author's note: angst incoming! duck!

warnings: implied deaths

edited by: MariDark, previous chapters are in process of being edited

2:
blessed are the dead

"I will pay any price to have her back."

Gabriel never forgot his father's determination, his cold declaration. Although his father hadn't agreed with grandfather's decision to destroy humanity, he was still quite willing to kill. Kill was hardly something his dear mother would've agreed with.

"Violence is never a solution." His mother told him once, after his terrible temper tantrum and mauling of a large prey until there was nothing left for even a scrap to eat—something that was the norm for his age, for what he was. No one was upset with him, it was just another lesson in his growing up.

But, Gabriel thought, he might have grown up a little too much within a year of the tragic passing of his mother and grandmother. He no longer felt like a child, but rather a sad adult still in a child's body. He rarely spent time with his father and grandfather, as they were lost in their grieving. Gabriel spent his time reading in the vast library instead, consuming a book after a book. Countless of books.

Often, in fictional love stories he'd be reading, he would re-imagine two characters as his parents—it was his way of keeping them alive in his mind. Since his birth, his mother and father had always been in love with each other, love was so warm in their eyes they might as well be suns. Yes, Gabriel shot his father a sad gaze, his father was dead—his heart had died along with his mother.

Although Gabriel kept books as his company, neither his father or grandfather forgot about him. They'd come and check on him in random intervals, passing along small questions, often like what he had learned in recent hours (everything and nothing), how he was (he wasn't okay but he always lied through his teeth), and so on. They rarely stayed long though.

Gabriel was still glad to see small love in their eyes, only reserved for him. They weren't as bright as they used to be towards their respective dearest partner, but it was something. Love made his inhuman father and grandfather more human to him.

Just a little more human than what they were.

Although he wasn't born a human like his beloved mother, her magic, holy magic, kept his father's blood rich in his veins. No one was sure how it was possible considering his mother was as human as a human could be, but they didn't care. They were happy he was healthy and strong—he had the best of both worlds.

But now, Gabriel tore away his sight from his huddling father probing through a thick book of a language he couldn't yet read, they no longer felt human to him.

He hated it.

Neither his mother or grandmother would want this. They wouldn't wish them to cast deaths upon countless innocents all because of what they were and for being in wrong place in the wrong time. Yet, death was their pending fates, for what his father and grandfather intended to do.

And Gabriel could do nothing about it.

How could he? He was still small, defenseless, and equipped with nothing but his books and his smarts. There was no one else for him to go. Neither his mother or grandmother had any family left that bore any warm feeling for them and their latest addition to their little family.

He loved his sires still.

Fluttering his gold eyes close, Gabriel shuddered at hundreds of cries of innocent women screaming from floors below like a disgusting cacophonic symphony. Dashing behind a tall shelf he hurried to wipe away his red tears before his sires could scent it. He wanted nothing to do with them this hour.

If not weeks.

"I'm so sorry, mother." Gabriel breathed so quietly into the air he was hardly sure he even said his words at all, "I know you didn't want this. I know you'd be upset…just," his back shot straight and stumped down the want to shiver, "please…don't hurt father any more than he is now." He pleaded, not sure at all if his mother's spirit could hear him.

He was scared of what his father would do, should this horrible experiment succeeded and have him be rejected.

616* virgin women, bearing still with virgin blood.

A harder task than one may expect—or perhaps expected given the corrupted state of the living world. Adrian, Alucard as he had taken upon to call himself as his name served him a horrible reminder of how sweet it sounded from his love's tongue, needed women that met certain requirements.

Pure from being untouched and their blood still unused.

The spread corruption hardly allowed women to go without being tainted in any form. Sex and demon sacrifices were unfortunate commonplaces. His father had been happy to help, sending out his most trusted vassals to gather women. They wouldn't touch and corrupt these precious sacrifices. Of course, they still had to be taken care of, their minds washed of the horror they found in their hearts or risked them taking the coward's way out.

Incubuses were quite useful in that aspect, keeping these women happy until they were able to reach the amount they needed.

Of course, they had to be threatened disembowelment and certain types of permanent sufferings should they attempt stealing their pureness. Dracula knew how to keep fear deep in his minions. As he said before, there were far worse things than death.

Alucard should know—life without his darling love was that. It was an eternal torment, to not have her in his arms. To remember her burned body forever in his mind eye.

Tracing his hands over the sleek dome of glass, he thumped his forehead against it and found himself gazing upon his slumbering wife's face. So beautiful even in her death, even with the distortions of the green fluid meant to reserve and to heal her body, he found it unbelievable still that Kagome ever died. He touched the glass, tracing her face, and sighed, "Soon, love, soon. Forgive me, I know you'll hate me, but I can't live without you."

He pressed his lips into a kiss on the glass that separated his love from his touches. Slowly, reluctantly, he parted and sighed once more, "I must get back to my work. I'll have you in my arms, very soon." With one final caress on the dome, he turned back to the immense book his father had found.

The Shikon no Tama needed to be the final resort. Kagome deserved that honor, and Alucard didn't fancy the idea of having her to slave over again to keep the corruption within from ever spreading. The book, so ancient its title wore off from the cover, would be his final attempt before he'd use the cursed jewel.

The number of attempts he had made to revive his love was unimaginable.

Of course, this one horrible spell neither Alucard or Dracula could afford to test on a lucky soul to revive. 616 women wholly virgins weren't easy to come by and they weren't that patient to wait some 15-odd years to have the world to breed more. Nothing else worked in the way they'd rather have the results to go.

Several times, their revival tests came back as monsters they killed with ease.

Most of the times though, nothing happened. Their dead test subjects stayed dead. Alucard was praying this spell wouldn't return his love as a monster.

Or rather the monster who would turn his Kagome ugly in both outside and inside, unrecognizable in all aspects.

Hell, she becoming like him, he wouldn't mind. It would be difficult to corrupt her soul into something terrible—he'd seen how many had tried to corrupt her and her purity through different means, and she still came out stronger and her spirit more addicting. Indeed, he simply wanted his Kagome to be Kagome.

If this worked…his father would be sure to follow this ugly recipe and resume his collection of 616 more unfortunate women. His father managed to succeed recovering and righting his mother's body into her previous glory. Now, her body slumbered away from Alucard's sight.

He didn't need another reminder of his losses. His wife was horrible enough. His father agreed, rarely sparing a sight onto Kagome himself in turn.

At another screech of a wailing woman from a floor below, Alucard ignored another twinge of guilt. These women seemed to realize their impending demise and his father's fools were constantly trying to blank their minds. A few of them would always end up waking up though, triggering an onslaught of horror all over again, into a vicious cycle.

It was alright though—Alucard intended to put the final end to their terror and put them at rest, for good. That end was quickly approaching. With a quick dart of his bright eyes, he saw the long hand of a large grandfather clock face ticking closer to midnight. Alucard didn't need to see through a nearby window to know that the full moon would be rising tall above his father's castle that night.

Alucard had an idea where his son was. Gabriel's blood tears were strong and stung his nose. Alucard wasn't blind to see his son's contempt for his foul deeds—but he wanted his mother back too. It seemed to be a concept Gabriel had been struggling with, his heart torn and confused.

He felt sorry for his son, felt guilt for putting Gabriel through this disaster, but Alucard couldn't sleep since Kagome's nightmarish passing. He could barely function, losing all desire to even feed. He hadn't needed to feed on anything else when his Kagome still breathed. Several sips from her neck had been enough for him, ending his craving for human consumption. Large preys were all he needed as actual substances.

Now, his father had been force-feeding him unlucky humans monthly, just so he wouldn't wilt away and leave his father sonless and his child fatherless. His hunger would always drive him to empty these poor bastards no matter his resistance. These mortals tasted foul to him, absolutely nothing like his sweet love, but they sated him.

The idea of his wife breathing again in his arms, in his bed, was the only thing that would drive him forward.

He shot a glance at his silent father, brooding always in his black cloak. Alucard hadn't any idea how Dracula was able to function at all, but needs of gaining vengeance were his apparent driving force. While he was seeking a way to return his Kagome into the land of the living, his father had been working on something else. Something Alucard would rather not worry himself about.

He shook his head of swirling thoughts, his hand clenching on a lever that would surely take those poor women from the world of the living. Alucard's ears waited for that clang he both dreaded and awaited eagerly for. He caught sniffles in intervals of his wait and, again, he debated on whether if he should make a request to remove his son from the dungeon.

"You," Alucard called out to a lingering she-beast—one of Dracula's favorite servants for some ungodly reason, "can you please remo—"

Clang clang clang!

He was startled, but he hurried. He clenched his jaws and jagged the lever toward his body with such a jerk that Alucard thought he might've tore his shoulder. The blaring of life escaping from these ill-fated mortals' throats was deafening. So deafening Alucard barely recognized his father's minions' howls and screeches, their claws grasping over their ears.

Dracula didn't flinch and neither did Alucard.

They did look back at the familiar cry of their dear boy. After a brief check both turned back to a great clear tube hanging from the ceiling. Crisscrosses of running tubes twisted on the aged cobblestone walls were flashing red.

The red dashed to the great tube, quickly filling it to the brim.

"Go." Dracula barked at his minions as soon as the silence returned. They giggled and circled the far-off lever. The tube lowered to the great hole below, sloshing the blood of countless virgins. "Son." He turned to Alucard, who vanished to an elaborate, gold-lined coffin on the opposite side.

A white-wrapped body appeared in his arms and Alucard shuddered at the feather-light weight. He glanced beyond his father's shoulders, worried for Gabriel. Dracula shook his head, "Boy, go! Time is of the essence!"

Despite his rough voice, Dracula trekked back to the hiding Gabriel, to perhaps shield him from the sight of his mother's body being bathed in blood.

Alucard pressed a kiss onto the blanket-covered forehead, stopping before the hole in the floor. The tube finally clicked in, the rim crackling against the stone, producing a horrid sound. It was time.

He dropped to his knee, and with tender care, the body slipped into the pool of blood without any splashes. Alucard had to claw himself into the stones, to keep himself from going in after his wife, when a fog of white and black faded into dense red and sunk to the bottom of the glass. There was nothing else to do but to wait.

And wait he did.

"The spell didn't work." Dracula hissed, when an hour passed. He ignored the tiny clenching on his trouser, his cape hiding his grandson from his son's view.

Alucard's eyes tinged red, upset. He couldn't reply back, his throat too full of his rage to be allowed to speak. The stones bore two holes, jagged with claw-marks, a sure evidence of his wants to destroy.

Dracula vacated his followers from the room, sensing their increasing jeers. It took much for him not to murder them all. Good helps were such a hard find these days.

Though, perhaps he'd throw one or two toward Alucard's way, to be used as his targets. Alucard would need to pent out his disappointment and anger. Dracula thought he'd do the same as well.

His red eyes drifted to the blackening pool of blood, and found himself wanting to slump his shoulders like a broken man he was inside. He couldn't afford to break before his son and precious grandson—they needed him strong. Dracula bit back a grit of growl, "We should return her body back to the pod."

Alucard, still speechless, intended to launch himself in and fish up his wife from the pit. She'd need to be bathe, he thought, and be rid of any taint within her body. As soon as he threw his jacket off his back, the surface of the virgin blood bubbled.

Stiffening along side with his father and son, they watched as the bubbles increased in quantity. Their eyes grew wide, in disbelief, as the blood seemed to turn totally black within a single blink. Something, or someone, broke from the surface and slammed down their clawed hands onto the ground.

Drenched in dense blood she choked and gagged and coughed for air, crawling her way out from the pool and spitting out blood from her lungs.

Although it wasn't easy to tell who it was from the first glance they knew who she was: Kagome. Dracula clenched onto the whimpering Gabriel's shoulder, to allow Alucard his desired reunion with his wife, and watched with morbid interest. With his sharp eyes he watched Alucard bound over to the other side, grasping onto her small shoulders.

Quickly, she slapped them away, her eyes heated with rage, "What have you done to me!?"

*616 was supposedly the true number of the beast, not the triple 6, but who knows. i'm being superstitious here though, being silly.