All disclaimers and notes contained in the first chapter.
PRELUDE TO WAR
Part Two – The Dark Flame
Finally recover
And the mood is right
Looking up into a neon sky
The child in me takes over
It's been too long since the last time that I tried to fly"Body Crumbles" Queen of the Damned OST
Alucard stood on top of the hotel itself, waiting for the Police Girl to inform him that she had reached the fourth floor. There was a cold breeze. It lifted the fine black strands of his hair and sifted through them lightly, as though pleased by the texture. Alucard felt the barest psychic brush against his mind and nearly sighed – the Police Girl really needed to work on her telepathy.
Are you ready, Police Girl? He asked, latching firmly onto her mind. An affirmative filtered through the link and Alucard grinned and leapt from the roof. On the count of three. The tail of his red jacket streamed out behind him and he tilted his head slightly so that he wouldn't lose his hat. He liked this hat.
He pulled out the Jackal and flexed his fingers. Three!
There was someone sitting on the sill of the open window, not paying attention to the outside world. No time for that. Alucard grabbed the ledge just above the window as he fell and swung himself inside, crashing into the person as he did so. Skidding to a halt inside, he saw the person – demon, he reminded himself with a fanged grin – blur over to the side of a red haired and apparently human someone lounging on the bed. The Police Girl had slammed the door open just as he'd entered and was eyeing both demons with distrust down the barrel of a hand gun. "Hands up, demon scum!"
The red head's eyes were wide, a fresh, innocent green. Alucard actually had to use his nose to determine whether he was male – he was tall and slender and beautiful with pale skin and full lips, for all that he looked shocked at the moment. The other, dressed all in black, was considerably shorter with childlike features that fiercely contrasted a set of furious, smouldering red eyes.
Alucard grinned. "So... demons."
The redhead's eyes, if possible, widened a little more. Then they narrowed. "So... vampires." To Alucard's great pleasure, the demon slid gracefully from the bed and ran a hand through his hair. There was a burst of strange demon energy and the redhead's hand came away filled with a rose. Alucard chuckled. The shorter demon was more straightforward, holding a Japanese-style sword at the ready.
"What do you want with us?" The redhead's voice was calm, low and melodic. Seras gritted her teeth against the easy charm in that voice. "Speak slowly and clearly, please."
"You are the creatures behind the latest series of deaths in London." Alucard answered easily. Green eyes narrowed slightly as though the words were foreign. Then a grim smile appeared on his shapely face.
"No. But you'll try to kill us anyway." The black-haired demon hissed something at his partner and the redhead nodded, expression becoming less pleased with the situation. He replied in the same flowing, complex-sounding language and held out the rose at arms' length. "I should warn you, my partner doesn't like being taken by surprise." A light smirk curled the lips. "I find it quite amusing."
Alucard grinned. He almost liked this foreign demon. His opponent twitched the rose and murmured something to the second demon, whose brows dipped so violently that they became visible below the white bandanna across his forehead. Seras let out a soft gasp and fired the handgun as the darker demon raised his blade and took the offensive, moving towards her so fast that he blurred.
The shot ricocheted off the wall and Alucard made a soft sound of amusement as he, too, shifted into motion. They were safety rounds, made to make a mess of humans but not go through walls. They hadn't bothered bringing any silver ammunition since as far as they knew it was useless against demons. Alucard pulled the trigger and was both pleased and surprised when the redhead dodged the first bullet and avoided another from the Police Girl with a neat spring across the apartment's unused bed.
With another surge of the strange demonic power, the redhead flicked his wrist. "Rose Whip!" The rose in his hand mutated instantaneously, elongating into what Alucard was indeed forced to call a rose whip. Easily five meters long, its diameter was roughly similar to that of his index finger. However, his index finger did not have inch-long thorns at regular intervals along its length. Alucard fired another shot, aimed directly at the youth's forehead.
There was a flash of green. Two halves of the bullet went their separate ways with a loud 'CRACK' and a portion of the rose whip flopped to the ground. However, when the redhead retracted it, it seemed completely unharmed. Alucard's eyes lit up. "You're fast." He murmured in approval.
The Police Girl, meanwhile, was not having as much fun as her master. The smaller demon was so fast that not even her vampiric speed could touch him. Fortunately his blade wasn't silver, or she'd have been in real trouble. She was bleeding, but only slightly – she had fed earlier in the evening – and it didn't exactly hurt. The strength of the blows knocked her off-balance, though, making it ever more difficult to aim her handgun. She finally lunged at the demon, making it inside the range of his blade. He immediately raised an arm to fend her off, but she raised the handgun and pulled the trigger – she was so close, she had to hit something.
The demon's head jerked back and blood spattered the floor. The battle between the red-haired demon and her master paused for a moment as the whip-wielder spun around with an anguished cry of, "Hiei!" Seras raised her weapon to take careful aim and several things happened at once.
The first was that Alucard's eyes widened – he'd lost his glasses underfoot long ago. "Police Girl!" He raised the Jackal.
The second was that the red-haired demon let out a blood-curdling battle cry, lashing the gun from her hand and indeed, dividing it into two separate parts. Alucard's Jackal suffered a similar fate, and though he only lost part of the magazine, he also lost most of his hand.
The third was that from behind her, the black-haired demon had raised his hand towards her and said something that sounded like "Jaou Ensatsu...!"
She didn't hear the rest as fire exploded all over her body. She could only scream.
"Police Girl!"
Stupid! Hadn't he taught her better than that, didn't she know not to turn her back on an opponent until he was most certainly dead? It would have been a little more acceptable had they only been ghouls, but these were not mere FREAKS, not even mere vampires – these were demons, some of the most powerful and dangerous creatures the world had to offer. And she'd turned her back on one of them. He raised the Jackal and focused along its length, aiming for the forehead of the black-haired demon. The blood soaking over the white bandanna was almost too much of a focus.
He was surprised when the red-haired demon twirled the whip into action, taking off most of the barrel of the Police Girl's handgun and also removing his thumb, index and middle fingers along with half the magazine of the Jackal. Alucard watched with half an eye as his beloved gun clattered to the floor, noting how odd it was that the demon would act to save his companion.
Lovers.
He paid no attention to the thought as the black-haired demon raised a hand. "Jaou Ensatsu...!" An explosion of black flame and the Police Girl's scream of agony cut off the rest of his words. Alucard's eyes widened. He summoned the flame? The red-haired demon flipped away to stand behind his mate, whip held at the ready once more.
Seras wept bloody tears, patted frantically at her arms, her body, but to no avail – the fire would not be suffocated. Alucard's upper lip pulled back in a furious snarl as the red-haired demon spoke over the horrible screams.
"If you leave now, he'll put out the fire." He said, voice still pleasant enough over Seras' cacophony. "If you do not... how long would you say she has, Hiei?" He added as the female vampire collapsed.
The red-eyed fury glared at Alucard, an almost imperceptible smirk tugging at the cupid's bow mouth. He said something curt but complicated in the odd, flowing language Alucard now recognised to be Japanese. Green eyes glittered. "If you don't leave, about two seconds. If you do, he will suppress the flames when you are more than two miles away."
Alucard's expression darkened. For all her aloof pretences, Integra had warmed to the Police Girl of late. She would not take the destruction of one of her best agents lightly. And with power over dark flame, it was entirely possible that even Alucard wouldn't survive a direct assault from the dark demon. He grit his teeth, sketched a bow and scooped Seras Victoria into his arms. "You may expect us when she has healed." He assured them with a venomous smile. He took his leave through the window, abandoning the Jackal with reluctance.
The black-haired demon, whose name was Hiei, sheathed his sword and tore the white bandanna from his forehead. A slit in the skin widened and finally split open to reveal a third eye with a purple iris. It glowed slightly as his other two eyes slid slowly closed. He spoke in clear, fluent Japanese: "They're headed... west. Very fast – already one hundred and fifty metres..."
The redhead's rose whip made a soft schloop and became a single rose again. He tucked it away in his hair and looked around the room with a sigh. Side-stepping the bed, he walked to the bedside table, where two tiny silver earrings lay side by side. He tossed one to Hiei and clipped one into place in his own ear. "Let's just leave, shall we? No one will ever believe two foreigners were attacked in their hotel room. The landlord didn't like that we were Japanese, anyway."
"Get your pretty things then, Kurama." Hiei replied with a smirk, not bothering to open his eyes as he attached his own earring. Kurama chuckled and rested a pale hand on his shoulder, scooping the bandanna from the smoking floor and giving it a brief lick before applying it to the other demon's bleeding face.
"If you can track them with the Jagan, there's no need to leave right away. Their powers will be weaker during the day... and I must tend to this, or it will scar." He finished in a matter of fact tone. "Come into the bathroom, I need clean water."
Hiei snorted, but allowed himself to be led into the pitiful excuse for a bathroom. As he understood it, English ningen were barbarians in comparison to the Japanese – or at least, they stank more. He was intensely pleased that Koenma had organised their transportation – he would have suffocated in a flying death trap. (Known to the rest of the human world as an aeroplane, but Hiei was less than tolerant of humanity at the best of times.) Kurama tugged him over to stand in front of the sink and he stood there, arms crossed, eyes closed.
"Make sure you stop her from burning," The red-haired demon reminded him, turning the water on with a deft flick of his wrist and holding a hand towel in the flow for a few seconds.
"Hn." Hiei replied. He hissed slightly as Kurama pressed the damp cloth to his cheek, where the girl's bullet had cut into the skin. Kurama kissed the top of his head and murmured soothing words – needlessly; Hiei knew by now that the red-haired demon would do things as painlessly as possible – growing in his other hand several small plants, which he set down around the sink. Hiei waited until the male vampire had passed outside the two mile radius before he reached out with a little of his youki and snuffed out the demonic flame he had set to the female vampire's form.
Alucard glanced down as the black flames abruptly sank down into nothingness with a soft hiss. The Police Girl's skin was black and flaking, cracked like the clay of a riverbed in a drought. None of the dark fire had transferred itself to his clothing, confirming his suspicions that the shorter demon, Hiei, was a master fire-wielder. He'd heard of demons like this, but he had never met any before. He grinned slightly. It would be very exciting, visiting them again.
A twinge of guilt niggled at the back of his mind as the Police Girl began to stir, a soft moan escaping her lips, cracking halfway through. With some of his own powers, Alucard clamped down on her consciousness, sending her back into a deep, peaceful slumber. She would need blood. Quite possibly more blood than the Hellsing Organisation had to spare, these days. He brushed the thought aside – he'd gone without blood for decades, he could do it for a few days without any ill effects.
She would have to take more of his own blood, he suspected, in order to heal. His smile became a touch more normal, almost satisfied. At least one good thing would come of this. Even if he had lost his gun. The grin overtook his face again.
Walter would be so displeased.
A/N: Thanks to riskygamble, the only reviewer. :) I was seriously considering having Hiei and Alucard have a beat-up over their many, many eyes... but it honestly never occurred to me to have Kurama and Walter duke it out over whip-like things. chuckle Perhaps later.