Part 2: The Fight with Rip Van Winkle

Disclaimer: I do not own Hellsing, Twilight or the song Mr. Killjoy by Lordi. These things are used for non-profit purposes and I personally make no money off of this nor does anybody I know.

Warning: Ahead is intense bloody violence and scenes depicting graphic and unusual rape. Not for the faint of heart. All those who don't enjoy that sort of this turn back now.

For the rest of you bunch, have fun ;)

Jasper turns away from the mystery crate to look again at Alucard fighting with the small grey object. After much cursing and hopping around, Alucard finally manages to yank it off his face and throw it to the ground. The creature lands on its feet and tenses its haunches. Jasper sees grey fur, long fangs, red eyes. To his utter surprise it's a vampire rabbit.

Jasper lets out a chuckle, but Alucard is less than amused by the little vampy critter. He grunts in pain and rubs his rapidly healing eyes, which only a moment ago had been gouged out by the bunny. His vision clears and the rabbit and the No-Life King size each other up. His face is back to normal and no longer resembles Jasper's evil twin from hell.

The whole scenario is so bizarre that Jasper can't help but ask, "Are you afraid of that rabbit?"

Alucard looks up in mock surprise. "Do you think that's a rabbit? Oh no, my friend, that's not a rabbit." Gracefully, Alucard reaches into his duster and starts to pull out a double-barreled shotgun, which is fully loaded. "It's a clay pigeon." He beams as he aims his twelve-gauge gun at the vampire rabbit. In about thirty seconds, Bugs Bunny will join Daffy Duck in hell.

Just as Alucard squeezes the double triggers, something materializes in front of him. The shotgun pellets harmlessly deflect off the solid chest of Jasper Whitlock, who has intercepted the gunshot on behalf of the rabbit. Alucard can only stare in shock as Jasper grabs his gun and smashes it against the stone walls of the volcano's interior.

This is an outrage! Alucard could never have anticipated this move in a million years. He continues to stare at Whitlock at a loss for words. He thought that he could anticipate every emotion and response of the so-called warrior. He thought that Jasper was nothing more than a dog, a spineless creature that existed only because of the will of others.

He is a dog -- the mongrel does not even abstain of human blood by his own desire; he merely follows the trends set by his family. Why then does he stop Alucard from extracting his petty vengeance on this creature? He cannot fathom Jasper's motive for denying him this small sadistic pleasure. Is it perhaps that Alucard's overly simplistic worldview of men, dogs and monsters cannot account for all the complexities of the natures of vampire and man? Or is it simply that Alucard cannot have known that someone would dare to defy him after he had struck fear into their hearts?

When Alucard does find words, they're hardly profound or mysterious, "How dare you! That gun was a gift from the North London Mafia."

"Why would the North London Mafia give you a gift?" Jasper asks. But really, he's only half surprised by anything the Nosferatu says anymore. What's more surprising is that he'd been able to sneak the weapon past CBS security on the way in.

As the two speak, the vampire rabbit begins to hop towards the big wooden box on the crater's edge.

Ignoring his prey, Alucard smiles as if Jasper were an idiot, and says enticingly, "Let's just say that I cannot disobey the Hellsing family, but they pay for shit. Now, the Mafia on the other hand are quite generous to those that offer their services with excellence."

Jasper's attention is caught by the bunny, and he follows it towards the mystery box. He's suddenly aware of an excitement radiating from the crate. By the level and variation of the emotion, his gift tells him that the box contains about ten or eleven people.

Alucard is not blind to Jasper's diverted attention. He senses the alien presence, as well, but only feels disappointment that the Major would resort to something as boring as ghoul-like creatures to entertain him. He's having much more fun taunting the Cullen boy. He chases after him while raising his voice. "That's right; I have secret dealings with the Mafia. THat's right, I have done all kinds of bad things. I deal and cook crystal meth, I engage in grand theft autho and I even babysit the boss's daughter from time to time. If you ever need any top grade weed . . ." He expects the comment about the weed to grab Jasper's attention, but it fails.

Alucard finally catches up to Jasper. The red light, the last gasp of sun, coming through the opening in the cave causes Jasper to sparkle red. It's a fitting color scheme. The pair stands twenty feet away from the box as the vampire rabbit scratches and gnaws at the sides of it.

Jasper communicates with Alucard free of emotion. "There are people in that box. I think you should go first." He knows that they need to get into the box, but he deduces that whatever is inside might possibly be dangerous.

Alucard sniffs in distaste for a moment and then starts to laugh. "Ha! You're learning a few lessons from me; I like that." The Nosferatu casually struts his stuff over to the box, black hair flowing freely and eyes blazing red.

When Alucard is about six paces from the box, a sound is heard from within. It's the sound of a musket being cocked.

Jasper and Alucard both stiffen at the noise, but neither can react before something amazing happens. Something, some kind of shiny projectile, shoots out of the wood container. It zips through the air so fast that even Alucard can barely track its movements. The magic bullet turns around one hundred and eighty degrees in mid-flight and strikes the vampire bunny. The rabbit is torn to shreds but Jasper can't tell if the rabbit is dead or not. If it truly is a vampire and the heart is intact, then the rabbit will survive.

Twisting and turning in a midair ballet, the magic bullet jerks this way and that before it strikes Alucard in the head, reducing his over-inflated noggin to a gory mist. Alucard's headless body falls and is struck by the magic bullet at least a dozen more times before it finally hits the ground. Alucard must have spirited his bombs into a kind of null space, because he does not explode.

Jasper tries to run, but even his thousand-and-one-foot-per-second speed is not enough to evade this strange projectile. Before he can blink his topaz eyes, the magic bullet strikes him dead in the heart. The force of the impact causes Jasper to slam against a cave wall. The bullet twists and turns several times in insane patterns before it strikes Jasper again, this time through his lower back and out his stomach.

The cave rumbles from Jasper's impact; several tons of volcanic rock land on top of him. Effortlessly, he throws the dark grey stone off of him and assesses the damage to his body. The entry wound of the magic bullet is small, but the exit wounds are the size of bowling balls. He can feel that several of his ribs are shattered, and the muscles below his left shoulder blade and in his abdomen are obliterated. On the floor in front of him he can see the missing pieces of himself scattered around like shards of statue. Except that shards of statue don't crawl towards each other and unite to form larger pieces.

Jasper immediately begins to run towards the pieces and shove them into the new holes in his body. The venom that courses through the body of every Unstet also functions as superglue to hold dismembered body parts in place long enough for them to reattach. Almost immediately, Jasper feels shards of his body moving around and fitting into place. The muscles and bones will fully heal in two to five minutes, depending on Jasper's level of physical activity. He can only hope that it's two instead of five.

Once more, Jasper appraises the situation. The giant wooden "prize" falls apart and shows its deadly content. In the back, there are ten figures dressed in the uniforms of the Waffen SS, the elite fighting force of the Nazi regime. But these are not human fighters; their hearts do not beat, yet neither are they ghouls as Alucard had thought. Their teeth are sharp like razors and their eyes are bloody red. There is no mistaking that they are, in fact, vampires, and they're armed with rocket launchers and machine guns with incendiary ordinance. They've come with the right weapons necessary to kill an Unstet. One in the back is hauling around a massive flamethrower that is meant to be carried on a vehicle.

The leader of the group is a musket-wielding woman in a man's suit. She looks at Jasper and says, "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor; my varhead vill punish all vithout distinction."

It's the lamest thing Jasper has ever heard.

Since she is the only one in the group with a musket, Jasper can conclude that she is the source of the magic bullet. Even so, she is not the only threat of the group, and he is eager to get out of their weapons' range.

Jasper leaps from the spot so fast that he almost appears to fly. He does so just in time to avoid a burst of aerosol napalm from the flame thrower. The blast of fire is slower than a bullet, but with its mushrooming effect it has an equal chance of hitting him. The blast of fire lights up the cave almost as if it's being lit by the noon sun.

Quickly finding cover, Jasper ducks behind a stalagmite. The cave is large, but there are only so many places to hide. At best the volcanic outcroppings can provide only temporary cover against the weapons of the FREAK soldiers not forty yards from Jasper's position. Right on schedule, a hail of incendiary bullets rains on Jasper's hiding spot, quickly reducing it to white-hot rubble as the phosphorous bullets unleash their hellish heat.

Jasper suffers only minor wounds from their guns; he has smoldering streaks running across his left side. The wounds are purely superficial and aren't even worth noting. His tactical mind begins to run through options and alternative battle tactics. He knows that the two main threats are the magic bullet marksman and the flamethrower operator, the more dangerous of the two being the marksman.

He can estimate that now the marksman is reloading her musket, and soon she'll be ready to fire. The only disadvantage that her weapon has is its slow reload time, and Jasper plans to exploit that before she does some more serious damage.

Casting his sharp gaze around, Jasper notices a fault line from his end of the irregular shaped cave to the high ceiling. As he raises his fist above his head, he almost regrets the damage he's about to do to this beautiful cave.

The FREAK soldiers are having fun, they've been told that their enemy sparkles in the sunlight, and so they assume that he'll be easy prey. The flamethrower operator busies himself with igniting Alucard's headless carcass, laughing like a child as he does so. Really, they're almost disappointed that Alucard was taken down so easily.

The FREAKs shout to their leader, "Lead us, Obersturmfuhrer Rip Van Winkle; lead us to kill the sparkling heretic." Yes, the Major has told his troops about the Cullens' refusal to partake of human blood and their overall concern for human life. Needless to say, the Nazi soldiers are angered and offended by these claims. To think that such creatures call themselves vampires!

Rip is almost finished loading her gun when she hears a thundering noise in the cave coming from the direction of their sparkling quarry. To her surprise, she sees a fissure opening up in the roof of the cave, spreading from where Jasper struck.

Some of the smarter soldiers jump out of the way, but one of them is not so lucky. Massive boulders start to fall from the ceiling as parts of it fall in. One FREAK is crushed like a bug, splattered into a puddle of gore. Even with advanced regeneration, he won't be getting up from that.

The Nazi vampires all howl with rage at one of their own being slain by such a laughable foe. Their howls are cut short when Jasper grabs a boulder the size of a hummer and charges at them, using the rock as a shield.

Rip Van Winkle barely jumps out of the way before being hit by the impossibly fast-moving rock face. The boulder must weigh at least three or four tons of the metric variety. Rip Van Winkle can barely manage lifting a single metric ton, but this creature is running with at least triple that. It would seem that he's not so laughable after all. She must be extra careful and kill him now.

Jasper grits his teeth as the flamethrower Nazi tries to turn him into Southern barbecue, but the broad face of the volcanic rock shields him. The heat from the flames is enough to instantly melt the skin off of a human or a softer vampire, but Jasper suffers literally no damage. His sparkling Unstet skin is fire resistant. Without either being first dismembered or the use of a chemical accelerant, the hottest fire would take seven years to burn him completely.

Wanting to give the flamethrower Nazi a stern lesson, Jasper hurls the rock forward. He ignores the pain from his healing wounds in his chest and stomach. While his companions jump out of the way as if lifted by anti-gravity belts, the flamethrower operator is weighed down by his heavy weapon and takes the full impact, shattering close to every bone in his body. He is grievously injured, but his weapon hasn't exploded. The operator will heal and will fight the sparkling faker.

"Faker? Rather hypocritical of you, wouldn't you say?" The musical, baritone voice frightens the operator. He can't even let out a scream before a pair white gloved hands grabs him by the throat and drags him into the darkness.

Jasper dodges and weaves the hail of gunfire. The FREAKs are enraged, but they're so mad now that they've forgotten their military discipline and have become nothing more than an angry mob that Jasper will be able to pick off one by one. Trying to get a good look at her enemy, Rip Van Winkle screams for her men to get back in rank, but in their livid fury they don't even hear her.

Jasper is using his empathic power against these FREAKs, turning their own warrior spirit against them. He didn't survive the vampire wars in the south simply because he was the best fighter or the best tactician. It's true that he was a great fighter and a good tactician, one of the finest, but evolution has shown that being the fittest is no guarantee of survival. By mastering his empathic power and using it for something other than calming people down, Jasper had been able to gain an edge over his enemies and win. Batman has his utility belt and Jasper Cullen has his emotional powers. Everyone needs a little ace up their sleeve.

Rip can't get a good sight on the enemy, and if she can't get a bead on her enemy then she'll risk having the magic bullet miss. The magic bullet never misses, but an un-aimed gun never hits what you want it to.

Suddenly, the Unstet leaps in front of her, causing a mini quake as his heavy weight slams into the floor of the cavern. She would shoot him, except that she's suddenly shot by several of her own men. Their incendiary rounds were designed to punch through the dense bone and muscle of the Unstet species and go right through Rip. She can't help but scream as the white hot bullets burn through her.

Taking advantage of Rip's pain, Jasper slashes at her. Fortunately for Rip, a few of her men retain at least a little of their arms training and shoot the Unstet scum.

Jasper surpasses the growl of pain that builds up in his now half-healed stomach. In order to avoid more potentially devastating hits, he jumps up and clings to the ceiling. Instead of staying on the ground to pick off Jasper, the enraged FREAKs jump after him, hoping for a bit of personal glory in close-quarter combat. Ah yes, the ability to read and manipulate emotions is a potent power, indeed.

Nevertheless, Jasper knows that his power can only buy him so much win. He needs to get out of this cave, and fast. In this enclosed environment, he'll be at a disadvantage against foes that have him constantly in their line of sight. He also needs to dig the incendiary bullets out of his arm. If he doesn't, he might lose his entire arm to the white phosphorous projectiles.

Besides the pain from his arm, there is another feeling that has him worried. He can feel Alucard's emotions again. It's like having an ice cube inside of his brain. The overwhelming, pitiless fury that he has come to associate with Alucard feels familiar, yet different. The madness is now reined in by a cunning and brutal sanity, and this frightens Jasper even more than when the rage ran free.

Rip looks at Jasper, feeling pain from her gunshot wounds and strangely from her hands. The sparkling faker hangs from the ceiling; his hands dig into the stone like it's plastacine. Rip's men fight him like a mob of drunken fools instead of trained soldiers of the Reich.

The filth stops to dig the bullets out of his arm, ripping away most of his bicep and upper forearm in the process. This is Rip's chance to kill him for good. Raising her musket and smiling with her pointed teeth and bright, blue eyes, Rip utters to herself, "My varhead vill punish all vithout distinction." But nothing happens. What is going on? Rip looks down at her gun. Oh, that's what's wrong.

When Jasper had lunged at her, he used his harder-than-steel fingernails to slice the trigger, middle and ring finger off of each Rip's hands. Now she only has a thumb and pinkie on each hand, totally useless for firing a gun.

It is then that Rip can hear a sound. It sounds like somebody is screaming. Or is it singing? It's almost too horrible to be singing, but that's what it is:

Your shindig's kinda boring
Shall I spike the punch with cyanide?
I gotta warn you - You'll need a coroner tonight

If you see me, better flee me
If you hear me, better fear me
I help you from the fryer into the fire!

That musical baritone voice sings. Clouds cover the night sky, blocking the moon's glow through the hole that Jasper and Alucard created. Now the cave is lit only by the burning pools of napalm from the earlier flamethrower blasts.

Alucard could have slaughtered them all in a heartbeat; broken them in half one by one before any of them even realized what was happening. He could have gone and killed them without as much as a whisper. He could have given them a quick death.

Not likely.

He wants a show. He wants a big show. He wants to make these German scum know how big a mistake they've made. He wants to see them scream and cry. They won't die with a bang and a blaze of glory, they'll all die bleeding on the ground, lying in pools of their own shit and blood while they cry and beg for the painless death that they ain't gonna get.

Alucard appears on top of the boulder that crushed the flamethrower operator. He stands at exactly seven feet tall and looks like the kind of vampire you'd see in your nightmares. Gone are his red duster and charcoal riding suit; instead he's wearing a black leather straight jacket and his stark white gloves.

Upon seeing Alucard, Rip becomes undone with a crippling fear and it doesn't have anything to do with Jasper. "Samiel!" she half gasps half shrieks. It's the lord of hell from her favorite opera.

The Major had warned her, he'd warned Rip that one day Samiel would come for her and he would take her to hell and throw her body to the wolves just as he'd done to the opera's main character, Casper.

Alucard can't feel Rip's fear like Jasper does, but he can smell it, and the smell of fear has never been so sweet. Jasper can feel her fear, and fear has never been so paralyzing. It's as if Rip's terror is so great that he's become as frozen as the statue he resembles.

Even as the FREAK soldiers fire upon him, Alucard does not stop grinning. The teeth flash white before they're blown out the back of his skull by incendiary bullets. The red eyes can see into your soul before they explode into jelly and gore. Alucard shakes and jerks like a scarecrow in the wind. In a bizarre way it looks like he's dancing.

Finally, the guns stop blazing and Alucard falls to the ground, unmoving. Jasper watches from behind a fallen piece of rock. He feels not only Rip's terror and the terror of the FREAKs, but he can feel Alucard's emotion. The sick bastard is enjoying this. It's not about following orders or defending himself; he's doing this for the sheer pleasure of it. He's known some fucking insane, hateful, diseased psychopaths but none of them can really hold a candle to Alucard. There's no reasoning. There's no talking with the likes of him. With him its kill until you can't kill anymore.

Jasper feels the lust for carnage that Alucard feels. He can feel these emotions that have no names, because Jasper has never experienced anything like them before. He'd thought Alucard was scary, now he's about to see what Alucard can do.

Alucard's mangled, smoking corpse lands in a heap before the feet of the Nazis. For a second the Nazis dare to believe that he's dead, but Jasper knows better. He feels amusement, for Alucard this is just the warm up sequence.

Rip doesn't believe that Samiel is dead. The daemon lord of the hunt won't be brought down so easily. It is then that the glamour wears of off the body, revealing the mangled, dead corpse of the flamethrower operator who will no more operate a flamethrower.

Jasper watches this spectacle; it's rather like a movie. He's removed from the action. It's all about Alucard and the freaks now. But unlike a movie, this isn't make believe. It's happening right before his eyes. At any moment the brutality might spill over into his personal space.

Rip breathes heavily, the men have a confidence that she doesn't share. Where is Samiel?

"Hello." The voice of the lord of the hunt is in her ear. Alucard stands right behind Rip. She turns around and screams like she's never screamed before.

The Millennium huntress's scream is cut off by a spray of blood. Alucard stands in fighting stance. In his hand is a bayonet that he'd liberated from Paladin Anderson. Jasper can only look on in horror as Rip Van Winkle falls into two pieces, sliced in half at the waist.

With a bayonet in one hand and a giant meat cleaver in the other, Alucard does what the Hellsing family hires him to do. Alucard is the star of the show, the Nazis are the extras and Jasper is the audience.

Jasper's power is a double edged sword. He can manipulate the emotions of others, but it also means that he'll feel what they feel. So right now, he is divided on the inside. Half of him feels the call of Alucard's madness while the other half feels the anguish and horror of the unfortunate Nazis. It's almost as if his heart is straddling a giant chasm that's growing wider with each passing second.

Inside and out, Alucard is grinning from ear to ear. This is his element; this is what he was born to do. The only thing that matters is destruction; simple irrational destruction for destruction's sake. Survial is secondary. Some were born to die, he was born to kill. His only regret is that he's not fighting against a thousand of these so called vampires. Even thought they don't sparkle, these pricks are worth less than the least of the Cullens. These fools are nothing, they're merely butchers and bakers turned and given weapons. In his heart he hopes for better adversaries very soon, but for now he makes due with what he has.

His technique is flawless, Alucard moves like one of the shadows. Now you see him and now you don't. He glides with the grace of a ballerina and slashes with the geometric perfection of a master swordsman. His meat cleaver becomes a metallic flash in the air; one of the Nazis is sliced from head to crotch and the pieces fall on opposite sides to each other. It's a brutal and elegant kill.

Another flash of light in the air; the stolen bayonet slashes one vampire from shoulder to hip. The screams are lovely. Alucard doesn't want too many of them dead yet. This is merely an exposition of his power and ability. He laughs, because laughing after ferociously dismembering somebody is always scary. It's a way of saying, "Your death is funny."

Rip Van Winkle is in a bad place. She drags herself across the bloody stone of the cave with her mutilated hands, trying to get to her musket. At this point, she's sort of starting to regret joining the Nazi party. The further screams of the troops under her command spurn her to get her ass moving, even though her ass is about ten feet behind her and severed from her body.

Alucard now stands still, bayonet and butcher knife bloody with the vital fluids of his enemies. It's time to get ready for the finale. The surviving Nazis are horribly mutilated; one of them has literally had his face sliced off, another has had the pleasure of being castrated with a blessed blade. All but two of them are dead and at a cry from their second in command they start to unload their grenades at Alucard's feet sans the pins and fire their rocket launchers.

These poor bastards have no idea just how futile their actions are, but Alucard decides to let them cling to their illusions for a few seconds longer. The incendiary and fragmentation grenades blow him apart and burn him to a crisp in the same stroke. The rockets double the power of the explosions. His smoldering ruins produce a thick black smoke.

Rip turns around, one incomplete hand wrapped around the handle of her musket. She screams, "Nein! Er ist nicht toten!" He is not dead.

Right on schedule, the Death-by-Alucard express pulls into the station. The black smoke chokes the cave while the napalm fires burn low; their fuel nearly spent. Hundreds of red eyes open in the smoke while a form solidifies from the choking fumes. Alucard appears once more, whole and still in charge despite everything that his foes have tried to do.

Like a hell-born maestro, Alucard raises his hands to conduct the grim reaper's orchestra. His eyes gleam and his smile is wide. Oh, if the Grim Reaper would smile and if he had a gleam in his eye, he would look just like Alucard.

To the horror and shock of all the participants of his fight, hundreds of arms start to grow out of Alucard's back, like a horde of multi jointed tentacles ending in white gloved hands.

The second in command can only gaze in horror at this impossible sight before him. His lower jaw is torn off, but he tries to say, "What the fuck are you?" And like the wrath of God, hundreds of grasping and clawing arms lunge at the Nazis. They stand no chance, they shoot but it doesn't even delay the inevitable. They're all shredded like meat in a grinder. The once proud soldiers of the Waffen SS are completely, totally and utterly fucked up. All except for one.

Rip Van Winkle cries. She sobs like a baby. Her time is up, there's no escape and no way to fight back. Death is coming and it will provide no relief or salvation. Her tears break Jasper's already divided heart. God, how did she get involved in this mess? What had she done in life that took her to this place? Jasper is no stranger to the killing of the innocent. Three quarters of all the vampires he's killed were poor victims that were forcibly recruited into bloody, pointless wars and forced to abandon everything they held dear. But this girl, it's like she's the poster child for all the people that got screwed over by the bosses in power. Rip is only a foot soldier, one of the pawns.

And Alucard is the physical personification of karma. It doesn't matter what your intentions were or what you thought you were going to do, you're going to pay for your crimes.

Rip catches Alucard's eye. She cringes and starts to weep again. Jasper weeps in time with her, even though he's incapable of shedding tears.

Alucard's voice is rich with sneering, biting sarcasm. "What's the matter? Are you out of those magic bullets?"

Seconds pass. Rip chokes out one last sob and then pulls off her glasses. She wipes her eyes, the terror and despair is gone. There is only a fiery determination left.

Alucard sneers once more, "Go ahead, shoot at me, bitch."

Rip then takes hold of her gun and pulls the firing mechanism close to her mouth. She yells one last time in German, "My warhead will punish all without distinction!" Then with her tongue, she pulls the trigger.

BLAM!

The magic bullet zips at immeasurable speed out of the barrel and makes a bee line for Alucard without any deviation of its path. Alucard patronizingly smiles as the bullet blasts through his chest.

In his crevasse, Jasper involuntarily mimics Alucard's smile almost perfectly.

The magic bullet ricochets off the wall and ceiling before ripping through Alucard's heart. The Hellsing trump card grunts, but shows no concern for the pain he feels. Alucard is a masochist as well as a sadist. He loves pain.

The bullet desperately zigzags through the air and starts to tear in and out of Alucard's body like a needle through fabric. Through desperate fury, Rip tries to formulate a plan. In the original entrance of the volcanic cavern there is a bridge which goes over a fast flowing river. If she could just push him twenty feet more then he'd fall into the river past the cave entrance. She screams, "FALL! DIE!"

Jasper imitates her cries, but very softly, "fall, die." He's totally a slave to the emotions of Rip and Alucard. They're the performers and he's the voyeur.

The magic bullet shreds Alucard the same way that he shredded the troops. But the troops didn't smile as they got pulverized.

In Jasper's heart, Rip's dominating emotions are briefly overtaken by those of Alucard. He can taste Alucard's satisfaction. It makes him wish that he could get another crack at Rip, but something keeps him anchored to the spot.

Yes, that's it! Alucard is almost over the edge! Just a little further, just a little more and then . . .

Alucard decides that it's time to stop fucking around; this is starting to get stale.

There is a deafening chomping noise, which stuns both Rip and Jasper. Before them, Alucard stands with half his face ripped off. The magic bullet is clenched between his jaws. "Gotcha" he rasps. And with no further ado, he chews up the magic bullet like candy.

This is it; there is no more hope for Rip. Her sheer hopelessness crushes Jasper like a massive weight while Alucard's pitiless thirst for carnage threatens to puff him up like a toad. Between the two of them he feels like he's going to blow up like an over-inflated balloon.

Rip tries to reload the gun. She panics and spills the musket balls all over the floor. Frenzied with fear, she tries to grab a stray musket ball but it slips from her pinkie and thumb. Squealing with horror, she tries to grab another when Alucard's booted foot slams down on her hand with crunching force. As she cries out, so does Jasper.

Alucard is content; he's like the junkie that found the perfect high. Now all that's left to do is to shoot up another hit. He grabs the bisected FREAK by her shirt collar and lifts up her to his eye level. Pathetic. Is this all that Millennium sees fit to send against him? He's insulted.

Rip thrashes her mutilated arms, trying to break free. She doesn't want to look at Alucard's face, because if she does she'll break down completely to the level of a baby.

Alucard merely clucks his tongue. "You're so clumsy. Look, Jasper, she's all thumbs today." If the situation wasn't so dire, it would have sounded corny. A moment later, Alucard lunges with his shark-like teeth and bites off Rip's thumbs.

Her scream makes Jasper cover his ears, but with his acute Unstet hearing he can hear every whimper, every desperate murmur and each dying plea.

Laughter rings throughout the damaged cavern. The laughter is just as fractured as the various shattered stones along the cave floor. "And now, she has no thumbs! AH-HAHAHAHAHA!" He laughs as if he truly finds humor in this.

By now, Jasper's heart is split nearly in half by the contrasting emotions in the cave. He just wants to get out of here. He wants to go home and go shopping with Alice, listen to Edward's music and put up with Rose's vanity.

Once more, he hears that mad, lilting voice reach for his attention, "Come here Jasper, I know you're there! I can read your thoughts, I can smell you."

Alucard sniffs and then runs his long tongue around his lips; they got stained with blood when he chewed up his prey's thumbs and spat them out. The blood is stale, but nutritious, as all vampire blood usually is. "Get down here, boy. Have some fun with your good buddy, Alucard! Put that limp prick of your to good use and abuse!" This final line elicits more lewd guffaws from Alucard's gut.

Jasper is tucked away in a recess of the cave, cradling himself in fetal position. He's just witnessed Alucard decimate a horde of Nazi FREAK Vampires. Only one remains, Obersturmfuhrer Rip Van Winkle, and she is quite literally torn in two, and fear paralyzes her mind and what's left of her body. Alucard is waiting for a response to his invitation for Jasper to join him and put his limp prick to good use and abuse.

Jasper can't move; he won't. He feels that if he were to go down there and join Alucard in the "festivities," then he would unleash a monster that would never be caged again. He would drink from the cup of blood that this ancient monster offers, and he doesn't think that he would ever be able to pull away from that bittersweet taste. So no, he doesn't join Alucard, and perhaps he saves his soul in the process.

The smile slips from Alucard's face. He drops Rip Van Winkle; she weakly tries to escape only to receive a heavy boot to the back of her neck.

That harsh, accusatory voice flies out like daggers. "So, that's it. I see what you are now. I thought you were only a dog, but I was wrong. You're a coward. That's what you are, Jasper Whitlock. You're nothing but a great, yellow coward!"

Deep down, Jasper knows that Alucard is right, but he cannot succumb to these foreign emotions that he feels. To do so would betray everything that he and his family stand for. The Cullens stand for temperance, and Alucard stands for intemperance; where they practice self-denial, he luxuriates in excess. Jasper is also guilty of the sin of gluttony, but he wants to move on and be more than what he is.

More of Alucard's accusations come his way. "You're weak and you've always been weak! Half a century with that accursed pixy flopping around has made you even weaker! But I am strong and my unlife of eternal war has only made me stronger. Every minute, every second that I spend in chaos and carnage will make me even stronger!"

Alucard grunts and spits. He has no further patience to waste on this stupid little boy. He's no warrior, just a grunt that happened to be a little tougher than the rest of his fellow grubs. Instead, Alucard turns his lantern-like eyes on his prize. The napalm fires are nearly extinguished, but the light is enough for him to appreciate destruction when he sees it.

In one of his hands, a bayonet seems to appear. It shows in the dim light like an extra large fang. Doubling over, Alucard grabs Rip Van Winkle's long, beautiful hair none too gently. He almost ends up ripping it out of her head. Ignorant of her squeals, he starts to use the holy blade to cut her hair down to large, uneven patches.

Alucard grabs a hunk of Rip's hair and holds it to his face. He breathes deeply. She smells of gunpowder and blood, which happen to be among his favourite scents.

Discarding the free hair, he flips over his victim and gazes upon her face. She's so young. He loves killing the young ones; they're always the stupidest. And Alucard can never forgive stupidity. In fact, he's utterly incapable of forgiveness.

With a callousness only a psychopath is capable of, Alucard smiles as he punches Rip in the face. The force of the blow caves in one half of her skull into a bloody pulp; one blue eye pops out of its socket and rolls away. That's okay though, she still has one left to look her tormentor in the eye with.

Rip tries to shut her remaining eye, but she will be afforded no such luxury. Alucard rips off her eyelid, forcing another scream out of her still intact vocal cords. The opera is already over; Samiel has tossed her body to the wolves and this is hell.

That pale, fanged face speaks to her. "You are about to find out why they used to call me Vlad the Skullfucker." As he begins to unfasten the various clasps and buckles of his straight jacket, she screams and thrashes with all her might. She fully realizes what he plans to do.

The black straight jacket comes off and Rip involuntarily gets to see what's underneath it. His body is lean but highly muscular. Bundles of muscles stretch the skin until it is almost translucent. Two marvelously toned pectorals and eight pack abs are hidden by a thick coating of curly hair to match the stuff on his head. On first glance he actually looks beautiful.

A closer examination of Alucard's body shows it to be far from beautific. Dead vericose veins run across his body; all full of stale and dead blood. At his pectorals, tiny breasts can be seen as if large weights in the past were attached to his nipples.

Rip gets a good look at him below the waist and tries to scream as he rams a gloved hand down her throat to keep her from screaming, causing bloody tears to form in her lone eye. She chokes and tries to vomit but nothing will dislodge that sinfully clean white cotton clothed hand.

Alucard's penis resembles a large carnivorous worm that twitches and stirrs once it smells fresh meat. Instead of a glans, the long organ is tipped with a razor sharp bone barb; perfectly designed for shredding and tearing velvety meat. The worm cock stands at the ready, a drop of pus forms on the end. It looks toxic.

Alucard rips his hand from Rip's mouth. She can go ahead and scream now.

Jasper hides and clenches his eyes, desperately wishing for this madness to be over. He hears screaming from Rip. She begs, screeches, threatens and breaks down crying, but Alucard makes no reply. Suddenly he hears Alucard make a deep, bestial grunt and then he can hear Rip gasp in pain before her screams reach a new high. There is also a crunch; the sound of an eye socket being run through by a sharp bone barb.

Alucard's grunting and growling become rhythmatic, synchronized with Rip's pitiful, desperate screams. In the dim shadows of the cave, Alucard smiles at his humiliated prey. More screams accompany the sound of an eye being ruptured; it is truly a pleasure for him to fuck her brain. How much more pain and misery can he continue to heap on one person? Does his lust have no boundaries?

Alucard's grunting and groaning continues, this time in greater volume and intensity. Between his bestial noises, his speaks with brutal sarcasm and cruelty, "Oh Rip, don't you just love what I'm doing to you? Don't you love me?"

And then he begins to sing once more; it's a noise from Hell's number one radio hits.

I'm here to fix your troubles
Brute force applied with some finesse
When people are the problem
My hatchet always works the best (Oh, yes it will)

Nananananah - Calling Mr. Killjoy
I'm the death of every party
Nananananah - Calling Mr. Killjoy
And I don't care if you don't like me

I made you suffer and that doesn't feel right
I thought my knife would snuff you out like a light
How rude of me, a quick be-heading will end your fright

How long has it been; how long has he tortured that woman? Who can say? Jasper certainly can't. He's been like a child trying to convince himself that the monsters under the bed aren't real. But this monster is all too real, and he's having a jolly good time.

Very quickly, Alucard's utter of satisfaction turns into a fractured, schizoid laugh that climbs higher and higher. He doesn't just want Rip to know that he's defeated her utterly; he wants the entire world to know of his victory and to celebrate his genius and his ability.

The laughter only stops when Alucard stoops down and chomps down on Rip's throat. No longer can she scream. Alucard's shark-like teeth have severed her windpipe and slashed her vocal cords to ribbons.

In every way, Rip has become a macabre work of a sociopath's masterpiece. Her bloody and raped eye sockets seem to stare out with ultimate misery; her mouth silently utters a final farewell to whatever person or deity she loves the most. The lower half of her body lies still; the napalm fires have burned down, and now the cave is pitch black except for a tiny smidge of luminescence provided by glowing organisms in the fast flowing river. Shadows claim all; they begin to devour the body of Rip Van Winkle even as their master drains the last of the blood from her system. She struggles no more from his iron grasp.

And then it's over. There's nothing left of the battle, only whatever scraps the scavengers can get at when Alucard has had his fill. Rip Van Winkle is gone. There's nothing left of her but a pair of broken glasses and a musket.

A hand in a clean white glove reaches down towards the ground. Just lying there is an eyeball of the most brilliant blue, begun to glaze over. The hand grabs the eye by the optic nerve and lifts it to a hungry maw. Sharp teeth masticate the eyeball noisily and jelly runs down greedy lips.

Fucking yummy.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that and didn't have to vomit at any point :) My goal in this chapter was to show Alucard in his full, uncontrollable evil. If this stuff is too much, Lion in the Land's story is just as good (maybe even better) and it's not quite so graphic.

Cheers, my freaky darlings

Master of the Boot