Wow. This fanfic is really coming along. I'm loving this. I hope others are enjoying it as well. I don't have a lot to say on this chapter except that I put way too much time into researching stuff sometimes. I just like to have that touch of realism. I have never been to Italy, so Google was my best friend for this chapter.

Update: If you've been following my fanfic, there is an update on the first chapter to explain *why* Alucard has his powers back, is bound to Integra again and isn't acting like he has Shrodinger yanking him out of reality if he noms on a soul or two. I apologize for the seeming lack of continuity with no explanation. Or maybe I just think too much…

Disclaimer: I know Hellsing isn't mine, but a girl can dream, right? RIGHT?

Ch. 4: Search

Seras blinked groggily as the train rolled to a stop in Milazzo, Sicily. Beside her, Alucard stared out at the lights of the coastal city. The train station had an incredible view of the ocean and the tiers of white-washed houses crowding its edge. On the left-hand horizon, an especially bright glow lit up the night.

"What's that?" Seras asked, pointing at the glow beyond the coast. Alucard glanced at his protégé.

"The port."

Seras waited for him to elaborate, but he just returned to staring out the window as the train released an ear-piercing whistle and all around them, tourists, families and students stood to begin gathering their things. Seras sighed.

Alucard had grown increasingly more pensive after they arrived in Italy and began traveling along its western coast. With each city they stopped at, he would lift his head, close his eyes and…sniff. She couldn't imagine how he could smell anything from miles away. Her sense of smell certainly wasn't that acute, but he seemed to sense something. Every time, he ended up facing the ocean. In Capo Vaticano, he had faced directly out to sea, but as they crossed from Italy's mainland into Sicily, his nose had pointed increasingly north.

Each time they stopped and Alucard found himself facing out to sea, his mood grew more volatile. He spoke rarely and spent most of his time brooding as he stared out at the lapping waves.

As the train car cleared out, Alucard pulled out a black cell phone and Bluetooth ear bud. It seemed strange for the ancient vampire to use the technology so casually, but he was nothing if not adaptable. He glanced at the phone's screen as he dialed through, then went back to staring out the window as a tiny ring emanated from his right ear.

"Alucard reporting in. Suspicion confirmed. She is somewhere in the Aeolian Islands. Trajectory suggests Panarea, one of the smallest islands. Limited casualty potential. Your orders, master."

"They remain the same, Alucard. Search and destroy. Bring her home."

"And any humans that might stand in my way?"

The answer didn't come immediately. Seras remembered a time when Alucard would have tortured his master with the decision. Of course, by now, Integra had made so many difficult decisions in her position as head of the Hellsing organization that the potential guilt rolled off her like water off a duck's back. It had been years since she questioned her own decisions.

"Search and destroy, Alucard. Anyone willing to torture a child has left their humanity behind them long ago."

A small smile tugged at the corner of the ancient vampire's mouth, the first one Seras had seen out of him since they crossed the Italian border.

"Understood, my master."

"And, Alucard?"

"Yes, my master?"

"If you find the ones responsible for directly hurting her…take your time killing them."

Alucard's smile stretched into a shit-eating grin. His eyes glowed with a manic intensity.

"As you command, my master." He breathed the words with the reverence of a priest in the presence of God. Integra's end of the phone clicked off without so much as a by-your-leave. Alucard didn't seem to notice. Nothing more needed to be said.

"Per favore, passate presenti al passaggio a Palermo."

Seras jumped at the ticket inspector's voice. She'd been so intent on the conversation between Alucard and Integra that she hadn't noticed his approach.

Alucard looked up as though he'd known the man was there all along. He slid his orange spectacles down his nose so he could capture the man with his red eyes. The ticket inspector blinked and then seemed to relax through the shoulders.

A torrent of words spilled from her master's mouth in what must be Italian. Seras didn't understand a word of it, but the human soaked it up like a sponge as a glaze settled over his eyes.

Alucard had been doing that since they crossed the English Channel. Seras didn't know if he actually knew every language across Europe or if he was plucking the words from the humans' minds. She hadn't dared to ask.

The man nodded, bobbed a curt bow and turned to go back down the aisle. Alucard rose and Seras scrambled to gather their things. They didn't have much, just a backpack with a change of clothes for her and a case containing the Viper which looked like it housed a musical instrument. And…the coffins, of course, but they were tucked away in an empty sleeper car with a bespelled attendant guarding them. Anything else they needed, they could buy…or hunt for.

"Master?" Seras's voice held a querulous note that made Alucard cock an eyebrow at her over his shoulder.

"She…she's on an island?"

Alucard's grin quirked up. The younger vampire had done surprisingly well on the crossing at the English Channel. So much so that he'd allowed her to remain outside her coffin for the crossing from Italy to Sicily. However, this next leg of the journey would be different. With several miles of ocean to cross, she would have to go back in the box.

"Of course she is. They would be fools to keep her anywhere else."

Seras's shoulders slumped, her face falling at the thought of crossing more water.

"Buck it up, police girl. I expect you to provide cover fire for me, just like always."

Seras glanced mournfully over her shoulder at the Viper's case.

"I don't see how I can, with this tiny thing."

"You're thinking like a human again, police girl. Haven't you learned better in thirty years?"

Seras seemed to droop further, if that was possible. Alucard chuckled under his breath.

"Admittedly, a little more firepower might come in useful. The Harkonnen is in a secret compartment in your coffin."

With that bomb dropped, Alucard headed down the train's central aisle, leaving Seras to catch up once her overjoyed shock wore off.

V^^^V

Alucard gripped the ferry's railing, watching the bluffs of the tiny island of Panerea glimmer in the distant moonlight. The bespelled ferryman wouldn't be able to see them yet, but the vampire's sensitive eyes could make out the faint glow of light on the Eastern coast and from behind the cone of the old volcano.

Even with the drag the miles of open water placed on his powers, he could scent the child of Hellsing, Integra's heir, his future master. She was here and he would find her.

Beneath his feet, Seras's screams echoed through the deck. She lasted for almost an hour before the first wail drifted up beneath his feet. She had done better crossing the English Channel, but her reaction didn't really surprise him. In addition to the weight of the ocean, he could feel the prick of holy power across his skin. The entire island had been blessed and radiated with holy light typically invisible to human eyes.

Tugging on the ferryman's mind like the reins of a horse, Alucard directed him to follow the western coast line, away from the eastern, populated side. A sheer bluff rose up on the right and fell away into a jagged, rocky coastline that looked like some giant had hit the island with a massive hammer, crumbling the western half into the ocean.

They skirted around a promontory and a small spire of rock thrusting up out of the water. The faint sound of Seras's muffled screams echoed back to him from the rocky cliffs.

"Quiet, police girl."

The screaming stopped immediately, but he could feel her pain and terror ratchet up a notch. He couldn't be sure how much her mind would take, so he had to make this fast.

A small, sandy beach came into view at the northern end of the island. Alucard directed the ferryman to maneuver as close to the shore as he could as the vampire turned to clamber down to the main deck. He took the stairs like a normal human to conserve his power.

Two coffins sat in one of the spaces that would be taken up by a car on a normal day. Both were in the old-world style, shaped to closely fit a human body. One had a gold cross on the lid. The other had words scrawled across it: The bird of hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame.

Alucard stooped to grasp the plainer one, hefting it up by the metal straps that held the lid on. He felt a surge of terror from the inside but didn't have time to comfort his protégé.

Carrying the bulky object and its terrified contents to the edge of the ferry, he eyed the shoreline and judged the distance to be narrow enough.

With a mighty heave, he launched the coffin through the air like a bulky, unwieldy javelin. It sailed through the air, trailing a thin, terrified wail as it went. To his satisfaction, it landed in the sand of the beach, upright and sunk about a foot and a half into the ground. The second coffin landed next to it a moment later.

Reaching out to leave a last set of instructions in the ferryman's mind, Alucard surveyed his handiwork and, grinning, dissolved into a hoard of flapping bats.

V^^^V

Pain! Pain and terror! The unbearable pressure had vanished, but the pain marched over her skin like an army of angry ants, taking chunks out of her as they went. Another scream bubbled up at the back of her throat, but something she couldn't name prevented it from escaping past her lips. If she could just get that scream out, it would all be better. She just knew it.

The sound of screeching metal assaulted her ears as something wrenched the lid off her prison. A familiar face swam into view. She knew that face, like a distant memory of a long-forgotten dream. White gloved hands reached for her and as her skin came into contact with his, the pain lessened and a touch of sanity returned.

Seras frowned up at Alucard's grinning face. How could he laugh at a time like this? His eyes danced with mirth and she realized he no longer wore his signature red duster but the black leather conglomerate of straps that only showed up during his most violent bursts of power. His black hair, grown long and thick, snapped in the whipping sea breeze…or was that his power whipping around them like a hurricane gale?

"What are you doing?"

His grin widened and his eyes showed white all around the iris as the wind picked up. It battered them like a ship in a storm and Alucard began to fade around the edges. Dark tendrils of power curled out from his whipping hair and wings made up of a thousand gloved hands sprouted from his back. The hands flexed, raised themselves to the sky and then plunged into the ground all around them.

Like a straw house going up in flames, Alucard's dark power consumed them both. It spread from the inferno of their bodies, across the beach and up the rocky cliffs that framed the crescent moon of sand. Hundreds of red eyes opened on the black cliffs, blinking at the two vampires and their waiting coffins. The black flames reached an unbearable crescendo and with a loud pop, both vampires and their coffins slipped through the sand of the beach into the warm darkness of the volcanic rock below.

The sand settled into place, leaving no indication of what had just taken place. For a normal human, nothing would seem out of place, but to the properly trained eye, the beach pulsed with a dark corruption that sat against the island's holy blessing like a rotten core beneath the skin of a fresh, crisp apple.

Safe within his coffin, Alucard's eyes closed. He could feel the sun working its way over the horizon. For now, he would sleep the day away in his native Romanian earth and come dusk, the Vatican dogs would pay dearly for daring to lay a hand on an heir of Hellsing.

End note:

Yay, a new follower.

xVentressx: Thank you for reviewing on every chapter. I'm so glad you're enjoying the fic. This should start getting a little more involved and interesting, now. Yay.

I changed the rating on this to 'T' because I'm not sure I'm going to get SO very gory that it would be a problem. I think I may be misrepresenting the story with the 'M' rating. Of course, I haven't gotten to the gore yet. That's next chapter. Heehee.

Please review, even if it's to say I'm way off and couldn't write Alucard's character right to save my life. Feedback is good. Really.