A/n: Here's chapter nine! I tried to update quickly to make up for the two month delay with the last chapter, so I really hope you guys enjoy!

To answer Accuracy Rating, yes, I'm leaning more towards AlucardxIntegra and PipxSeras for this fic. Though I'll take this moment to warn everyone that the romance won't be a huge focal point. It'll still be present and relevant to the plot, since every story needs a bit of romance, but I'm probably going to focus more on the adventure aspect.

If there are any more questions or confusing parts that have been bothering anyone, please feel free to ask! I know this story is a bit overly convoluted, so either PM or review and let me know.

And a final note, I just wanted to thank every reviewer and reader I've had so far. Particularly the ones that have been with this fic since the beginning and reviewed every chapter since! I know Witch House is…kind of out there as far as Hellsing stories go, but your support and encouragement has kept me going regardless, so thank you tons! You guys rock!

Alright, I'll stop rambling now. Again, please enjoy and don't forget to review and let me know what you think!


The Witch House (9)


They sprinted up the rest of the steps in record time and had to skid behind a wall to avoid the hotel staff that were just rushing in.

There was a trail of white smoke in the hallway, stinking of fried wires and melted glass. It wound its way to a room adjacent to an intersection of halls, where several employees and nosy guests were hurrying over to. A woman's loud enraged screeches could be heard inside. Seras and Pip scuttled to a nearby corner to peek in.

An expensively dressed American woman was shrieking at a worker, as two hysterical teenage girls clung to each other in the background, "I was just watching a movie with my babies when the tv suddenly exploded! Do you people have any idea what proper wiring is? And with the prices you charge us! Well, your manager will be having a talk with my husband…!"

"Mon Dieu," Pip muttered, as he caught sight of what remained of the television, which was nothing more now than a pile of shrapnel with jagged pieces of glass sticking out of it. Streaks of soot and ash were splattered across the cream wallpaper and orange sparks were still rising from behind the shattered screen. It looked like a miniature grenade had gone off inside it.

"Must've been a pretty shitty movie," he quipped weakly.

"Oh, God, we need to find him" Seras said, anxiously tugging on Pip's hand. The captain didn't budge though, and closer inspection saw that he was mesmerized by the expansive wine cabinet further inside the room.

"Holy fuck, is that Montrachet?"

"Captain!" she snarled, turning back to smack him, when an icy hand suddenly clamped down on her wrist.

I keep telling you to quiet down, a voice rippled through her head, before the familiar shudder of passing through a portal crawled down her spine. Next to her, the captain cursed in surprise.

Seras barely waited for her surroundings to solidify again before flipping out.

"Master, what the heck?! Did you shoot their telly?"

Alucard frowned at her, dropping her arm and Pip's braid, which he had used to yank them both through a wall and into an unoccupied suite.

It was there again.

"What?"

Alucard twitched, That filth. The one with thirty-minute pauses between lines and the obscure sparkling in the sunlight. It was there again, multiplying, poisoning the world. It deserved death.

For a moment, Seras just stared, before it suddenly clicked.

Consequently, an overwhelming wave of exasperation crashed into her instead. She sighed, hanging her head, "I never should have showed you that movie."

It would be a complete miracle if they left this place without being seen.

"Looks like the smoke's clearing up," Pip noted obliviously, having wandered over to the door's peephole. A line of disgruntled guests were being herded away by listless employees. "Oh, hey, they're evacuating the floor."

Seras brightened slightly at the news. It was always nice to know something productive came from her master's destructive fit.

Alucard, himself, looked entirely nonchalant.

Why does that matter? He said, heading towards the nearby wall. It's only two doors down anyway.

Seras nodded, "Yeah, but the halls will be emp—WAIT, WHAT?"

Without thinking, she leapt forward blindly, somehow managing to grab Alucard's wrist and surprise her master enough into pausing.

"You mean the penthouse right?" she said nervously, sightless eyes like two full moons in the darkness, "That's where he is right? We're only going to the penthouse right?"

Silence. Alucard cocked a slender eyebrow at the young vampire, while Pip just sent a perfunctorily confused stare at both of them.

Did you do as I told you, police girl? Alucard finally said, frowning down at his fledgling.

Seras's wince was tiny, nearly microscopic, but he saw it anyway. He always did.

Alucard sighed in disgust, unknowingly making Seras's face crumple. He supposed he should have expected it. Even when in close contact with the pin, the energy was remarkably thin—a single ugly thread against the myriad of scents and sounds in the world; not something a half-starved fledgling could detect.

He scowled, considerably miffed; still though, he thought he'd likely find her overwhelming self-rejection less annoying if she surprised him now and again.

It's two doors down, he coldly shook off Seras's hand, Hurry up.

The girl blinked uselessly. "Huh? W-Wait, master…"

She reached out again, catching nothing but air this time and fell flat on her face from where she tripped over the edge of a rug. Immediately though, she sprung back to her feet.

"Master?!"

"Uh," Pip said, watching the tips of Alucard's coat melt into the wall, "Is he going somewhere?"

"I don't know!" she said frantically, whipping her head back to Pip, "He said two doors down."

Pip's eyebrows rose and he turned back to the door incredulously.

"Two doors down…?" he muttered, but grabbed the knob regardless and pulled it back, "I thought it was the pent—"

The words died as a gun suddenly materialized in his face.

"PUT YOUR HANDS UP!" A voice shouted, nearly indecipherable with its thick French accent.

This is becoming a little too familiar, Pip thought, staring down the dark barrel as he obeyed.

His assailant was a dark-haired man dressed in black suit and trousers, with another identically dressed blonde man behind him, also brandishing his gun. DST badges glinted at Pip from the shoulders of their uniforms.

"Walk slowly out of the room," the first man barked at him, "Don't try anything or I will blow your brains out."

Their faces were pinched and suspicious as they glared at him, weapons raised menacingly, though Pip hadn't felt a wisp of fear of the French authorities since he was twelve years old. Nevertheless, he did as he was told. The blonde man snatched him as soon as he was close enough and wrenched his arms behind his back.

"We have two potential suspects cornered on the sixth floor. The affected room is diagonal to our location now. The television was in close range," he said in French into a radio, "First suspect has been apprehended. A male of roughly six feet in height. Does not seem to have any of the suspected explosives or bomb triggers within his possession."

Pip stared blatantly at his arrestor, wondering if his hearing aid had even processed that correctly.

"We're moving for the second suspect now," the blonde man finished, just as his partner began moving forward into the darkened room.

"Come out with your hands up!" he demanded, again in mutilated English.

Nothing but silence greeted him. The dark-haired man dipped his head into the shadows, eyes narrowed into slits, as if he could somehow see more by doing it. His long brows furrowed, in that blend of focus and frustration that was a man straining his ears. Pip nearly laughed—no amount of eye or ear straining would ever find Seras if she didn't want to be found.

But he held his tongue, and his captor moved closer, perhaps sensing the fearlessness in him. "I wouldn't try anything if I were you," he hissed, prodding the gun between Pip's shoulder blades, "My finger could always slip."

How professional of you, Pip thought blandly, as the man jabbed him with the gun again. It was hard to feel threatened by a puny Glock 23 when a bazooka had been aimed at his face just yesterday night.

But for the sake of the man's pride and finding an opening, Pip kept still. The blonde man, observing that his captive seemed passive, felt confident enough to fiddle again with his radio.

Simultaneously, the dark-haired man reached for the light switch and the opening was there.

With blinding suddenness, Pip's head flew backwards, ramming the hardest part of his skull into the most vulnerable part of his captor's. The man crumpled to the ground noiselessly.

His partner whirled around in shock, gun trained squarely between Pip's eyes. However, he only had enough time to spit a curse and notice the pity in Pip's smile, before something hard and freezing smashed into his back.

With barely a yelp, the man went down, darkness smashing into him as he hit the ground.

"Are you alright, Captain?" Seras asked, shifting her weight off the unconscious man.

"Not a scratch, girlie," Pip replied, though feeling mildly disappointed, "Did you have to take him out that way? What a lucky bastard."

"Don't start. You should be glad I even hit him, I was relying on scent alone," Seras snapped, "What happened anyway?"

"The other guy said they were investigating what made the tv explode. They probably think there are bombers or explosives in the hotel."

For a moment, Seras stood there in stunned silence. Then she sighed deeply and ran her fingers through her hair.

"So much for stealth again," she muttered, sounding incredibly tired, "We should go."

They dragged the two unconscious bodies hastily into the empty suite, bashing in the doorknob for good measure before heading down the hall. When they arrived at the correct room, Seras pressed her ear carefully to the door.

"No sounds of snapped spines or blood-curdling screams," she noted to Pip, who just shrugged in confusion at her.

The first thing that greeted them when the door opened was a pair of boots, propped up on the edge of an intricately carved coffee table.

You took your time, Alucard commented, semi-boredly, reclining on a plush leather armchair.

"Master," Seras hissed, staggering her way over to the elder vampire, "We need to get out of here. The captain and I were just attacked by these big french people and now they think we're a load of bombers trying to blow up the hotel!"

Alucard stared at her, looking neither particularly alarmed or concerned.

And? Has this somehow frightened you?

Seras's cheeks puffed slightly in frustration, "That's not what I mean! Ohhh, Master, if you just hadn't shot that telly in the first place…!"

Pip winced slightly, feeling a deep pang of sympathy for Seras as she continued "arguing" with her sire, who didn't even seem to be listening. But as they were currently occupied, the Wild Geese captain took the moment to wander a bit away and observe the room they'd broken into.

Despite the shadows from the drawn curtains, a single light from a nearby lamp revealed an excessively expensive-looking suite. It had cream wallpaper and dark oaken furniture, with all the chairs cushioned by soft white velvet. A television screen was stretched across half the western wall, with a neat arrangement of leather couches positioned before it. Bundles of delicate hyacinths and callas graced the top of every surface in crystalline vases.

Pip's nose wrinkled, feeling slightly irritated by the sight. Spending the better part of his life sleeping on moldy mattresses and the occasional rat-infested trench could do that.

"…so let's just go, alright Master? Please? What if they—mmf!"

Immediately, Pip whirled around in surprise, only to see Alucard had slapped a hand over Seras's mouth again. His expression didn't seem impatient or vexed however, and looked more gleeful than anything else.

For an inexplicable, but plenty suicidal reason, Pip began speaking, "Um, Mister Alucard—"

A simple look shut him up swiftly.

However, Alucard did point to a closed door near the couches.

Pip stared for a moment, having not even noticed it was there. "What the…" Quietly, he edged closer to the jamb.

The faint sound of water from a showerhead drifted through the wood.

Pip's first instinct was to reach for his hearing aid, adjusting the knobs to make sure he wasn't imagining it. The sound didn't change and he could've sworn, was now being accompanied by a falsetto rendition of Habanera.

"Holy shit," was all Pip could say, as he turned to the two vampires, "Holy shit, is there still someone in here?"

Seras's eyes widened almost comically, though Alucard's knife-like grin answered it all. Releasing his fledgling, he glided over to a long couch, leaning lightly against the back of it so he could directly face the door. The single lamp lighting the room fizzled out with a wave of his ghostly hand, plunging the room into darkness.

Seras and Pip stayed where they were, frozen. The showerhead had shut off and the doorknob was turning.


"… Rien n'y fait, menace ou prière! L'un parle bien, l'autre se tait…!"

Jean Petit bellowed at the top of his lungs as he turned off the water and wrapped a robe around himself. He stepped out of the shower stall and inhaled deeply, pushing away the general stresses of his current situation from his mind.

The deaths of a few nameless villagers and a couple novice officers should not be troubling his conscience so deeply. Not when he knew it wasn't his fault.

What chance could you have had? Anguis had said, You knew not who she was. What she was. All you knew was that people were dying. And so perhaps, you sent your men to slaughter. But in the end, how could you have known? She is a creature so beyond the capabilities of your mind to comprehend, petit commandant. How could a small, weak little man like you have ever done anything?

He was right of course, as Anguis often was. At first, all he'd wanted was to save that village. It was a rickety, humble little place, lacking the pomp and luxury of the cities, but the men laughed at his jokes and the women baked him pies and the children always smiled at him as if he were a hero.

He hadn't saved anyone; every person the creature took died, but they never stopped being grateful. And a part of him (the one his father's old drunken fist never reached) wanted desperately to show them results.

Even after…he was told…shown the truth.

Petit shuddered violently, and wrapped his robe more tightly around him as he finished tying the sash. He'd sent squads in with the best equipment the department could afford; young, blue-eyed officers, more boys than men, thinking it'd be enough.

And when they were dragged from the forests a day later, skin turned inside out and eyes plucked, Anguis had patted his shoulder and said No, it hadn't been enough. But it's not your fault, because you are no match.

He had trouble initially attributing all the deaths on his hands to such a bleak reason, but the more Petit thought about it, the more it made sense and the more it resembled, not an excuse, but something akin to release.

"Et c'est l'autre que je préfère! Il n'a rien dit mais il me plait…!"

His singing grew stronger as he slipped into his bath slippers and headed for the door. What did it matter if the monster was still alive? He had handed all control of the case and his men over to Anguis already, and what the man did with England was hardly his concern.

He was nothing now—a mere secretary—and despite Anguis's anger and disturbing cruelty, he had never felt so free.

"L'amour! L'amour!" Petit bellowed, swinging the door open, "L'amour est enfant de Bohême!"

There was exactly three seconds to register the sudden darkness of the room, save for the pale moonlight, before he was slammed into the couch.

Petit's squinty eyes bulged open as the wind was knocked clean out of him. He opened his mouth to wheeze and made a choked off noise instead. A white, skeletal hand gripped his neck in a cold vice.

For a moment, he gasped and wriggled like a fish on land as the splotches of color across his vision faded.

It was white shadowy light that first came into focus, outlining the long dark shape over him—something slender, though the hand around his throat was like iron, no matter how he scratched at it. And cold. Like a corpse's.

Eyes like two bloodied worlds stared into his, reptilian slits for pupils, and he knew. He knew in that moment that they were not human. He had seen her far too many times to not recognize a monster's eyes.

A growl rippled through the shadow—part animal, part something else, and Petit knew, before he could understand anything else, that he was going to die.

It didn't stop him from trying to scream, as panic bubbled to the surface and torched his coherency. He thrashed like a maniac, gurgling out pleas and prayers in turn, all in vain, as the icy fingers around him never loosened and those red eyes never blinked. He was to die. The Devil had come to judge him. OhGodOhGodShitFuck…!

"M-Master, Master, please wait. Who is this?" A voice floated in from the darkness, light and ethereal—a woman's voice.

She appeared from the shadows like a ghost—pale white, save for the gold of her hair.

"Hey, I recognize this guy," another voice suddenly said, "He was on the news earlier with Anguis. His secretary, I think." In the next second, another face sprang up only a scant meter to his right. It was a young man this time, with long auburn hair and a black patch over one eye, the other bright and horribly green. But human.

Petit didn't take the time to be confused or even think. He turned his eyes as much as he could toward the man.

"P-Please, h-help me, I don't want to die…don't want to d-die…please, please."

The words were a garbled, stuttering mess and partly in French, but he seem to have been understood, because the man gave him a slightly pitying look.

"He looks like he'd talk either way," he said finally, standing back next to the woman, who was wringing her hands.

The creature gripping him said nothing, only bent his neck back further with a press of its icy thumb. Petit squealed and flailed, sending desperate pleading looks at the two in the background.

It was by sheer coincidence that the yellow glint caught his eye. It was in between the woman's fingers, a golden glow smattered by the red lights of the rooster's gem-lined crown.

Petit froze mid-scream, so suddenly and completely it was as if time itself had stopped.

For a moment, he forgot the monster baring down at him, forgot his crushed throat and pounding heart.

For a moment, there was just the woman. Despite her nervous expression, her eyes were entirely vacant and, he noticed for the first time, milk-white and sightless.

Mon Dieu…

The man blinked at him in confusion, following his gaze to the woman. A mechanized hook was attached to his ear, previously hidden by his hair. Deaf. He was deaf.

the spell's been split…

It began clicking together so rapidly that his brain was nearly rattling.

"Hellsing," he croaked, staring at the cold red eyes above him with a vague sort of horror, "You're Hellsing's monster."

The two in the back stiffened visibly and the mass of black shadows growled again. The grip on his throat tightened a fraction.

Petit's mind scattered like leaves.

"Nono, I'm sorry, I'm sorrypleasedon'tMonDieupleaseI'lltellyouI'lltellyo uanythingyouwant…!"

But he was simply wrenched upwards, chin pulled back to expose his thick neck. This time, the woman and man were silent.

"Please, please," Petit begged, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, "Please have mercy…"

He got no reply, not a sound, but the icy feel of its breath across his throat. And as it drew closer, he saw the darkness melting away from its face.

It had skin whiter than any snow he'd ever seen and dark wild hair falling in inky wisps across its forehead and cheekbones. Its features were sharp, but without a flaw, as if every contour of its face had been sculpted by a master's hands.

Petit stared, salty tear trails slithering down his temple.

"You're beautiful," he whispered, as if in shock, and not because he felt it needed to be said, but because the words flew out of him of their own accord.

The creature paused. It lifted its head, tilting it at him, eyes almost childishly wide. For a moment, it seemed that he had taken it by surprise and Petit felt a weak glimmer of hope spark inside him.

It was smothered not a second later. The creature smiled, and that too would've been beautiful, if its eyes had not glittered in that way, with no mercy or feeling, nothing but inhuman glee. If its colorless lips had not parted to reveal a great fanged maw.

It dived at him, having never uttered a word.

Petit's shriveled throat struggled to even scream. The last sight he saw, before the most horrific pain that'd ever existed shredded through his mind, was a rooster upon the base of a white, white neck.


Jean Petit, as Alucard learned his name, had incredibly bland blood, bordering on rancid—a taste akin to a corrupted heart. It was horrible, almost worse than the vein-less bags he was forced to digest every day, but Alucard forced himself to ignore it.

It was the memories he was after anyway and they came in a river, like the blood flowing down his throat. They trickled down his thoughts quietly, and not knowing what he was looking for, he let them come one at a time.

One had a small boy, freckled and overweight, being kicked around by a man with an empty bottle in hand. Another had the same child sitting alone in a sandbox, shoveling with a cracked blue bucket. Another one still, he was sitting beneath a tree, the broken body of a bird cradled in his palms. He cried in this one.

But Alucard shifted them all aside impatiently, letting them sink into the roiling darkness to join the rest of his souls.

Eventually he saw Petit in the forest, patting the shoulders of young uniformed men, before they disappeared into the swamp. The next one had Petit at the morgue, staring at a mutilated corpse, its flesh ripped wide open, all its organs black and half-consumed. Another body was next to it, its youthful blonde curls framing two empty eye sockets.

What chance could you have had? A voice hissed, rippling through the surface of the memory, but Alucard couldn't make out the owner before the scene vanished.

The next few images were disjointed and short. A dark room. An aluminum table. Scalpels and hatchets and cobwebs in the corners. A half-charred flag of France hung like a rag off the rim of a dirty sink.

Then the House rose up through the river of memories—vine-ridden and silent as they had seen it, if not for a splatter of blood across the rotting porch. The golden pin of a rooster lay in the middle as if having bled out.

You truly don't know what this is, do you? The voice said again, and a dark figure formed. His face was shadowed, but his long hands tapped at a pin fixed neatly to his lapel. It was a rooster, identical to the one at the House.

she shall exist as long as it does…tu me comprends…that little pin…it doesn't matter what happens…as long as she dies…it doesn't matter…

Tell me, petit commandant. A man stood behind a large oaken desk. He was thin and tall like a skeleton. His eyes were a piercing, eerily familiar green.

Tell me, petit commandant. What do you know of Japan…?


Alucard's eyes were wide and faintly stunned when he pulled away. Long strands of blood dripped from the corners of his lips, trickling down his chin and onto the expensive leather.

Petit's neck and bathrobe were also saturated red as he laid like a stringless puppet beneath him. He was ghost pale, nearly blue and would've looked dead if Alucard hadn't heard the sluggish beat of his heart.

With a quick whip of his tongue, he sealed the punctured wounds over the jugular, but didn't rise. Instead, he leaned back on his heels, trying to sort the information he'd just absorbed into a sensible order.

Simultaneously, Seras gathered up her courage and crept forward.

"M-Master?" she whispered, head and shoulders shrunken inward as if trying to disappear into her jacket. Alucard glanced at her.

She opened her mouth to say something, but hesitated and took a step forward instead. Inadvertently, she stepped in a small puddle of blood that had gathered on the floor and screamed, flailing backwards.

When she found cleaner footing, she hugged herself as if cold, even though her pupils shrunk with hunger. Alucard stared. So meek and frightened by her own nature, he didn't think he'd ever understand.

"Did…did you find out what happened to us?" Seras eventually struggled out.

On his other side, he saw Pip move forward slightly from the corner of his eye. Though the captain looked mildly nauseous, he seemed more interested than anything else. It was a sad day when a human could stomach a scene better than a vampire could.

Give me the pin, he snapped at Seras, without answering her, feeling all of a sudden annoyed. His childe jumped slightly, startled, but hurried to obey.

Alucard held the crown and feet of the rooster between two fingers. His crimson eyes flashed as he concentrated on the strand of black energy extending out from it, trying to pinpoint where it ended. In any case, it was better to find the other pin first.

The energy looped across the suite, going through walls and floors, and Alucard's eyes narrowed.

It's not here.

Seras's eyes were owlish in their confusion. "What's not here?"

Pip's head whipped suddenly toward the door. "Hey," he whispered, "Did anyone hear that?" He was ignored.

There's another one.

"You mean the pin? Well, it's a government-issued thing isn't it? Probably loads of them out there."

Alucard looked at her. No. There are only two. One for her and the other for her children.

Seras's eyebrows rose as Pip turned toward the door, reaching silently for the gun in his jacket.

"What?"

A thin grin split Alucard's face, displaying sharp blood-stained teeth. She's still alive, police girl. She's not a—

The door smashed open, pouring in light from the hallway.

"FREEZE!"