Chapter One: A Crimson Bath in the Hidden Manor

"What the bloody hell is this?" Josephine exclaimed through her labored breathing. Her evening of keeping ghouls wrangled within the limits of Cheddar was exhausting, even for her—even a vampire can only take so much. "God...what sort of dodgy, idiotic architect built this bloody thing!" She kicked the brick she had stumbled over, it was just another crumbled piece of the now decrepit old manor that loomed over her among the dark treeline. She rested the end of her rifle on the ground, propping herself up slightly as she examined the area for any more ghouls. She looked up, hearing a loud gunshot and sighed "He's finished once again." she paused and looked disdainfully at the manor, "Maybe.. I'll just clear this old place and head back." she reasoned, trying her best to make sure no mistakes were made in order to keep Sir Hellsing's favor.

The manor was dark, and even in the foyer the scent of blood and rotten death permeated the walls and stale decade-old air despite the general cleanliness of its walls and floor. Josephine choked on the stench, this was old, soiled blood—and she couldn't stand it. Covering her mouth and nose, Josephine made her way deeper into the manor, exploring its crumbling halls as she searched out the source of the rank odor. Each hall was in worse condition than the one before it as she cleared every layer of decay, following the ever-strengthening scent of death. She reached the end of all the minor halls, each one leading into a massive hall. The walls along each side of this huge main hall were littered with splintered roof beams, torn wallpaper and tapestry, along with crumpled and ripped paintings and their smashed frames; all the while the stifled, barely filtered air drowned her in the inevitable stench she had been hunting the origin of. As she forced herself through the wall of stink, she came across a large double-door, each door partially cracked—the space between them enough for maybe a slender child to fit through.

She grabbed the doors and pried them open, the hinges creaking and screeching as she ripped them from their rusted positions. "GAH!" She exclaimed as the doors flew open, the hinges giving way, releasing a concentrated gust of the wretched blood-soaked air. She pulled her shirt over her nose, staggering backwards with the sheer power of the odor, and looked into the now open room through squinted eyes, the rankness of the air making them water.

"Oh Dear God..." Josephine's eyes widened with the bloodbath that those rusted doors had contained. "..What...in the bloody hell...happened here.." she managed to choke out between her gags as the stench enveloped her, she'd never smelled anything so disgusting, and the sight was just as grotesque. Before her laid an inner chamber, presumably the bedchambers of the late Master of the house by the ragged remnants of a luxurious silken canopy and matching splintered and fallen remains of a once ornate bed frame, the bedchamber floor completely covered in rotten and mummified flesh, outstretched skeletons all a part of a pool of crusty, hardened blood that now created a new layer of floor around the skeletons and flakes of dried flesh. It was incredible she thought, for lack of a better word, the sheer mass of victims, and she didn't see a single weapon among the blood or on any of the bodies.

She was speechless by this point, trying to comprehend the massacre that had occurred in this desolate room, without a soul knowing: she was alive long enough that she would have easily seen this reported on even if it had happened 50 years before. "How?" She asked herself, bracing herself against the now exposed door frame. "How could this occur without a single family being concerned that these people disappeared?" She prepared to enter the room, placing her foot on the crusted blood layer. Upon determining that it was hardened enough to step on without ooze, she applied her weight, and moved forward. Each step made her cringe, the layer of blood crunching like fresh red-brown snow beneath her feet. As she crossed the grotesque rot that was the floor, she began to notice an odd similarity among the exposed bodies: they were all missing heads. Side-stepping to avoid a group of headless, rotten masses, she looked over them and found some sort of hint; a face peered up at her from the layer of dried blood. She grimaced as she kneeled by the face, the blood crunching with her weight, "Look at that sorry mug..." Fearfully covering her nose and mouth with her shirt instead of just her hand to brave the disgusting odor, she dug the dried blood from around the face, gagging at each scrape until she freed the poor decapitated soul, and carefully removed the head from the blood layer. Looking over it, she groaned with displeasure. The head had a massive bullet hole hole right through the ears, its eyes were sunken in, and its mouth littered with dried, ripped, flesh. She tossed the head back into the hole she'd dug it from, the fragile aged skull disintegrating as it hit the ground. "Holy Hell..." She stood back up, sighing deeply "A room of slaughtered ghouls...ghouls.." she paused, a small chill shooting up her spine as she counted the sheer number of ghouls. "..every last one. No wonder it reeked so bad...rotten ghoul's blood." She scanned the room, and noticed along the back wall of the room—leaned against the wall alongside the splattered ghoul's blood, was a body, its massive dried husk of flesh body barely clinging to the skeleton and from its neck where its head had once been, a spray of ash decorated the wall.

She couldn't help but be taken aback at the sight, unbeknownst to her, the master of the house had been a centuries old vampire, a creature who had thrived in the lap of luxury since the olden days, hiding away and taking not only the easiest ways out in all situations, but manipulating, capturing, or eliminating anyone in his path to guarantee his own survival. Now the head that at one time manipulated, enslaved, and devoured so many was merely silvery dust on a decrepit old wall, the master's mindless servants all slaughtered before his now decapitated body.

"This ash..It should mean this body was that of a vampire, right?" she reasoned aloud. "It has to be..."

She was distraught, trying to decipher the situation in order to correctly report her find to Sir Hellsing. After a few moments of canvassing the room, she sighed "Everything is so aged... It's hard to get a good read on anything that might have happened... and with all this vile, hellish rot everywhere, there's no sign of whoever escaped this..." She made her way out of the room, the blood crunching beneath her feet as she exited.

She hurriedly escaped the crumbling manor, and quickly reconvened with her cohorts before they returned to Sir Hellsing's manor, the headquarters for the Hellsing Organization. As they returned to the manor, Josephine began explaining what she'd discovered to her employer. Each detail she recounted with impeccable accuracy, each image had left a bloody stain in her mind, something she would never be able to remove. She watched her employer's face, this scene's brutality was equivalent to what she would expect from Alucard, but as Integra's face slightly distorted with an internal concern, Josephine came to the understanding that this bloodbath was not incurred by order of her employer. She slumped into the seat beside her boss, crossing her arms. "Who in the bloody hell could have done that... The Iscariot wouldn't do that, would they?" Josephine looked at Integra, who was staring forward, her face intensely focused as she lost herself in thought.

Josephine crossed her legs, "No matter who it was, no innocent lives seemed to be taken outside the manor, right?" she looked at her boss, she wanted to give Integra some semblance of comfort over the ominous situation at hand.