Jingoism (n.):
The belief of people who think that their country is always right in their violent actions against others.
The following days were weird. Angelica felt wired, as if someone had put her on overdrive. Her mind was constantly spinning ways to escape. That small taste of the outside world was driving her crazy. She was angry at herself for becoming so docile in the care of a complete stranger but she convinced herself that it was all just to keep her parents alive.
Hausmeister would take her on walks outside to readjust to the light every morning, but one day he let her out by herself, giving very strict instructions.
"There is a stone warehouse near the harbor, you are by no means allowed to go there. Do not listen to your instincts, the only thing that awaits you there is death himself." He warned as he fixed the ribbon rack on his chest.
Above Hausmeister's bed was a wooden canopy. Above that canopy was an attic door that puled down on hinges. Next to his bed was a drop-down ladder to climb in order to get to the second ladder. Angelica was stumped. Why go through so much trouble when you could just build a staircase?
As soon as Hausmeister closed the door, freeing her from his imposing gaze, she took off running down the middle of the road, narrowly avoiding a black car as it raced past. She had no idea where she was going, only that she needed to get away. Now.
Then, as she passed some stone buildings to her right, she heard shrieks and cries. They were death cries. No one else on the street seemed to notice.
Of their own accord, her legs started running her toward those blood curdling screams.
The harbor was only a few hundred feet away from where she climbed from captivity. It was the one place Hausmeister warned her against. Hope fueled her as she ran toward the smell of low tide and rotting eggs. She could take a boat somewhere! Ignoring the driving impulse to run toward the screams within that stone building, Angelica ran to the dock and frantically accosted the first person she saw.
"Hi! I'd like to buy a ticket to, well, anywhere, please!" She disjointedly begged the captain of a small boat that floated like a balloon on a string behind him as he coiled rope in his hands.
The older man eyed her suspiciously, grabbing his bushy grey beard to think. A nun with a sword was never a good sign in this part of the world.
"Where yah try'na git to sister?" he asked, kneeling to untie the knot holding his boat to the dock.
The nun glanced around like someone was after her before whispering only loud enough for him to hear: "America."
The captain nearly spit out his chewed cigarette out of disgust and stared up at her quietly for a minute to decide if she was genuine.
"That'll cost ya quite a bit."
"Please, I don't have much time." The frightened girl begged.
Judging by the apprehensive stress in her demeanor and the strange white scythe the girl had strapped to her back he figured she must have done something to piss off the IRA. He was not willing to get involved with enemies of the Irish Republican Army.
"Fer seven hundred I can get ya ta Greenland with the other crew, buh tha's et."
Angelica's heart sank as her coinage situation became distressingly apparent. She had nothing.
"Er, sorry, I just realized I have no money..."
"Sorry Sister. Tha's alotta gas." The white bearded man shrugged, happy to be rid of the troublesome girl.
Crap! How was she going to get out of here now?!
Screams pierced the calm harbor. The captain looked over Angelica's shoulder to the stone building behind her and started working frantically to get the small ship ready for a trip. Every few seconds he would look back up to check the building. He was waiting for something.
"You oughta get out a here." The captain warned, "Thes is no place fer a woman."
Shouts, the broken cries of fully-grown men seemed to grow louder with each passing minute. But Angelica didn't feel afraid as she might have once before. Her emotions began to fade again, but then she felt a hand fall heavily onto her shoulder that jerked her back to reality with a start.
"Cap'n we takin' charters on this'un?" A happy young man cheered from behind her. "We could use a pretty face 'round here." He winked.
The scraggily older man shook his head slowly, nervously before motioning the boy onto the boat. "Naht this time, boy. Time ta go, meetin's ov'r."
"Meeting?" Angelica asked, "What's going on?" Both pairs of eyes dropped to the girl. "Sorry, I'm very lost here."
"Ah, a convent girl. What kind'a Christian are ya?" The younger man asked, removing his hand from her shoulder to move in front of her.
Angelica's face blanched. "Uh, I'm not sure…"
"Protestant?" The younger man probed, barren of the gentle cheer his voice held only moments prior. "Or Catholic?"
Her mouth opened to answer but the scene around her exploded into chaos. It was as if a bomb struck. The boat was nothing but flotsam drifting in the hectic pink tipped waves of dark red in murky green water.
The older man with whom she had been conversing was now a blood stain on the dock. His body sunk into the water amidst the floating pieces of his ship.
Horrified, Angelica stumbled backward, tripping over something onto her backside and into a pool of blood soaked mud and grass.
Blinded with terror she leaped to her feet.
A deep voice met her ears with the evocative feel of cashmere. "And what, exactly, are you supposed to be?"
Tossing her head about she tried to figure out what just happened. Then she looked down to the bloody dirt from where she tripped.
There was a man in a red duster kneeling on the ground with his chin dripping with blood, black hair falling to one side of his face to cover a pair of round orange tinted glasses.
He must have dyslexia, she thought to herself, trying to think of some redeeming quality of the person who was currently eating that nice Irish guy.
Before Angelica could find the sense to respond, he dropped his face back to the dead man on the ground, biting down hard on his throat, causing blood to spray everywhere like he'd bitten into a water balloon.
Normally, when faced with a situation such as this a person might run away, or scream. But not Angelica.
"Not much of a talker are we?" The killer taunted as he lifted his head once more. "Or are you so scared that you can't move?" His eyed suddenly caught the weapon on her back and a terrifying smile creased large dimples into his cheeks. "So that's where it went." He came to his haunches and lifted a white gloved hand, palm up. "Be a good little girl and give me the Scythe."
On instinct alone, her hand reached for the blade's handle to protect it.
As if bored by her compliance he reached up with one massively long arm and grabbed Angelica by the front of her habit, standing to his full height as he lifted her feet off of the ground.
Did the IRA think they could steal from Helsing without repercussions? Or that sending the Scythe away with a holy nun would deter him? At first he found the little nun funny. The shock and terror reflected in her eyes was amusing as her comrades became nothing more than chunks of people. Though, now, as he held her at eye level Alucard realized he did not like what he saw.
They were the same as...
No; it wasn't possible. Completely ridiculous. Seres was the right one, he was sure of it. Narrowing his eyes with a sinister grin he looked into those defiant eyes and laughed. "Go on, I believe you were planning to attack me. Make it happen little girl."
The motion was quick, fast enough to catch Alucard by surprise.
He dropped her to the ground. Angelica landed on her feet and watched the white metal rip through his ribcage with ease, exposing each individual rib like teeth. The cool blade slid through him, leaving a wide wound across his chest. Blood flowed out at an alarming rate to the wooden dock, far more quickly than any supposed vampire in the past.
Attempting to withdraw the weapon, Angelica lurched her body weight backward to haul it out until she fell backward into her butt with the hooked scythe in hand, blood dripping over the handle, seeping into her skin like red dye. Looking up, she watched utter shock take over the arrogant smile the man before her adorned since he showed up. Minute pain seemed to register there and all Angelica could think to do was whimper, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It doesn't usually do that it usually... It usually..."
To Angelica's horror, and minor relief, the wound began to close. He touched the exposed bone and made a face like he was going to sneeze then another great big grin seemed to take over his whole face before cracking up.
"And you have the nerve to call yourself a vampire hunter? How pathetic."
Angelica wasn't entirely sure how to take his mocking tone. She never called herself a vampire hunter; in fact, she still had a hard time believing that such a thing could really exist.
"I'm not a… I'm sorry." She eyed the pool of blood gathering around his feet before flicking them back up to his amber glasses. "It usually fixes-"
Suddenly she was forced to her knees. She heard that deep, silken voice murmur from high above her head as a metallic click rang in the space between them. "Oh? You were trying to fix me? Is there something about me that displeases you?"
The cold breath made her shutter as excuses came tumbling from her mouth. "Hausmeister told me that I needed to purify vampires, that I was helping you find peace-"
Bang.
A painful, yes, painful sound reverberated through her eardrums and into her skull, rattling her brain until it scrambled to figure out what had just happened.
The wild looking man stood above with a massive gun aimed for her forehead. Angelica's heart leaped to her throat, he slid the burning hot metal from her forehead to her mouth and she realized what the painful sound was.
That asshole shot her!
She struggled to grasp the realization because she hadn't felt it happen. But when she moved her hands, keeping her eyes on the vampire, she felt that half of her torso was simply gone. Vanished. Poof. And without those muscles to keep her sitting straight, she crumpled to the side. Her one remaining hand felt her own boiling hot organs moving and undulating as shock tried to set in.
The gun went off again. She could not move. She couldn't make herself fight back. She knew that he had every right to kill her. It was only natural to fight back when someone hurt you first. This man was naturally reacting to an attack. It wasn't his fault.
Clearly this guy didn't want to be 'cleansed'. He reveled in his immortality. It suited him pretty well. He made a pretty freaky sci-if flick of the week.
"Aren't you going to beg for your life?" He mocked from above. "Beg. Go on. Do it!"
Angelica didn't move a muscle. She just looked at the gun aimed at her face, accepting her fate.
Suddenly irritated with her indifference he gripped the front of her bloody white robe and lifted her off of the ground to make her look at him in the eyes. Her head lolled to the side where her left shoulder was missing, only a bloody stump. Cold breath puffed against her exposed throat and she felt something wet lap at the skin. She then realized absently that he must have tasted her blood.
"Or are you waiting for me to bite you?" he provoked with his silken tone, "Is that what you want, kraut? Immortality? To become a monster like the ones you slay?"
The girl didn't answer. She didn't react. She only stared at him with big forgiving eyes. Alucard felt the strong desire to blow her pretty little face to smithereens.
Angelica felt the squared nozzle of the gun press a hot brand deep into her cheek.
That's when she began praying in that strange language.
The next thing she heard was a high pitched ringing sound.
The sensation of being thrown to the ground dismissively was harsh and gritty.
And that was all she could remember.
…
Alucard found himself giving into curiosity by flipping through her cellphone while she underwent intensive surgery to fix the damage to the nun's shoulder and gut. There were hundreds of phone numbers on the little device, he wondered how many of these people she actually spoke to. Then he figured out how to access her pictures. There were thousands on the little black device.
One stood out among the strange images of red cups being used as hats with a red haired girl and different wine labels, though he could see she preferred a Columbian Crest 2009 cabernet sauvignon.
It was a photo of a young man donning a mask with the likeness of Guy Fawkes, lifting his shirt to reveal a well formed abdomen. Through the mask's eyes he could see blue, but something about them seemed wrong. Those blue eyes were oddly familiar.
Disturbed, he clicked the phone's light off and placed it back in the bin with her other personal affects where he found it.
…
The full body covered hers. Struggling blindly she felt her body heat surge, sweat doused the pure white robes that gathered around her hips. Without sight she could only smell the man above. He smelled like blood and dirt.
Images of a beautiful man teasing her with a flirtatious smirk and flaming red eyes flashed over her mind like a burning room. She couldn't let this happen, she couldn't let him find her body like this. Not again.
Terrified screams pealed from her raw throat as the burning hot entity above began grumbling about her 'using her power to keep the enemy safe'. Calling her a traitor and a monster.
Tears streamed down her cold cheeks in torrents. Her eyes were glued shut as they ran dry. Her throat was raw and sore from screaming.
Struggling like a cornered animal she used her arms as a cage around herself, then thrashed one arm out to push away his face. She tried to dig her fingers into his eyes. Small squeaks of extreme effort crept between her lips sounding more like a baby elephant than a scared girl. His massive hands encircled her thin wrists and he pinned them above her head as she struggled to escape.
She would get away this time. She would fight back.
But she couldn't. The man above was too strong. Eventually she simply let it happen, there was no use in fighting anymore. It was all too exhausting.
After what felt like hours of laying in her own blood in silence, she felt a gentle finger run across the bridge of her nose, under her eyes and along the shells of her ears.
"Please... don't go." The gentle words echoed in her head. What kind of accent was that? Russian? No. Polish? Certainly not. It sounded Western European but she couldn't put her finger on its homeland.
"Don't leave me here alone..." The grip on her limp body tensed hard.
His voice changed slowly with each passing syllable, transforming into a velveteen baritone as the thick accent seemed to fade away allowing her to better understand his words.
"… not again." She heard him say.
Her heart palpitated as the last word sunk painfully into her heart.
A tough skinned finger swiped at her face, removing a tear as it made a cold contrail toward her temple, some even lodged themselves in her ear. The tear in her ear must have warped his voice because he began to sound just like... that guy who...
Holy shit!
She screamed, then her voice cut into silence as she bounced painfully off of the bed and skated across tile before slamming into a wall. Angelica slumped over and squeezed her eyes tightly to her palms.
Mind scattered like marbles her eyes opened wide, allowing the Sandman's hard work go to waste. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles sleepily, noting how sore her left arm felt, then glanced the room.
Oh, thank god it was just a nightmare. Angelica thought to herself, holding her chest as her heart began to slow.
At first she didn't notice him lurking in the shadowed corner of the white room. But his glowing red eyes gave away the hiding spot. He was giving a harsh glare accented with an amused smirk. She frowned a little. He didn't kill her after all.
That dream though...
It was so real.
"It was a nightmare." Angelica comforted herself aloud this time. The vampire seemed to think she was speaking to him because he then appeared in front of her with a cocky half-smile half-sneer as his eyes disrobed her body. A chill ran down her arms.
Wait.
Where the hell were her clothes!?
She glared up at him accusingly, not bothering to cover her skin. He already saw her naked so there was no reason to hide now. Now there was only a tiny inkling of a fear that she wanted to voice, you know, just in case.
"Give not into temptation?" she requested sarcastically, her heart drumming with fear in her chest, warning her with every fiber of her existence to run. She raised an eyebrow, hoping her nightmare was just that; a frightful dream that never actually happened.
"Me?" The vampire who nearly killed her feigned bewildered indignation. "Never."
She started to stand against the wall and ignored him as his eyes traveled all over. His grin drooped momentarily before returning as Angelica's hands clenched the area of her stomach that should have been nothing but a gaping hole. Then her other hand flew to her shoulder to feel for further damage. Her body was entirely intact. She panicked. Had that all been part of her nightmare?
Then something more terrifying occurred to her. Did he bite her...? Was she dead? Was she now a vampire, too?
Before she could reconsider the suicidal action, she clutched the front of his bright red duster, shaking him violently until the ornately tied cravat came apart. Tears jumped to the rims of her eyes. "You're okay!"
One hand patted his chest where the blade had slid through. "Right?" She let go of his coat and looked him up and down for injuries. "I didn't mean to- What happened? Why am I..." Stuttering for the right words, she cried at him. Guilt ate at her stomach like maggots on a month old steak.
He did not appear to be amused. "Surgeons tried to sew you up but your body would not cooperate. It seems you heal remarkably fast for a human. Genetic splicing with some crustacean species I presume?"
A sharp pain tugged at her side. But she refused to show weakness around the guy who fucking shot her.
Wait.
He shot her!
She jumped away like a gazelle from a lion and hid in the safest spot in the room: under the covers.
"Such a devastating defense, there's no way I could possibly..." His white gloved hand gripped the blanket from above. Angelica curled over herself tightly to hide from the guy who blew her damned body apart.
A female voice cleared her throat in the doorway.
"Alucard what the Hell are you doing." The woman asked tersely. He dropped the blanket like it shocked him. It floated gently over Angelica's face and she continued burrowing into the bed.
"Waking the girl, as you ordered." He gave a wolfish grin.
Angelica poked her eyes out from behind the blanket to watch the two bicker like an old married couple. The wife, in this situation, obviously wore the pants.
"I did not tell you to make the girl howl like a banshee and wake Seres. What did you do to her? And don't you dare say 'nothing'" The older woman narrowed her sharp blue eyes threateningly with a tight edge to her English accented voice. Angelica expected the vampire to scoff and give some bogus explanation.
But he didn't.
Instead he relaxed his posture reverently and told the whole story, starting from before she woke: " I heard screaming behind the door. You had given no orders to kill or maim her in any way. I found that she was having a night terror." The blonde's face tensed as she nodded for him to continue. "I threw her." His grin widened, the blonde's eyes stormed. "That seemed to work."
Angelica disagreed with his reasoning and continued looking about the room for means of escape.
"That's when you walked through the door without knocking." He explained.
"I have an open invitation to every room of my own damn house." The older woman smirked with daringly narrow eyes.
"Yes, my master."
It was shocking, surprising, confusing even. He didn't say those words with distain, but rather respect and admiration that Angelica almost envied. This woman deserved a person so devoted in her advanced age.
"Angelica Rampart." Angelica's eyes snapped to the willowy woman in the doorway. She had an armored guard on either side. "You have cost us far more than you're worth. Who are your masters?" She demanded, gaze unwavering.
"Masters?" Angelica wondered quietly aloud, but the woman didn't seem to hear.
"What did you say?" The blonde shifted so her right ear was closer. "Speak up!"
Angelica sat up and shouted, "I don't have a master!"
"Then explain your attack on Alucard. If you have no master, as you claim, then why dare such a suicide mission?"
Angelica went silent.
"Whose 'Alucard'?"
The silence was quickly filled with cackling laughter that erupted like popcorn in the microwave. Glancing between the guards, the vampire and his master, confusion numbed Angelica's brain as the tall man in red cracked up to the point where he was holding himself up against an armoire.
"The vampire you provoked," the blonde woman spoke through the vampire's laughter, "his name is Alucard." She shook her head slowly and deliberately, eyes barely hiding a smirk. "Why did go after him? Who do you work for?"
It didn't feel right talking about him when he was standing right there like a laughing, toothy, piece of meat. Of their own accord she lifted her eyes to the right to watch his aloof expression. 'Aloof' in his expression repertoire meant a mild smirk of amusement at the situation around him. The amusement seemed to increase drastically as his eyes slid to meet Angelica's somewhere in between them.
Her heart bubbled nervously. Frightfully she said, "I-I swear that I have no masters."
The blonde woman crossed her arms, her round glasses reflecting the light so harshly that Angelica could no longer see her eyes. "The Iscariot?"
"Huh?" Angelica stared at her. Did she just speak in pig-Latin?
The woman stilled and her brows pulled together. "What religious affiliation are you?"
Burning hot vomit rose in the back of Angelica's throat. This had been a confusing year for her, spiritually. For one, she had some form of spirituality that she still couldn't quite grasp. But for now, considering this was obviously some kind of interrogation, she decided to simply tell her the truth. "When I got kidnapped I was atheist, but now I'm not so sure."
Alucard's red eyes trained hard on Angelica's face, but she refused to look away from the blonde in the doorway with a newly emerged smirk on her face.
"An atheist." She smiled only wide enough to show ultrawhite teeth. She seemed to become angry for a moment before regaining composure as only royalty could. She then continued regally, "what a plight you have befallen, Alucard." Her sardonic smile shifted to a small frown of stiff disapproval. "A godless nun tried to kill you."
Angelica still couldn't look at him, even when she felt the cold intensity of his gaze, it just didn't feel right. His eyes were something familiar. Something awful.
"I see." She heard him mutter from the right side of the room.
The blonde woman began again, "Angelica, your misdirected anger at god-"
Angelica rolled her eyes and spoke fast, she had heard this same lecture from a thousand different mouths in her life. "I don't hate God. My parents are Baptists. They are great: happy, smiling. I don't hate God, I simply don't believe that there is one."
The words had a dangerous, silencing effect on the room.
"So, you're telling me that you used the Scythe… as an atheist." She stated dubiously, taking long, important steps toward the girl before stopping right next to her spot on the bed. She stood right in front of Alucard, who Angelica was then forced to look at as he loomed just over his master's shoulder imposingly. He was still staring, but Angelica only awarded him a diminutive glance for his effort.
"It is impossible," he spoke into the thin blonde's ear, thinking Angelica couldn't hear, or didn't care if she did. "No one else can access…" His voice lowered until Angelica couldn't distinguish the words. The woman's eyes widened minutely and she turned her eyes back the spot where Angelica lay defenseless.
The blonde woman then turned back toward the door.
"Alucard," the woman called over her shoulder, "Do not come back into this room again unless Seres, or I, accompany you." Then, she acknowledged the short haired girl on the bed, pausing her short jaunt, turning a little to face her. "Angelica, you are to meet me in my office in an hour. New clothes will be delivered to your door shortly and Seres will guide you. I am Integra Fairbrooks Wingate Helsing, allow me to be the first to explain everything."
A/N: Thanks for reading, leave a review to let me know what you think. Even if you hate it.