haven't drunk any blood yet, I'm going to guess I've got to be in my coffin if I want to cross the sea," Seras said when she was confronted with the most recent issue of orders. "Or do I get to stay here at Hellsing and be the vampire on duty if Millennium decides to try attacking Hellsing again while you're in Brazil?" she asked.
Alucard was being sent to Rio de Janero in Brazil to follow up on some of the leads that Iscariot had provided. His orders were 'search and destroy'.
"You will be accompanying me," Alucard answered firmly. "And yes, you will be travelling in your coffin. You do raise a good point though..."
Seras shook her head. "Master, I think Millennium is mostly after you," she said.
"Oh?" Alucard asked, curiosity peaked. "What makes you think so?"
Seras relayed the brief conversation she had overheard at the museum after he'd left.
"And you didn't turn and kill them on the spot because...?" Alucard asked.
Seras raised a finger, clearly intent on counting off reasons again. "That would ruin your fun," she said reasonably.
Alucard grinned. "Such a thoughtful Childe I have," he commented, amused.
Seras smiled back and raised a second finger. "Killing this commander is an honour that belongs to Sir Integra, I'm fairly sure," she continued. "And if it doesn't yet, it will before long."
Alucard inclined his head. "You are probably correct," he allowed.
Seras raised a third finger. "Last but not least, it was a public museum full of members of said public. The Hellsing Organisation doesn't do 'public', and I couldn't think of a way Sir Integra could have explained me randomly killing two people in the museum café in broad daylight," she explained.
Alucard nodded. "Very well," he decided. "You are still coming with me to Rio. Be packed, and in your coffin, in two hours."
Seras sighed. "Will I get to see any of the traditional Rio night-life while we're there?" she asked, accepting the order without any further comment.
Alucard scoffed lightly.
Seras nodded. "Didn't think so," she admitted. "Can I be let out of my coffin as soon as we land?" she requested.
Alucard raised an eyebrow. "Do you have clothing suitable for a customer of the 'Rio Hotel'?" he asked.
Seras smiled dryly at her master. "That depends on if 'appropriate' would be for me to look like your P.A," she answered.
Alucard smirked back at her. "That will do," he agreed.
~oOo~
Seras delicately folded the parasol that had been over her shoulder while she'd been outside as she joined her Master at the reception desk of the hotel. The coffins, unlike weapons, could not and would not be carried in those impossible spaces that Alucard had taught Seras to carry her weapons in. The reason? The coffins carried them, not the other way around, ever.
So, Pip (the man in charge of the mercenaries) was getting the men to bring the coffins in, draped in black cloths so that people wouldn't know exactly what was being brought in, and the young man at the counter was stuttering protests about size-restrictions on luggage that could be brought into the hotel.
"It's perfectly fine," Alucard assured the young man.
"N-no..."
"It's..." Alucard said, and pulled off his glasses. "Perfectly..." he raised a hand so that it hovered right in front of the receptionist's face. "Fine..."
"It's perfectly fine," the receptionist agreed dazedly. "Perfectly."
Alucard nodded and turned away from him to head for the lifts.
"How do I do that?" Seras asked softly as the elevator doors closed and the lift began to carry them up to the top floor.
Alucard smirked. "Drink, of your own free will, my blood," he said plainly, and with plain delight, plain, dark, delight. "After that, it's just practice."
The elevator arrived at their floor and they exited. Pip and the men with the coffins had taken an earlier elevator, while Alucard had been hypnotising the reception clerk, so when they reached the room, the curtains were drawn, the coffins were there waiting for them, and so was a somewhat upset Pip. The man was not pleased to be staying in a cheap motel while Alucard and Seras would be in the lap of luxury.
"Captain, we're being highly visible for the enemy to come at us," Seras said before her Master could say something delightfully condescending. "Once that's over with, we'll be staying in the cheap motel as well."
Alucard grinned. "I am so looking forward to it all," he said. "It is looking more and more like it will be so much fun here."
Seras raised an eyebrow at her master. Fun, huh? Well, her master relished a good fight just as much as the guy who was in charge of the enemy seemed to, so, yes, she supposed for him it would be fun. Maybe she'd even enjoy herself as well. She wasn't so sure of that one yet.
Alucard ordered some wine from room service, and then it was a matter of sitting down to wait while they imbibed. Seras was pleased to note that she could drink wine just as she could drink water. She'd never been a big wine-drinker when she was alive, but on those rare nights when she'd gotten a bonus in her last pay and had a night off and she'd pampered herself, she'd liked a glass of white then. This wasn't a glass of white though. Of course her Master had ordered a red.
She could taste every nuance of the wine too. It was wonderful, and without the usual effects that wine had on her – she wasn't getting giggly.
"I can't get drunk any more, can I?" she asked her master absently as she considered her glass.
"No," Alucard agreed, a hint of wistful melancholy in his tone as he swished the beverage around in the glass, "but you can still enjoy the flavours."
Seras nodded.
The lights suddenly went out and a helicopter appeared at their window, a bright light trying to penetrate the closed curtains.
"It's about to get good," Alucard noted happily.
Seras pulled out the small gun that Walter had given her after the invasion of the mansion. It was just a small thing compared to what her master carried, but it was still a good gun. Walter, bless him, had given Seras a modified version of the sort of gun she'd used when she was on the force – a Glock 22. Most of the modification was in the rounds, which were designed for killing monsters rather than people, but goodness knows they'd work on people just as well.
"Police Girl," Alucard said.
"Woman, please Master," Seras requested. "Policewoman."
Alucard chuckled. "It doesn't have the same ring," he defended lightly.
Seras shrugged. "Then call me 'Kitten', like the rest of my old squad did," she offered. "I got used to that one, and showed each and every one of them that this kitten has claws."
Alucard laughed in delight. "Very well, Kitten," he said. "What is that you are holding?"
"Something a bit more subtle than the Harkonen," she answered. "Walter gave me rounds for it that are armour-piercing, or explosive, or depleted uranium, or have silver castings, or have mercury tips, or any number of fun things," she explained as she checked the clip before slamming it back in professionally. "And there's fifteen rounds to a clip. It's just something for the situations where the Harkonen is over-kill. It even has a silencer."
Alucard chuckled. "Very good, Kitten," he said with approval.
Then their door was slammed open by the local police force, all kitted out in bullet-proofing and holding automatic weapons. Which they proceeded to use, firing upon Alucard, who they could see since he was facing the door. Seras had her back to the door and was in a wing-backed chair, invisible to them.
"Tell me Kitten," Alucard said lowly as he was riddled with bullets that would do him no permanent harm. "Are any of the rounds in the clip you just loaded 'armour-piercing'?"
Seras shook her head. "No Master," she answered as she raised her gun, pointing it over her shoulder, past the chair she was sitting in and at the police that had invaded their suite. "I always carry a couple of clips of normal ammunition as well though, just in case there really is no call for anything more," she explained as she fired, using that third eye that her master had already taught her about, to shoot each man between the eyes. "Like now."
When she'd emptied her clip, there were still five men standing. Twenty men had invaded the suite, and Seras only had fifteen bullets in her clip.
Alucard, in a bloody mess on the floor, grinned and stood. "You're very efficient, Kitten," he praised lowly, "and you've left some for me as well."
Seras shrugged as she lowered her gun to her lap once more. "You told me once that if I shot like a human, I'd miss like a human. I don't shoot like a human any more," she answered as she cleaned and re-loaded her gun.
She didn't bother looking up as her master killed four of the remaining five messily, or when he stalked up to the last, the one that had tried to run.
There was a single report of a gun, and Seras knew it wasn't the fire of either of the guns her master owned. The last policeman had killed himself rather than be ripped to shreds by Alucard.
Seras stood from her chair and walked over to where her master stood before the dead man, scowling at the body of the man who had taken his own life when confronted with the No-Life-King.
"At least he didn't soil himself before committing suicide," Seras observed.
Alucard snorted with disgust, and turned away from the body against the door. "Let's go, Kitten," he decided. "Time to make war. Oh, but first... a phone call."