Writing 101: This, children, is what we refer to as a filler chapter. It's what you do when you're attempting to bridge the idea you had two chapters ago and the idea you have now. Yeah, I don't like them either.
By the way. Newsflash for reviewers: I love you, I really do. You cats crack me up.
Integra was not in a good mood. In fact, she was in a very, very bad mood. "Alucard," she commanded with a lofty voice, "come here. Now."
The shadows seemed to melt and contort as she spoke, molding the dark figure of her servant.
"Master."
Icy eyes narrowed and became colder yet at the vampire's casual greeting. Integra intertwined her fingers over her mouth, stare unwavering. Alucard stared back, his own gaze just as steady and swimming with amusement, among other unrecognizable things.
"Tell me, why was the door to the basement left unlocked?" She was calm and direct.
The vampire tilted his head and quirked an eyebrow, his strong, angular features almost imperceptibly beginning to morph into something softer, round and childlike in appearance. "The door? Unlocked? Why, I had no idea," He replied in a lighter voice, now the very portrait of innocence itself. Yet Integra knew better than to overlook his subtle illusions; he could change his face to be gentle and trustworthy, but she knew him too well to be fooled by his tricks.
Her fingers twitched, just itching to snatch her handgun from its place under the desk.
"Yes. It was unlocked. And the maid just so happened to wander down into your chamber, as I'm sure you noticed."
She was quiet for a few moments longer, watching with hawk-like eyes as he continued his innocent façade. "Really? Hmm… I suppose I do recall noticing something…" Was his worried reply, his voice warm and all too sweet.
"Do you know what she found in the basement?"
He batted thick lashes that framed normally sharp, predatory eyes, now vulnerable and doe-like.
"You."
Red eyes widened in surprise, and he looked utterly taken aback, giving a little gasp. 'He' had by this point completed his slow transformation into the character of a tiny, rosy-cheeked child, harmless with its slim stature and pouty lips. "No! Me?"
Integra felt her reserve snap at his blatant mockery, and her words became snarls, eyes whittling down to furious slits. "You bloody fool!"
Just as quickly as she lost her stony demeanor, Alucard's genteel one twisted back into his former towering, masculine cut, once again radiating raw bestial power. The two were akin to absolute forces of nature, infinitely tied—Slave and master, captive and captor, alpha and omega, Dracula and van Hellsing.
"If you dare try and use this child, or any other that I bring into this house, for your games of petty self amusement the rest of your years under my hand will be spent in misery. Misery unlike you have ever known." Both pairs of eyes blazed.
"Oh, I doubt you could bring me to any sort of miseries I've not yet felt, Master." Alucard started to dissolve until he was little more than an inky fog from which two red eyes glowed and rows of pearly fangs grinned.
She sneered. "We shall try anyway."
A hand so cold that it burned trailed across Integra's shoulders in the dark, a purring hiss tickling her spine.
"Please do."
Integra reached into a little box on her desk and retrieved a cigar. She placed it between her lips and struck a match from the book, the tip glowing as red as Alucard's eyes. She rose.
"Servant."
The maniacal, Cheshire grin twitched wider. "Yes, my dear, sweet little Integra?" A disembodied voice husked.
Bullet after blessed bullet tore through his face until it was riddled with oozing holes. Blood spattered the polished wooden floor, and the broken grin remained for a few tantalizing moments before fading away.
Plumes of smoke curled from her lips as Integra exhaled and when she spoke her voice was searing, dead calm. "Watch your tongue, you vile, disgusting filth, or I'll cut it out for good."
/
Cricket loped down the street, strung tighter than a violin. It was pouring rain, the warm, steamy, disgusting kind, and it would have been pitch black out but the streetlamps and building lights kept the slick roads luminous. It seemed like every glowing window, every neon business sign, every passing car's headlights were those red eyes from the Hellsing basement. Walking home at night from the bus stop was never a comfortable affair, but tonight Cricket was ready to crawl out of her itching skin and leave it lying there on the street.
Wary of every shadow and corner, the girl kept to the edge of the sidewalk as she journeyed towards home. She watched the world go by intently while moving at a brisk canter through the oily streets, several times losing her footing, skidding and slipping frantically but never falling. Pubs exploded with sudden bursts of boisterous laughter every now and then, far away sirens and the buzzing of nighttime conversation forming a background track that assaulted her senses. It wasn't a long walk home after the two bus rides, but for Cricket, it felt like a million miles of nonstop paranoia and aggravation.
Relief unlike any other washed through her body when home finally did appear, safe and calm and far from the loud London nightlife. She stepped through the threshold of the door, valiantly battling her way through her mother's exuberant barrages of how her day went and if she was alright and if her boss got the cookies (which she didn't, thank God). Cricket managed to escape to her bedroom, congratulating herself on a job well done as she flicked on the lights. After a brief survey confirmed that everything was in order (or rather, not in order, seeing as her room was a disaster area wrapped up in a crime scene) she made her way to the bathroom for a pleasantly warm shower.
Half an hour and sixty gallons of water later, Cricket emerged from the bathroom whistling, still sopping wet but now in a good way.* Following her nighttime routine, she was soon sitting cross-legged in bed with the TV droning on, finally able to truly relax and think within the safety of those four familiar walls.
She stared out the second-story window at the pulsing sheets of rain. She liked the noise it made when it hit the rooftops, or when the wind sent it pounding against her windows. It made her feel safe, buried inside a nest of pillows and blankets, like she was hidden in the sky's womb. On the TV people laughed in a friendly way at some late night talk show host, and on her walls the Christmas lights she'd hung cast a warm glow of colors against the shifting shadows the rain threw. Letting out a breathy hum of comfort, Cricket allowed her brain slow down until it came to a stop, drifting peacefully in a pleasant daze through some ethereal purgatory between sleep and reality.
It wasn't until her mother cracked the door to let the dog slip into Cricket's room that she came back to earth. Waking briefly to the sound of his collar's tinkling as the dog circled his own little bed, she pawed wearily for the remote, flipping through the channels sleepily with plenty of little yawns until she found what she was looking for—Good old American TV, unintelligent and insulting. Smiling and humming dazedly, she crawled from her little cave blankets to the foot of her bed, reaching down and stroking the already snoring dog's graying fur. Stumbling from the tangles of bed, she made her way to the kitchen in a groggy stupor. Cricket rustled around the fridge until she found something good to eat, and then followed the path back to her bed in the typical adolescent zombie-like fashion. It was while engaging in this nocturnal teenage ritual she just so happened to look over at her desk, covered in sticky notes and schoolbooks and various manners of homework. Nothing was out of place, really; nothing to cause suspicion or alarm. Except for one thing, one small detail that she barely caught.
There, placed next to the dozens of loose papers, sat Cricket's paycheck. The same paycheck that had fluttered away from her when she took her little spill down the stairs. The same paycheck that she was absolutely positive she hadn't brought home. It was perfectly neat, no wrinkles or creases or anything, no signs of being stuffed into her pocket or trampled over in her mad dash home.
If she wasn't weirded out before, Cricket certainly was now.
*Not that kind of wet. It wasn't that good of a shower.