Vatican City- Rome

Enrico Maxwell quietly entered his private chambers inside the Vatican. The warm red colors were welcoming to him and he looked up at a large painting of Christ staring up into the heavens through dark clouds with rays of light shooting out from behind them. There was a stack of missives sitting on his desk waiting for him on the far side of his room. He exhaled sharply as his grand bed was just a few feet from him, but he couldn't go to sleep, not yet. The past few months were hell on Earth and the church was no better off now than it was before the chaos.

Having to sit so close to Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing and the queen made his skin crawl. "How did it come to this?" he muttered to himself. As he stood over his desk, staring blankly into the pile of missives for him to look over, he remembered the burial service for Father Alexander Anderson… or at least his remains anyway... It was a short and secretive ceremony. There would be no record of him now that he was gone. The church had to remain as aloof as possible in order to keep itself out of the critical eyes of the public. His deeds were with God now he supposed. But now that Alexander was gone, the church would have to somehow train a new acolyte to defend them from the darkest of evils. Suddenly the room seemed entirely too small and Enrico felt suffocated. It was all too much. He turned away from his desk and pulled back the large ornate red curtains next to it, revealing a large pair of antique glass doors. He pulled them both open, letting in a very welcome breeze and stepped out onto the balcony. As he walked up to the far railing, he took in the bright lights of the Vatican and looked up to the sky trying to clear his mind.

"You have grown Enrico." Said a strangely familiar voice from the far side of the rather large balcony. Enrico spun to see a man dressed in robes that looked like they should be familiar to him, sitting in the corner on the far side of a small table that he had placed so that he could have breakfast outside as the sun rose up over the city in the mornings.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" Enrico commanded. He was still trying to make out why the robes seemed familiar, but the only shadow on the balcony happened to be in the same spot where the man was sitting and it made getting a clear view of him difficult.

"Is it true what they say? Is my son, Alexander, truly dead?" the strange man said as he leaned forward allowing his face to be in the light. He had a look of intense worry on his face and he creased his brow. The man had ocean blue eyes and grey hair and a short beard, but his other facial features were that of a middle aged man.

Enrico jumped a little as the man's face gave him a start as a flood of memories washed through his mind. He knew this man when he himself was but a child. But aside from the grey hair and beard, this man looked as though he hadn't aged a day! "Father Lucas? Impossible!" Enrico shouted.

"I don't have time to argue with you, Enrico." The man said pleadingly. "Please just tell me, is my son gone?" he asked again as he stood and moved into the light. His robes were unmistakable now. They were grey and bared markings of the highest orders of the Iscariot; orders whose members were thought to have all died out many years ago.

"Forgive me, Father Lucas, but it is true. Alexander fell at the hands of the vampire, Alucard" Enrico said as gingerly as he could. "But how is it that you are here? You haven't aged a day!"

Father Lucas's face softened as he smiled. It was as though he had just received the best news possible. It was as if he misunderstood and had just heard that his son was still alive. "Praise be to God" he said gently. "I would not wish for my son to be alive on this world right now. At least in death, he may be safe."

"What are you talking about?" Enrico asked. The estranged priest's reaction had thrown him completely off guard. Father Lucas Anderson was the greatest fighter the church had ever had. He trained his son, Alexander, and was supposed to have trained others, but he had vanished without a trace in the early 1970's.

"Enrico, I don't have a lot of time" said Father Lucas as he sat back down in the shadows. "I know you might have questions for me, but there just simply isn't the time to answer them. I found something all those years ago before I disappeared. Something that had been buried by my order." As he spoke he removed a necklace that he had been wearing beneath his robes and slid it across the table to Enrico. It was a silver cross with a key at the end of it.

"What is this?" Enrico inquired while picking up the key.

"It's a key, Enrico."

"Yes but…"

"A key that reveals the very same box that it opens." Father Lucas interrupted. "What do you know about the rogue priest, Roderick Dayton?"

"Not much" replied Enrico. "He ran from the church because he was married to a pagan. After he was excommunicated, he died from an unknown infection. It was believed that his pox was a result of his marriage to a pagan and that God made an example of him."

"Awfully mid-evil for the 1900's don't you think? No, Enrico, that was what the church said to make sure his name was forgotten. Father Roderick was one of the brightest members of the Iscariot's holy order of science. My father was a colleague and close friend of his long ago. Roderick disappeared suddenly right around 1908 and my father went looking for him in the 40's shortly after WWII started."

"He didn't start looking for him until 32 years later?" Enrico asked, sounding very confused by this whole story. "What is the point to all of this?"

"Patience, Enrico. I never heard from my father after he left. And the church wouldn't give me any answers either. Then in February of 1971, I received a package from an unknown sender. It was from my father. And in it, were several letters that he had written and hid along with this key. You need to go down into the vaults of the Vatican and find the box that this key goes to."

"Why? I don't even understand what you're doing here now. I ought to have you tried for abandoning God and the church!" Enrico said growing frustrated. A full moon had risen now above the city and was now casting light into the shadow where Father Lucas had been sitting. Enrico could see now that tears were flowing down the man's face.

"I can't tell you why. Not here, not now. You need to find the box, Enrico. You must! Everything depends on it!" Father Lucas's voice quivered as he spoke. "And when you do, Enrico, you must take every concept of blaspheme that you know and cast it aside. The church's doctrine is full of holes and half-truths. But it had to be made that way. The truth is far more than anyone could ever want to know. We went looking for answers, Enrico. And we found them. We…..we found them…" his voice was fading now into a whisper. "Roderick….he did something… he brought something into our world, Enrico. Something terrible."

Enrico could see that the man was clearly struggling now. "Father Lucas…" he tried to say tenderly. None of this made sense. He had nothing but the highest respect for this man and was devastated at his betrayal when he left the church.

"We think we know what it means to be damned, Enrico. We thought we understood damnation. But we were wrong, Enrico. We were wrong! We know nothing of what it means to truly be damned! Evil does not exist because of a fallen angel, Enrico. It has existed all along." The shaken priest was now gritting his teeth.

"Even Satan himself is an innocent child in the face of the evils that exist. And now it is here, with us, right now in this very moment she is watching!" he said before relaxing back into his chair. He seemed very calm now.

"Father Lucas, I don't understand" said Enrico as he desperately tried to grasp the situation.

"Go with God, Enrico. And may he have mercy on your soul…on all of our souls." Father Lucas raised his arm to reveal that he had what looked like a desert eagle in his hand.

"Wait!" cried Enrico. But as he lurched forward to try to grab the weapon, Father Lucas pulled the trigger, blasting the far side of his head all over the patio wall. The fallen priest slumped in his chair as Enrico simply stood, dumbfounded. And then he heard it. It was like a loud exhale, but no one else was around. He could hear the Vatican guards now pounding his bedroom door, but before he could look away, he saw Father Lucas's body start to disintegrate. His skin seemed to melt as the rest of him started to boil. As it happened, his body began to turn into a foul black liquid as it oozed down, out of the chair, and through the metal flooring of the patio to fall on rock tiles in a garden 3 floors down. The air became terribly foul and he held his sleeve over his face. It was then that he saw a dark mist float up from the melting priest. There was no wind tonight, yet the mist moved on its own, quickly floating up into the night sky and vanishing.

Maxwell looked down at the table and saw the key still sitting there. He picked it up and walked back into his room as the guards burst their way into the room.

"I'm alright" he said. "But there are some remains on the patio. See to it that they are cleaned up and stored for burial. And treat them with respect.

"Whose remains Father? And what is that awful smell?" asked the senior guard.

"I'm afraid that's classified. Inform any one that may come looking for me that I shall return. I have an errand to attend to."