The fireworks message was to be sent up as soon as Sarah, Pip and Marie returned from India. In the meantime, Alexander, Alucard and the rest would be manning the head of the operation in France. Their job was to handle operatives incoming from the outside and stockpile supplies and order in extra ammunition besides what was being shipped in by the organizations. A war is a potluck and that was never more obvious than when help began to arrive.
That morning was chaotic as Sarah rushed about seeing to last minute things. The Ave Maria had generously provided their own landing strip and private plane for the trip, already stockpiled with everything they could possibly need in any situation. The plane was built for stealth and would evade radar detection. That would not help, though, if they were caught unloading.
"I cannot say for sure," Marie grunted as she shoved her personal bag in with the rest of the cargo."where the Tongue of Kali may be, but we have reason to suspect that they reside on the Eastern summit of Nanda Devi."
"What reason is that?" Sarah asked, climbing aboard behind the Frenchwoman.
"The Nanda Devi East and Nanda Devi West are supposed to be the twin peaks of the goddess Nanda. It is holiest mountain in the Himalayan Mountain chain. There is a sanctuary there and we believe that is secretly the base of the Tongue of Kali." She answered. "Like the Celtic mythos, goddesses often come in triple aspects or even nine aspects. Kali is an aspect of Parvati, the daughter of Himavan, the hindu god of the Himalayans."
"I never really got the chance to delve into Hinduism much." Sarah said with a bit of regret. "I think I'll read about it when I get back. It sounds fascinating."
Marie fiddled with her portable radio. "Yes, it is." She said quietly, her concentration focused on the object in her hands. They both jumped as a suitcase was pitched in the open side of the plane and landed just between them. Pip hopped in shortly thereafter. "You could have hit us!" She cursed at him in French, which only made him grin.
"Could have, Cherie. But I didn't." He made himself comfortable between them. "So, when are we supposed to actually lea-"
He was cut off by a rough, loud burst of static over the radio in Marie's lap. "Runway 2, cleared for take off. Proceed number 86, over." They heard their pilot respond. "Roger, base 2. Proceeding. Over."
"Well, I guess that answers my question." He said, looking at the radio with interest. "But what are you bringing that along for?"
"Basic spying gear." She said with a self-satisfied smirk. "As yet, there is no widespread way to keep radio traffic from being overheard, so this is useful in case somebody spots us and uses their own radio to communicate it back to their base." She twisted the dial a little and a blast of Bret Micheals came through the speakers. She grinned widely and hummed along. "Also," Her ice-cold blue eyes melted for just a second. "It has good music stations."
They all gave a start as the plane lurched forward. Pip reached down and firmly pulled the sideways hatch closed with a slam. "I suppose we should get into the cabin, then." Marie got up. "It'll be warmer there, but this plane's heating system is faulty. It'll get colder as we gain altitude, as well. So I suggest you all get your warmest items." She rummaged through her own luggage to find a large down coat and slipped it on, along with a pair of gloves.
"Why would they give us a plane with a faulty heating system?" Sarah asked begrudgingly, zipping up her thick quilted jacket.
"It was fixed, mostly, but the heat was directed more towards keeping the engine from freezing over. Call it a temporary patch. Planes are expensive, you know." Marie said, a touch of offense taken at the complaint. "We can't just buy a new one when a tiny thing goes wrong. And this was sort of short notice, this was the only one they had that wasn't destroyed. It was being worked on in the hanger while we were fighting Agran-"
"The Agran?" Sarah was astonished. "As in the dragon Agran?" She'd read about him in the library back at Hellsing. Agran was a European menace that had supposedly been defeated by St. George. Apparently, he wasn't as dead as they'd thought. Dragons were indeed notoriously hard to kill. The only weak part of their body was the soft palate and their eyes, which meant one had to usually risk the loss of an arm to get a lance through to a dragon's brain.
"The very same. He's getting on in years, that's partly why he was so easy to take down, plus he was still recovering from his scuffle with St. George a few centuries ago. Dragons are hard to kill, you understand, but also slow to heal, so he was in hibernation in a volcanoe in the Ring of Fire. We had him cornered, but we woke him up after our initial attempt to destroy him in his sleep." She looked a bit annoyed. "Long story short, it was an utter disaster."
"How did you manage that?" Sarah asked as they maneuvered their way to the front of the plane.
"He was opening his mouth for another bite out of one of our planes and we threw in a sedative made of molten gold imbued with nightshade and iron. He was out for the count within a couple of minutes." She shrugged. "We are still working on acquiring a weapon strong enough to finally get rid of the bastard, but that's going to take another couple of years."
"I have to admit that sounds pretty damn awesome." Sarah said enviously.
"Oh, it was a mission that had its perks, but still we lost a lot of people on that endeavor, not to mention the valuable equipment that was destroyed." She shook her head sadly. "Anyway, this is our only survivor. Heating or no, we should be grateful we don't have to take a commercial airline."
Sarah chuckled. "Ah, that system is about as difficult to deal with as a dragon. Right, Pip?" She glanced over to find the former mercenary's hat was pulled down over his eyes and he was softly snoring. "Wow, he must have been exhausted."
"Well, he was up all night with me." Marie told her in a subdued voice. "We were plotting out our route and planning possible subroutes for the pilot. It wasn't very easy, especially since we have to avoid getting spotted by Air Traffic Control and border patrols. We also had to figure out a good place for a safe landing that was relatively close to our destination. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to cart all of this stuff more than a mile or so."
"Ammunition does get heavy after a while." Sarah agreed, having had some experience with that problem.
"Does it ever." Marie agreed with a tired glare in the general direction of the cargo hold. "I'm hoping we won't need it. The Tongue of Kali should be friendly to us, but one can never be too careful. Plus, we may run into some unsavory things on our way there."
"Such as?"
"Well, you know that the Yeti species is breeding this time of year, so they'll be particularly aggressive and territorial." She thought for a moment. "Of course, there'll also be a Meh-The and the Dzu to deal with, the Yeti's closest relatives. They sometimes interbreed, you know. The one I'd really want to watch out for is the Dzu. They're the biggest and baddest. Nasty pieces of work that even I wouldn't want to deal with if I didn't have a mini-gun with me." She visibly shuddered. "My cousin nearly got his head ripped off by a Dzu, once."
Sarah frowned. "That's terrible. Speaking of your cousin, though, I'd like to ask if the Ave Marie really are just one giant monster-hunting family."
Marie smiled wanly. "Yes and no. We have a tradition of adopting young men and women, one that was inspired by the generousity of our ancestor. So a great many of us are not blood relatives. We don't think of any of our adoptees as inferior, though. In fact, it's considered an honor." She said proudly. "I was adopted when I was three from an orphanage in Le Havre."
"That's nice." Sarah acknowledged. "I wish more people would adopt. There are so many children in the foster system that need love and attention." It was nice to be talking about something normal for once. Instead of monsters and fighting and wars, she could sit down and have a break from it, just for a few minutes. Sure, all of that stuff was exhilerating and she wouldn't trade her job for anything now, but every now and again one needed to take a break. She didn't know if she could ever be as casual as everyone else was about the existance of monsters and demons and secret organizations devoted to protected the world at large. Hell, even her own experience living as artificial monster had a nearly dream-like quality to it now that it was behind her.
They talked for a long time about several things. Slowly, her opinion of Marie started to change. Behind the facade of arrogance and cold objectivity, there was a person who actually did care. Marie wasn't raised in a set household, rather she was raised with a number of other children in a sort of 'it takes a village to raise a child' kind of way. She didn't really know the people who had technically adopted her, but had met them on occasion. There were a great deal of older or disabled agents who looked after the children, took them to school, and such daily things. Marie's training had started at the onset of her thirteenth birthday, as per tradition, and she was now a Yondan (a fourth degree of black belt) working her way up to Jodan (tenth degree black belt and highest rank of black belt in general), as well as currently working on becoming a sixth level Dan, which would graduate her to Shogo rank. Strangely enough, she wasn't that great of a shot with any gun, but many of the creatures she'd come up against wouldn't have been troubled by bullets. Mud monsters, for example. It's very hard to kill something that's made of a substance that can simply reform whatever has been blown apart. The trick to dealing with that sort of creature (golems, most of the time) was alchemy.
"So you're an alchemist?"
"Not really, no. I only know a few basic transmutation spells. Enough to get me by. If you want a real alchemist, then you should talk to my brother Haarith. He's a genius on the subject. He's the kind of person people think about when you say 'alchemist', the whole 'lead into gold' thing is child's play for him. Well, it's pretty simple to change any sort of mineral into gold if you ask him."
"What sort of limits are there on Alchemy?" Sarah inquired.
"Well, for one thing, we can change practically anything into any other thing, but we cannot say...turn a diamond into a chipmunk." She fumbled over how to explain it, starting and stopping herself, until she found a way that Sarah could understand. "Actually we could, really, yes. We could turn a diamond into a chipmunk, but it wouldn't be a live chipmunk. It would have blood, a body, a heart, a brain, but none of it would be working. We cannot imbue life into anything that did not have life already. Now, if we were to, I don't know...change algae into a chipmunk, then we could transfer the life over to the chipmunk because algae, while a non-sentient form of life, is still life. Plant to animal life exchange is entirely possible. Maybe even animal to human or plant to human, though no one's tried it."
Sarah snickered as the image of a giant daisy with a human face came to mind. "What else?" She asked, forcing herself to be serious.
"Well, we can't make something out of nothing. I'm not talking about turning air into a rock, because that's completely plausible. What I mean is that we cannot create matter. That's a basic rule you can learn in Science class. Matter cannot be destroyed or created, but it can be transformed into something of equal mass value 'The Law of Conservation of Mass' is at the core of Alchemy. Alchemists simply have more of an effect on the transformation process than others do." She explained, leaning back in her chair as she did so. "That being said, Alchemy requires a scientific mind, loads of math and Chemistry, and a lot of scratch paper on which scribble."
Sarah snorted. "Well, that leaves me out. I'm terrible at math. I don't know how I got through Calculus and Chemistry."
"That's just the simplified stuff." Marie shrugged. "There's loads more to it, a bunch of formulas that need to be memorized and words that need to be said." Sarah looked at her with shock. "Don't look at me that way. Words have a lot more power than most people think. Words, when correctly combined with numbers and geometric diagrams, can force a change in anything."
"Wow, sorry." Sarah rubbed at her temples. "That's a lot to take in."
"Yeah, that's why I said Haarith is a genius. It takes a genius or someone with a great deal of patience to become a real, honest-to-God Alchemist. Right now, the best kind of thing I can do is turn a leaf into a bit of bread or make solid stone turn into mud or vapor. That's kindergarten stuff to someone like my brother."
"Your brother-"
She smiled. "He's Indian. He's the reason I'm so interested in India. I practically idolized him when I was younger, so I threw myself into studying everything about his culture, everything that made him what and who he is. He is a few years older than me, he'll be thirty-two next fall, but we were raised in the same group. Actually, I have eight brothers and three sisters. In Ave Maria, there are usually about twelve or thirteen children per base. And we have nine bases located throughout France. My brothers, sisters, and I were the base 2 group. That means that our bedrooms were right next to each other, we were educated together, we ate together and we played together. We are very close as a result."
"I'd imagine. My family isn't very close, unfortunately. I have three brothers and a half-sister. What are the names of your brothers and sisters?"
"Elena, Chihori, Eun-Mei, Tai, Amaer, Mark, Mathew, Jason, Aaron, Haarith, and Abiel." Her eyes were soft as she recited their names. "Chihori is youngest. She'll be turning 26 soon. Elena and Eun-Mei are 27, Tai is the oldest, he's a month older than Haarith. Amaer is 27, Jason is 28 and a half, Aaron is 28 and a quarter. Mark and Mathew are 29, they're twins. Abiel and I are thirty, but he's older by four and a half months. His birthay's coming up on the thirteenth, as a matter of fact..."
"Big family, I don't think I could have handled that. I had enough trouble helping my father with my brothers!" She grinned. "Triplets." She said by way of explanation.
Marie nodded. "Base 6 had a set of twins and and a set of triplets. Ben and Jerry," She rolled her eyes when Sarah's grin widened."Yeah, I know, but blame that on base 6's Head Mr. Allard. He has a weird sense of humor...anyway Ben and Jerry were the sweetest, no pun intended, little things around. But..hoo...Catalina, Christopher, and Kiara were little monsters. About once a year, all of the base kids get together for a party more or less like a family reunion. It's supposed to encourage family ties and whatnot, but how effective it really is depends on the kids. The date of the 'reunion' changes every year and that year it landed on my birthday. So it was going to be a birthday on top of all the other chaos and I don't know how the adults didn't anticipate it, but it was HELL. Catalina, Christopher, and Kiara somehow found my cake, ate all of it, leaving only a few smears of frosting and ten candles. When my base's Head, her name is Ms. Jung, came into the kitchen to bring it out, she bumped into Kiara, who was now sick from all of that cake, and she projectile vomited all over her best suit. Then Catalina, who was hyper as heck at that point, chased Ms. Jung's poor secretary Ms. Rose around the entire base shrieking "I'M A PRETTY PINK POSIE! YOU'RE A DORKY LITTLE ROSIE!" with a handful of worms. I think that poor woman still suffers from Scoleciphobia." She chuckled. "Meanwhile, Christopher had found my presents and had ripped them all open. When they caught him, he said he was doing a 'Present Inspection' and that none of the presents were good enough for me, so they should just give them all to him."
"What a little evil genius." Sarah remarked, laughing. "I'm glad my brothers never did anything quite so wild. Mostly, they were just very messy and climbed all over everything. Although, they did manage to upend a bus once. The school had let them onto the buses, but the bus driver was gone for a few minutes doing goodness knows what and that was enough time for the three of them to convince the children to run from side to side until the bus fell over. Pretty ingenius, but my father didn't see it that way. And no wonder, if the bus driver hadn't been blamed for negligence, then we would have had to foot the bill for the smashed windows, the dents, and the cracked windshield."
Marie was stunned speechless and it took her a second to recover. "Your family sounds very...lively."
Sarah laughed it off. "So does yours."
Marie smiled back at her. "You know, I apologize for the bad start we had. I'm not sure if we could be friends, but I would be glad to call you my partner in this mission."
Sarah grasped Marie's outstretched hand. "I'm sorry, too. Maybe, we can work on the friend part after this mission is over."
"I'd like that."
~H_E_L_L_S_I_N_G~
Alucard sat on the couch of his room casually sipping blood from a wine glass while he read the newspaper. It was the early evening, Sarah, Pip, and Marie had been gone for twelve hours. After the three of them had left, things got a little more quiet. Dimitri would alternate between visiting him, Alexander, and Walter, conveying news. It was necessary, since Alexander refused the company of Alucard and Seras (more or less so that he could keep his promise to Sarah about not fighting amongst themselves). Walter, on the other hand, was mostly busy giving Elazar private lessons. Private lessons in what, exactly, was not known, but presumably Walter was giving the boy a crash course in defense and weaponry. Elazar had already become a nice shot with a handgun a couple of months previous, but he was still far from an expert in anything. His only asset was the brute strength of his werewolf , their allies knew that there was a werewolf on their side, had been given a description of both Elazar's wolf form as well as his human one, and would hopefully not mistake him for an enemy.
Seras was busy on the phone. Being in charge meant a lot of work for her and he was glad to see that she was taking it in stride. He was proud, in his own way, of his creation. She'd had a rocky start, but he'd always known that she would turn out to be his equal. He'd sensed it, that darkness and inner strength, even while she was human. She was a glorious Draculina. Humans and artificial vampires would fail to see it, well 'see' wasn't exactly the word for it, but it was a distinct aura of power that any true No-Life Queen or King possessed. Since he'd created her, of course, there was always his mark. His 'stamp of approval', as it were. A trace of his auric power was there, on the edge like an aftertaste, and this possession was something he'd never had the pleasure of. Oh, yes, he'd made vampires in the past. Lucy Westenra and nearly Mina Murry, a man or two that he wanted to watch spread destruction... None of them had turned out right. They were all so inferior, so diminished in strength and none so grand as that seemingly fragile police girl who stood only a few feet in front of him.
His Master had no idea what possession of this sort meant to a vampire. A true Dracula or Draculina was not created, but born. They were so rare. He'd finally found one who could carry that trace of his power. The 'aftertaste' of his power would only last on a true equal to him, the auric power would fade on the others. Sometimes in as little time as a year, but no. Not for Seras. She would carry his power within her until the end. He still owned her through this connection. For once, he would be truly blessed with an equal. A personage worthy of being his mate, his counterpart until such a time as the Judgement came. Who knew, really. Perhaps even Hell would not part them. His teeth flashed. If he tried, the Devil would be very sorry indeed.
Seras, as yet, was not aware of this connection. She was not aware of how deep this ran. He'd been keeping it simple so far, the sex and so forth being just of a typical vampiric sinful sensual variety. A true union went beyond the physical, beyond the emotion, down to the primal beast within that was the very construct of their monsterous natures. When that was unleashed, and he certainly planned on unleashing it when he understood her to be ready for it, it would be a connection so powerful that it would make the simple mind-reading and shadow manipulation look like parlour tricks. They would be, in essence, one being. They would be able to reach out mentally and manipulate each other's bodies, they would not need to 'hear' each others thoughts. They would know each other completely. He was waiting, biding his time until he recognized the signs and then- he took a sip of his dink-..and then that sort of existence would be indescribable. Love? He was not a being of love. This transcended love.
"Mister Alucard," He laid the newspaper aside.
"Yes, Dimitri?" His voice came out as a low purr as a result of his pleasurable musings.
"The representative of the Masons has arrived. He is downstairs with the Deacon." Ah yes, he would have to get used to that. The ex-priest's new title. Such a shame really, but then again the guy had really needed to get laid. No wonder Anderson had such a short temper. He briefly wondered if Anderson's private bayonet was used as well as the ones he'd battled with. Smirking, he rose. "Of course, Seras!"
Seras gave a start. "Yes, Sir." She said into the phone one last time. "We're meeting with him now." Then her brow furrowed and she blinked in surprise. "She hung up on me." She said, sounding slightly hurt.
"Never mind that," He said sharply. "We have to go." They made their way downstairs to Alexander's room. A young man, around thirty something, stood beside Alexander. Walter was there as well and at his side was Elazar, who was looking a bit tired, but eager. The unknown had a serious, no-nonsense sort of face with a Roman nose and thin mouth. His hair was a brilliant red and curled tightly even though it was cut in a very short business-like manner.
"Hello. My name is J. R. Huffman and you must be the Alucard that I've heard about even all the way back home. Your reputation preceeds you."
"And I've never heard of you. Your reputation does not preceed you."
"And that famous snark is as sharp as I've been told." J.R. said coolly. His accent was familiar, Alucard tried to place it. A Southern drawl, but not very pronounced and it had a hint of Northern inflexion. "I was informed by a Master that I would have to be on my toes around the legendary No-Life King. I don't think you'll find me a very easy nut to crack, Mr. Alucard."
"J.R. is from the West Virginia division of the Masonic Order, Alucard." Walter said. "He has come ahead of his compatriots by a few days."
"We've already given him an update on our plan of attack." Alexander's face was stony, his jaw set in a determined way. "Within a week, our army will be entirely situated in France with the exception of-"
"The Tongue of Kali, yes. That is quite an ambitious parley. Hermits, those people are. It has been a long time since they withdrew from the world, a century or more." He let that doubtful sentence hang in the air.
"We shall see. It's not a waste of effort if it turns out that they are willing." The Deacon motioned for their newest member to take a seat. "We are meeting with the Black Crows, Huffman. I think that is a more pressing issue. We've deduced that humans are not at the core of that particular society, but it has been created by demons."
J.R.'s thin lips curled up at the edges. "Ah and that is why I'm here, my friend. I bring news that may interest you." He found himself the center of attention. "I know who is at the head of that ship. A pair of names that you may recognize. Malphas and Bune. A stately pair, I must say. A Prince and Duke of Hell, respectively."
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