CHAPTER SEVEN
Civil Combat
It took a lot for Maria to calm herself, her breathing and heartbeat. Alucard was holding her, bodies pressed together in a tight embrace. The prince's heart was racing; she could feel it through his shirt. There was not a clearer shot to rip into his back and remove his heart from behind. The claw began to burrow into the gentle flesh but the dunpeal was no longer there.
Two swipes from behind drew a thin X into the back of the woman. The prince returned in front of the woman with a dark expression on his face. The sneer seemed so unnatural to his beautiful features, it forced the succubus to drop her illusion. She couldn't move, paralyzed by the gaze the dunpeal held her in. A gaze that promised death.
"How?" she managed to sputter.
Alucard face contorted in malice, plunging his sword deep between the demon's breasts. This time, the demon cried loudly but did not vanish. Demons of such lustful nature had two hearts, both of which he was going to puncture. Removing his sword, he still held the demon in his vampiric trance. A growl, nearly animalistic, left his thin lips.
"You may have seemed like Maria but you couldn't hide your demonic stench," Alucard disparaged as he thrust his blade between her breasts again, this time, more targeted on his left.
Another wail left the demon before she slumped to the floor, becoming dust as she hit the stone. His rage subsided; Alucard took a deep breath, finding his normal calm. The prince flinched a moment later as his ring finger began to pulse.
"The resurrection," he whispered to himself.
Like D, the prince used the remaining effect he felt from his father's relics. Alucard moved about the cathedral, following the pulse in his finger. His mind wondered what might have befallen the vampire hunter. If he still lived, why didn't he stop the ritual that the prince knew was happening? Alucard didn't hold any love for his father and if Vladimir rose again, Alucard would just have to put his father back to rest.
Chanting from a room froze him in place. It was time to destroy the one who threatened the people of his homeland. Sending the ache in his finger away, the prince moved into the antechamber, sword and shield in hand.
Entering the room, the prince was greeted by a wave of decay that assaulted his sense of smell. It was dark with the exception at the end of the chamber, where at an alter sat three tall, red candles. In the middle of a pentagram on the floor that was drawn in blood, was a robed figure that had his arms extended. At each point of the pentagram rested each of the relics of Vlad. The arms of the figure lowered and as if sensing the prince's power, the dark priest turned to him.
"Welcome Alucard," the priest smirked with a bow.
"Your blood, it smells like—"
"A Trapoli? Indeed, I am."
"No, your blood should be thinner. I smell Shaft in you, as if he is your grand-father. Great-grand-father to the most," Alucard accused. There was something more to this man.
"Correct dunpeal. My family that continued to raise Dracula practiced incest. The greatest powers of the priests and priestesses of the past flows inside my veins and that included the dark priest, Shaft," Axel finished with a bow.
Alucard didn't think much about the second bow but his instincts screamed at him to defend himself. As the second bow was the cue, down came a crescent blade from the shadows above, which was blocked by the last second by the magical shield. The force, however, knocked the prince to the ground to kneel before his opponent. D tilted his head up, only exposing half of his beautiful features in the candlelight, beautiful features that were ruined when the vampire hunter gave the prince a maniacal grin.
"Dane, once I'm finish with the ritual, I shall make it permanent," Axel said to the vampire hunter. "Keep him busy or kill him. It does not matter."
The long sword swiped high and hard at Alucard's head, intercepted again by the shield. The prince's mind raced. Make what permanent and what sort of spell did he had on the powerful vampire hunter. Moving his shield to the left, Alucard blocked another devastating blow.
Kicking back, the prince began to slash outwards with his own blade but retracted it almost immediately before putting his shield in line with the attacking sword. Alucard knew he couldn't fight D too long like this. The vampire hunter had distance with his nearly five foot long sword and every block with his shield sent a numbing pain in his shield arm. But D was relentless, giving Alucard no room to dodge or fall back.
"D, wake up. You're under a spell," Alucard tried to reason.
His words fell on deaf ears or perhaps not as deaf since the vampire hunter grinned all the more. The long crescent blade slammed into the expected shield, sending Alucard's arm out wide. Faster than the prince could react, D turned his blade around and lunged for the prince's heart. Alucard slumped down as fast as he could to his knees, having the sword plunge through his left shoulder. Within a blink of an eye, the sword was redrawn.
Damn it, I should've known his sword was made of silver, the prince thought as his life essences poured out of his shoulder and wouldn't stop.
The blade came down again and this time it sunk deep into the wall, straight through a cloud of mist. Whenever the prince hated the pain of morphing into a bat or wolf, he always tried to remember how much he loathed becoming mist. Instead of joints popping and bones reshaping, every bit of his being was torn apart in one moment until he was nothing but the water vapors in his body. Keeping the mist form was still very difficult to do as the blinding pain made it difficult for a vampire to keep conscience long enough to stay mist. Still, he managed to hold the shape or lack thereof, long enough to hear D say something.
Out shot the left hand, though it didn't want to open its maw and pull the poor, unsuspecting victim into its void. The hand strained its mouth shut for more than a few seconds before its master demanded it into action. The hand gave a warning before unleashing its wind tunnel.
Rematerializing was equally as painful but the prince got the message from the hand. 'Get out of mist.' Alucard held his ground as the vortex continued to try to pull him in. It was difficult for Alucard to see with the wind and lack of light but he saw in the hand a face of sorts. Throwing a knife at the vampire hunter, the prince flinched more than once as the blade disappeared into the void.
Alucard wouldn't move, regardless of the vampire hunter's power, so D closed his hand and charged with his sword leading the way. Even with his wounded shoulder, Alucard was more prepared for the vampire hunter. Parrying some blows with his sword and blocking others with his shield, the two began playing an eerie symphony of metal against metal. The prince remained on equal footing with the vampire hunter. But he knew it couldn't last. With the previous battle with the succubus and with his wounded shoulder, he would tire first and he knew he needed some strength for the second threat in the room, the priest.
Gritting his teeth, the prince leapt at D, turning into mist the instant D's sword touched his flesh. Moving around the hunter, Alucard drifted slowly towards the priest. As expected, the wind tunnel began to pull him back, which was exactly what he wanted.
Cutting the seconds unbelievably close, the prince rematerialized a heartbeat before the dunpeal hunter, slashing the hand off at the wrist. D neither expected the attack nor had any idea that Alucard's family blade was blessed against vampires. The vampire hunter wailed out in agony but the sound was first of an old man and slowly it fade to a youthful voice. The left hand picked itself off the ground.
"D, wait, I can explain," the left hand known as Dane pleaded.
But the prince was not finished. Sending a huge ball of hell fire at the parasite, an old man voice cried out again as it was burnt to ashes. Tossing another, smaller ball of fire at D, the blast hit the stub on the vampire hunter's wrist, sealing the wound shut.
Taking a few deep breaths, D nodded slightly to his fellow dunpeal. D wasn't sure if Alucard would figure out that his parasitical hand took control of his body and he was imprisoned inside the hand or if he just guessed that severing the hand would free him. Maybe it wouldn't have worked at all but D was grateful for Alucard's actions. A laugh from the end of the room turned both their heads.
