A/n: Hey guys, here's chapter 11! I'll try to have twelve up some time next week or so too. Not much to say about this one, so just hope you enjoy!

As always, questions, reviews or critiques are welcome!


The Witch House (11)


Integra's first instinct was to snap the notebook shut, slamming it down on Alucard's fingers in the process. Her second instinct was to shove said startled vampire behind her and Walter, as if that could somehow erase him from sight. Her third was to curse very colorfully, but she held this one back. Barely.

"It's not polite to eavesdrop, Lord Anguis."

"My apologies," he said coolly, clasping his hands behind his back, as he began walking leisurely toward them, "I had merely come out for a breath of air when I heard a commotion in this direction."

Anguis smiled, a wide and disfiguring slash across his face, full of serpentine glee, "Imagine my surprise when I saw who it was."

Integra didn't bother replying, though her lips pursed into a white line.

It only seemed to make his smile wider however, as he stopped a meter away from them. There he leaned in almost eagerly, extending his neck to look over Integra and Walter's heads and regard Alucard's glowing eyes and pointed teeth.

"I take it this is your vampire then?" he said, nodding in thorough satisfaction, as if he were examining an expensive piece of art, "What are a beautiful creature."

Alucard just stared at him, with the unimpressed, indifferent gaze he gave most living things.

The same uncaring nonchalance was not afforded to Integra, whose eyes narrowed. It wasn't the first time she had seen someone respond to her vampire without fear, though the numbers were few and far between. Alucard, she had come to understand, tended to reach into the bones, for that ancient, primal terror that was forever there.

Those who weren't afraid of him were always naïve, fascinated and arrogant—enamored with humanity's current place on the food chain, as if its past place could ever be forgotten. They were all set right eventually. Painfully.

But she knew Anguis was not a fool. He looked at Alucard with the experienced ease of a hunter, like he was familiar with the meaning of those eyes and those teeth. Integra's mind flashed briefly back to the opened notebook and Alucard's hasty script scrawled across the page.

Three hundred years, it had said, Stripped from the record.

The task headed by the Anguis family.

It was clear Alucard had had more to say, especially after dramatically dragging out that last bit (which was a headache enough that she couldn't think about it for the moment), and it was a risky move to make accusations without understanding the whole situation.

Integra chewed lightly on the inside of her lip, unsure of how to proceed. While one side of her warned of caution and patience, the other demanded for answers, with no reason other than these were her agents. It didn't matter how much knowledge Anguis had on the curse or how dangerous it could make him.

All that mattered was that Seras was blind and Pip was deaf. That she may never hear Alucard's moronic laughter in her office again. Even if something like that shouldn't bother her.

But it does, a girl's voice whispered in her head, It does.

Integra clenched her fists in frustration. The entire corridor would've languished into thick silence, if Walter had not suddenly spoken.

"This must not be your first time seeing a vampire, my lord," he commented, coolly slicing through the tension, "No one has ever responded to him as calmly as you have."

Anguis's eyes slid fractionally, as if he found it distasteful the butler was even addressing him.

"Not at all, monsieur," he replied after a full minute, returning his gaze back to Alucard, "But I have seem them many times in books and movies."

Alucard's eyebrows raised abruptly, dangerously; the first sign of irritation beginning to surface on his face. He took a step forward.

Walter clenched Alucard's sleeve without even looking at him, partially blocking the vampire's path with his body. Integra did the same with his other arm and inconspicuously pushed him back, glaring death at him from the corner of her eye when he sent her an annoyed look.

"It is a grave mistake to presume they are one and the same," she warned out loud, turning an icy stare at Anguis.

The man laughed—the sound cold and grating against the tense air.

"I quite agree. Only fools believe everything they see on television," he continued smiling at Alucard even as he spoke, "But as a frenchman, I can appreciate the beauty of something so deadly and rare. Beauty is the epiphany of this world after all. I ask you, what amounts to us without it?"

"I'm afraid I don't answer such narrow-minded questions," Integra replied with swift disdain, "And if there's nothing pressing, Lord Anguis, then you'll have to excuse us."

Another laugh. Thinner and sharper than the first.

"I knew I was going to like you, mademoiselle," Anguis said airily, walking closer, "And you did not disappoint."

He didn't stop until he was a mere half a meter away from them. Alucard's lip began curling at the man's proximity and Integra tightened her already-crushing grip on his wrist. If Anguis was aware at all of the growing hostility, he didn't show it.

"For a woman, you are quite dangerous, aren't you? Much like your pet here. Who is, I must say, even more breath-taking up close," he said, sending another brief satisfied glance at Alucard, before suddenly turning to Integra. With such close approximation, his eyes were an unnatural green, a piercing mineral color. Integra pursed her lips into a pale line.

"Pitiless, full of rage and suffering no fools," his eyes flickered, the pupils expanding and spilling into the green-rimmed irises, something like hunger roiled at the barren center.

Anguis smiled with deep unpleasantness. "Even under this mannish drab of yours, on this uncouth rock you calla country, I must admit you are tres belle."

And before any of them could react, he cupped Integra's cheek in his palm.

Integra's first thought was that his hand was a clammy, shudder-worthy sensation. Her second was how she was going to break it in seventeen different places.

Her third was an alarmed, jumbled mess as Alucard suddenly yanked free of her grip and lunged at Anguis with a terrible snarl.

"Shit!" Integra scrambled to catch the end of Alucard's coat, but missed, "Walter!"

There was a split flash of light, the sound of wires unthreading, and then Alucard snapped his jaws shut a mere centimeter away from Anguis's face. His eyes were shrunken to red pinpricks with rage and his teeth glinted like knives beneath his lips.

The growls that emitted from him were like a beast's, like a monster on the edge of control, and made Integra hasten to his side.

"Alucard, stop, stop," she ordered, grabbing his shoulder, while simultaneously forcing her pounding heart to slow. She paused to note, however, the man on the ground before them with some minor satisfaction.

Anguis's legs had given out as soon as Alucard had rushed at him and his face was pale and quivering—all traces of his previous composure and arrogance wiped clean from his face. The malice in his eyes was replaced with genuine fear, though the appraising glint did not quite leave them.

Alucard did not seem half as satisfied as her about only scaring the life and death out of Anguis. Still growling and snapping like an animal, he strained violently against the wires, keeping them taut enough to dig bloody grooves into his arms. It was amazing Walter could even hold him back, but the elderly butler kept his stance with iron strength, as if he had done this a hundred times before. His face was devoid of expression, even as the wires began cutting into his flesh.

"I said to stop, Alucard," Integra snapped, eyeing Walter's rapidly bloodying gloves, "This is accomplishing nothing. Look at me!"

With great unbridled boldness, she grabbed the sides of Alucard's head and wrenched it to face her, brushing aside his wild hair so she could look him in the eyes. They were surprisingly lucid, if not infuriated, and she didn't need to hear his voice to know what they were saying.

He touched you.

"I'll deal with this on my own," she said shortly, releasing him and straightening, "Calm down."

The wires remained taut for a moment longer. Alucard was looking at her with a mix of surprise and annoyance; he was probably going to sulk about this later, which is just what she needed. Integra fought down a sigh.

"Now," she said, tone clipped, and Alucard obeyed this time. His lips slid back over his teeth, somehow closing over his monstrous fangs, and he unfurled from his predatory crouch and onto his feet again, still looking practically murderous. As soon as Walter retracted the wires tangled around him, his wounds sealed and the blood staining his elbows and forearms evaporated.

Walter was not so lucky. Integra sent him a concerned glance as blood steadily dripped off the end of his gloves. He waved off her worry, however, and she reluctantly turned back to the issue at hand.

"You were fortunate this time," she said, expression immediately darkening as her eyes landed on Anguis, "I advise you not to touch me again, if you value your hand."

Despite looking intimidated, Anguis didn't apologize. He didn't even glance at her, staring intently at Alucard, as if transfixed, with an expression that resembled horror but strangely not quite. Alucard growled softly at him, blood-red eyes swirling with anger, but he still didn't break his gaze. With slow, slightly trembling limbs, he groped his way to his feet.

"T…That sign," he hissed, pointing a spindly finger at Alucard, "Where did he get that?"

Integra and Walter's eyes widened at the same time. Alucard's death glare was replaced with a look of puzzlement. His eyes strayed down to his now-bare neck, the place where Anguis was gesturing at, and blinked in surprise at the rooster staring back up at him.

Silence.

Anguis's eyes narrowed visibly. An ugly and suspicious light flickered in them.

"Where did he get it?" he demanded again.

Walter and Alucard both glanced at Integra, one nervous and the other curious for her response.

Her face was unnervingly blank, nearly tranquil, and she turned to look out the hotel window instead of answering. Almost idly, she regarded the strings of headlights crawling down the dark roads. Their trails mapped out the intricate entirety of London—a scintillating grid of departments and bridges and candle-lit canals. Big Ben towered in the distance like a sleeping giant, its ghostly clock-face a dimmer twin of the moon.

She thought that somewhere out in London, a woman just like her was looking at the face of Big Ben, admiring its beauty, oblivious to the precipice her country was sitting on, to the ugly encounter about to unfold in a stray hallway of the Langham.

Integra turned to Anguis.

"At the Witch House."

Anguis's eyebrows twitched violently. "Excusez-moi?"

"The Witch House," she repeated calmly, "That is how you say it in English, is it not?"

Walter stared at her as if she had lost her mind, while Alucard grinned excitedly. Integra ignored them both.

"Were you aware that the target knew magic, Lord Anguis?" she continued, in the same way one would say 'could you pass the butter' or 'want to stop by Tesco,' "Because that's what happened. You failed to tell us this little fact so this is the situation now."

"What are you talking about?" Anguis snapped, almost before she'd finished her sentence, "There was plenty of information given to you about the monster. Do you expect my people to risk their lives to learn every mundane little detail? We cannot know everything—"

"And I would not expect you to," Integra interrupted smoothly, "I never hold other institutions at the same standards of my own. It's less disappointing that way. And your lives were not much at risk to begin with, were they? Seeing as you used the testimonies of traumatized and crippled witnesses for the main base of your reports."

Anguis's lips pursed in a pale line. "They were reliable sources."

Integra slid her hands in her pockets. "I'm glad you think that. Because most of them mentioned how the government had been ignoring requests for investigation long before all the casualties occurred."

"That's complete nonsense," he barked, visibly growing more agitated, "We did no such thing."

Integra remained unperturbed. "It seems we're both having trouble remembering what exactly was in the report. Shall I send someone to fetch it?"

Anguis hesitated. "…Even if some careless comments were made, it does not mean that is the truth. Only a rare few citizens are knowledgeable of what actually happens within our offices. Those witnesses were extremely traumatized and likely looking for someone to blame. They were not in their right minds."

She stared at him. "I thought you said they were reliable sources."

Alucard made a soft sound of amusement, as Anguis's eyes widened.

"W-Well, to a certain degree they are," he stumbled out, "But only on account of what they said pertaining to the monster."

"Oh?" one of Integra's slender eyebrows raised, "And why should I, the Council, or even Her Majesty believe you on that?"

A slight hint of panic emerged in Anguis's eyes and for a moment, he seemed at a complete loss. Integra pinned him with her gaze, waiting for his answer with merciless patience. He coughed and cleared his throat, hesitating.

Then his green eyes suddenly flashed and he turned to her.

"Because…a request for investigation in France requires obtaining permission from all the affected departments. If even one department below us rejects the request then it does not reach us, so it is likely none of them made it to my office," Anguis said, relaxing more as he spoke, "This is expected to happen of course. Any normal person would be reluctant to expend money and men to investigate such an isolated and unimportant site."

Integra was silent. Anguis's lips began loosening into a smug smile.

"It is unfortunate that you encountered more difficulties than you had expected," he said, tone becoming condescending again, "But we did all we could to receive and assist you. Our goal was the same as your Queen's—to strengthen national relationships. This centuries old animosity between our two countries has always been…quite petty, non? I think th—"

"Unimportant."

Anguis's voice died mid-word. "Pardon?"

"Unimportant," Integra said again, face utterly expressionless, "That's what you said. Unimportant and isolated."

The man's smile faltered slightly, "Well, yes, in a sen—"

"That's interesting," she interrupted nonchalantly, "Obviously not so much of a cultural hotspot as you've been implying all night then. So, what sort of "priceless artifacts" would be at such an unimportant and isolated location?"

Anguis's smile fell clean off his face. His eyes narrowed into furious slits.

"How did he get that sign?" he hissed, dropping all pretenses.

"Why did you lie to us?" Integra shot back instantly, an angry coldness settling over her features, "What are you hiding?"

"How dare you. You had better tell me now or—"

"I know twenty-six different ways to kill you with my bare hands," Integra said softly, "And that is not even counting Alucard, who is only half a meter away from you. The fact that you think you can still…fuck with me is both hilarious and tiresome."

The frenchman said nothing, slowly turning a puce-pale color. Alucard was practically grinning ear to ear and even Walter looked impressed.

BANG.

The doors to the conference room flew open, rattling as they collided with the walls. Integra, Walter and Alucard's heads all swung to the entrance at once, while Anguis nearly jolted out of his skin in surprise.

Standing in the threshold was the young DST agent that had been talking to Anguis earlier. He looked nervous and stressed, with his tie slightly askew and his hair disheveled.

"Mon seigneur!" he called, scurrying over to the man, bowing his head momentarily at Integra and Walter, while rushing right past Alucard without even noticing him.

"We have a problem, monsieur," he said urgently to Anguis, who was still slightly in shock, "There's been some sort of attack within the hotel. Reports are not clear yet, but we have almost ascertained they're—"

"Terrorists," a flat voice finished behind them.

Sir Islands walked calmly into the hallway, with the Chief Inspector at his side, who looked both embarrassed and horrified. The other members of the council gathered at the threshold, like a group of eavesdropping children.

"There was a call for back-up about seventy-eight minutes ago for suspicious activity on the sixth floor," he relayed, face grim and serious, "Prior to that, a television set in one of the rooms exploded while the guests were watching a film. This was only a few doors down from where the last request call was traced to."

"Bombers then," Integra said curtly, annoyed with interruption. She glanced at the Chief Inspector, "I advise evacuation."

The man looked vaguely insulted.

"We began evacuation about twenty minutes ago," he blustered, white mustache twitching, "All of the guests are already out and ATB's arriving shortly. We've managed to sequester them between the sixth floor and the penthouse until then. The two would have to be bloody ghosts to escape."

Integra's eyebrows raised. "Two? There's only two?"

"They are not to be underestimated," the young DST agent spoke up, looking earnest in his graveness, "We've lost contact with three of our agents during the early stages of the investigation. It is suspected they had encountered the suspects."

An ominous pause reigned momentarily.

"Wha-What are we still doing here then?" one of the Council members demanded, "There are terrorists in the hotel only three floors above us?! We should have been the first ones you escorted out you idiot!" A rally of angry, frightened complaints followed.

The Chief Inspector nearly tripped over himself in his bow, murmuring frantic apologies towards the ground.

Integra was more than a little disgusted and Sir Islands looked like he was visibly restraining a sigh.

"Scotland Yard shall escort you all out now. It is with fair certainty that the problem has already been isolated, so there is no need to disgrace ourselves with repulsive behavior," he said, voice growing sharp and snappish at the end.

The other members grew quiet. Sir Islands turned to the Chief Inspector and nodded.

The man scrambled hurriedly over to the council members, waving over two police officers that had been waiting in the conference room. In a panicked and disorganized mess, they herded the men down the corridor towards the main lobby.

The Chief Inspector then sent Integra a questioning glance, to which she shook her head.

"I'm staying."

The man didn't try to argue, turning to Sir Islands instead, who nodded.

"Please, Lord Anguis," Round Table Leader said, looking at the man, who had been quiet thus far, "Allow us to take you to safety. As a very important guest, I assure you that you will be afforded with the best protection."

Anguis stared at Sir Islands like he had a malignant disease, before looking at the DST agent without replying.

"They are on the sixth floor, did you say?" he asked sharply, to which the boy hurriedly nodded.

"Most likely, monsieur. A man and a woman based on reports. Please, Signeur Anguis, even with superior manpower, we cannot guarantee the situation will not escalate, you should accompany Monsieur Islands…"

"A man and a woman?" Integra muttered to Walter, who wore the same stunned expression. A pool of dread began forming in the pit of her stomach. No way…

"…we dispatched men to both stairwells as well as the elevator, and switched to code, because we're fairly certain one of them can speak French, but still haven't found hide nor hair. It is insane, monsieur, inhuman."

"I could care less about how you catch them!" Anguis barked, eyes flashing, "Just do it. Keep them on the sixth floor. And where the hell is Commandant Petit…?" He ranted on, but the rest was a buzz of nonsense to Integra's ears.

"AAAluuucaaard…" she whispered ominously, whipping around at the same time as Walter.

Needless to say, he had vanished into thin air a while ago. In his place was the notebook, lying open, with a single sentence written in the middle of the page.

See you at the estate.


It was said that sometimes, in the midst of intense anticipation and heightened alertness, the mind was honed to such a point and state of concentration that it actually began to wander.

In Seras's case, she was busy despairing over the present misery that was her life.

"There's no way in Hell that's a snake, is there?" Pip murmured unhelpfully from in front.

She glared unknowingly at his rear and lightly smacked his calf. "There are no bloody snakes in the bloody ducts! Keep moving!"

"Ok, ok! Ah mon Dieu, will you relax? I don't even know where the fuck we're going."

The draculina rolled her white eyes, biting back a retort about what cause was there to relax then.

It'd been half an hour since her master had essentially abandoned them and in that time, she had become fairly certain of two things.

One was that Sir Integra was going to eviscerate all three of them when she inevitably found out. And the second was that making her master watch Twilight was probably one of the biggest mistakes she's ever made.

As an added bonus, she was pretty sure she'd gone mad for what they were currently trying to pull.

"This tunnel leads to the elevator shaft. The air currents sound slower further out."

"I'm going as fast as I can," Pip grumbled, earning a strange look from Seras. He rubbed at his ear, which was beginning to slightly ache.

"Why are we going to the penthouse again instead of hauling arse out of here?"

"I told you, the second pin is up there," she replied, swiping a cobweb out of her hair with disgust.

"Right, well, why should we care about that then?"

"I don't know," she snapped, "But Master thought it was important so we need to get it."

Pip had no rebuttal for that, so he simply shrugged and struggled forward on his elbows, a difficult task considering how narrow the passageway was. For such a lavish hotel, the ducts hadn't seemed to have been cleaned for a good century. Cockroaches and cobwebs littered their path and there was an alarming unidentifiable slime that clung to the walls. The air was sticky and hot, carrying the faint scent of urine.

"God, there's such a thing as a fucking inspection," he muttered, after brushing dead cockroaches out of their path for the sixth time.

"You should write a letter," Seras said flatly, not nearly as bothered by her surroundings. There were benefits to being blind at times too after all.

Pip turned back to look at her strangely and fiddled with the knobs of his hearing aid. "Quoi?"

"I said you should write a letter."

There was a pause.

"Huh," he mused, prompting his head with an elbow, "Maybe I should. How can a five-star hotel have air ducts filled with cockroaches and stinking of the trenches?"

"Because they haven't had inspection?"

"There's an underground lab," Pip declared, striking his fist against his open palm dramatically, "Must be. The stench is from the experiments. It's a fucking conspiracy."

Seras made an unladylike snort, "I'm sure they'll look forward to your drunken ravings."

They shared a quiet laugh and continued in silence. It was slow going as every few minutes they needed to stop and wait out the thundering footsteps of DST agents hurrying below them.

Seras sweated slightly at the sounds and she assumed Pip must've half lost his mind from the fear, since she had to stop him twice from moving forward while agents were right beneath them. A few of them whispered to each other in French, but he was also too busy adjusting his hearing aid to catch it.

Eventually, to Seras's utter relief, the stale air in the vents grew fainter and the loud whirring of the elevator generator could be heard. The passageway had also grown wide enough that she could shimmy her way up next to Pip.

"We're here, Captain," she said, crawling forward, though both were too distracted to realize their shoulders were touching.

Pip didn't reply, studying the long fat black cables pulling the elevator boxes up and down.

"I'll go first," he said suddenly.

Seras blinked. "What?"

But she was already talking to empty air. Pip leapt from the ledge with a burst of energy, crossing the eight meter gap and landing on the passing elevator box with a deft somersault.

"Captain?" Seras whispered, slightly panicked as she groped the empty space next to her, "Pip?"

"Mignonette," Pip called from where the elevator had stopped on the first floor, "Get ready, it's coming back up."

"What?! Where are you?" She leaned half her body out of the duct, but obviously saw nothing but darkness.

"Get ready!"

"Get ready for what?"

The generator roared as the cables starting lifting the elevator back up the shaft. It was about a quarter of a way to the duct opening when Pip called, "Okay, jump now!"

Seras blinked dumbly. "Jump?"

Pip's eye bulged slightly as the box began moving rapidly toward the ledge. "What are you doing?! Jump!"

"Where am I suppose to be jumping to?!" Seras shrieked back at him.

"JUMP!"

"Oh, sod it," she muttered to herself, half-hysterically. With her undead heart in her throat, she took a wild leap. For an instant, there was nothing but the rush of wind pass her face, an expanse of darkness before her, and Seras bit her tongue to keep herself from screaming.

Then she heard Pip curse. A pair of warm hands flew out of nowhere and grabbed her wrist, halting her rapid descent. She gasped in shock at the sudden stop, and her body accidentally banged against the side of the box.

"I said jump not swan-dive," Pip snapped, keeping hold of her arm with gritted teeth.

"Well excuse me for being blind!" Seras sniped right back, gripping the edge of the box to help pull herself up. As soon as she had found her footing, she crossed her arms and glared vaguely at his direction. "It didn't help that you were ignoring me, you know. Why didn't you answer?"

Pip blinked. "Answer what?"

Seras's blind eyes widened incredulously, "Answer wha—like why I was falling to my death down an elevator shaft, you bloody jerk!"

Silence.

"Captain?" Seras prodded.

Pip didn't reply immediately and when he did, his voice was hesitant.

"…Sorry, mignonette, I didn't catch that. Hold on, okay? I need to adjust this."

Seras's eyes widened. She hadn't been actively taking notice, but she was rather sure this was already Pip's fifth time adjusting his hearing aid.

"Are you okay, Captain?" she questioned carefully, "How can it not pick up what I'm saying when I'm standing less than thirty centimeters away?"

"Huh? What?"

"I said are you okay?"

Pip tinkered with the device for a second longer, wincing slightly at the strange stinging sensation in his ear.

"Yeah, I'm fine. This piece of crap's just hard to use. Needs adjusting every five seconds."

"But you didn't need to do that a few hours ago," Seras pointed out softly.

Pip stopped to ponder that for a moment. "Huh. Maybe it's based on the place then."

"Is that how hearing aids work?" she asked, feeling a tad anxious.

"I don't know. I didn't really read the manual," Pip admitted and turned toward the metal ladder, wincing again as he rubbed his ear, "The Doc must've given me the wrong size or something though, it feels like it's cutting into my skin."

Seras looked alarmed. "Maybe you should take it out then," she advised in concern.

Pip nearly snorted and waved his hand at her. "It's fine, I can handle way worse than this."

Seras still looked unsure, even as Pip took her hand and started leading her toward the ladder. "But—"

"I said it's fine, mignonette. I can hear you now, can't I?"

It was true enough. Seras bit her lip, accidentally puncturing it with her fang. And as blood flooded her mouth, she reluctantly let him pull her along.