Chapter 10

Away from the back side of the wall that surrounded the Hellsing manor, a hooded dark silhouette of Father Gregory was standing in the bushes.

"Ah, what a breathtaking sight," he spoke admiringly, looking at the Moon and smiling, "Who can even enjoy the Sun this way? All that one can get from looking at the Sun is blindness. Why punish those who wish to enjoy your beauty? The magnificence of the Moon, on the other hand, can always be marveled at. However, so fewer humans appreciate the Moon as compared to the Sun. Of course, it's the Sun that makes the Moon shine, so it's basically the same light – or so they say. And yet, it has never hurt me, a vampire. Those ignorant fools with their observatories and telescopes can demean the existence of the Moon all they want, assigning it a simple role of the Earth's natural satellite, but only a monster such as myself can truly feel and understand its greatness. I wish I could show them the true power of the Moon. But then I would have to kill them all because they didn't deserve to witness it. Only those who appreciate it get enjoy its grace. There is never a better way to appreciate its splendor on nights like this than to pay a little tribute to it every time. By the Moon's mischievous spell, rise, my friends, from pits of Hell!"

Having said those words, Gregory looked down and smiled: aside from his own shadow, six more appeared from underneath his feet and spread out on the ground around him. Then all of them, except for his own, stood up straight, and their connection to him faded. Neither of them resembled him in size or shape, and two of them even had noticeably nonhuman proportions.

"Welcome yet again, my friends," Gregory greeted the shadows, turning around and giving each one an acknowledging look, "In the night of its fullest magnificence and elegance, the Moon, as always, using me as the medium, has generously given you a bit of time to enjoy yourself in this world. You know that I strive to prepare best entertainment for you every time. I not going to hide the truth from you: while I expect this night to be a great deal of fun all of us, I have great personal interest in what we are about to. Tonight we shall take vengeance on one of the most insolent human legacies that Darkness has ever faced. You know better than I do that humans for generations have fought Darkness in all shapes and forms, and using all means available to them; and Darkness has always countered laudably. Everything had been considered a fair game… until a man with a name Van Hellsing came about… As you very well know, he was the one by whose hand Count Dracula has suffered his last defeat. It would have been perfectly fine if everything just ended there. But that arrogant man decided to go much further. He humiliated the King of Vampires by forcing him into serfdom and inverting his name! And through years of living in such condition, Dracula's mind has become poisoned with human virtues. He has accepted his new nature, turned his back on Darkness and joined the human side. Many of our brothers and sisters believe that he has done so of his own accord. I refuse to acknowledge such nonsense! Humanity can corrupt Darkness just as much as Darkness can corrupt humanity. After many years spent with humans and their piteous existence, Dracula's heart must have softened – for his own trouble, because a softer heart is easier to pierce! Let us not forget that, obeying orders of a human, he had been thrown into oblivion for thirty years, and yet he returned to the very same human. And to his precious Draculina, who also serves that human. I say that no one other than that human is responsible for such disgrace of Count Dracula. The King of Vampires, the ultimate token of power, the Dark paragon of glory… neither he nor those who accepted Darkness from under his own fangs would have ever sided with humans if it hadn't been for Van Hellsing and his wretched lineage. And that lineage is now at its dead-end, lying on shoulders of an aging, childless woman. 'Why bother?' you may ask, 'Why not just wait until her age takes its toll?' I'll tell you why! Because only her death by the hand of those who are Dracula's true kind will enrage him to the point where he will remember who he truly is – a monster from pits of Hell, just like all of us. I do not wish any of your or myself to become his enemies. I only wish to destroy the only thing that had made him forget who his true friends are. And that is why we must take this opportunity when everything has been arranged so that he and his precious Draculina are not going to get in our way. I do not wish to fight either of them. I wish to save them from that delusional belief in humanity that encroached their minds like poison. Let's liberate them from servitude to that phony 'human kindness,' which has actually taken incomparably more lives than all forces of Darkness combined will ever be able to! I understand how tempting it is to believe in humility of humans. After all, I too have spent years caught in that lie. But it took me one fateful night in order to realize that there was much more humility on the dark side than human can ever have. When those of whom I thought as friends ran away, holding the bottoms of their robes in their hands, I realized what the true worth of 'human kindness' was. And then I found the truth in the one who was going to kill me… in the one whose kind I had always regarded as monsters. And if I was able to see the truth, then Dracula, who has known it at along, will definitely be able to see it again. He just needs a little help, but doesn't realize it. And I believe that it is our duty to rid him of this veil of lies. During my years as a human and a Catholic, I thought of Hellsing as heathens who thrived to rival God's true divine instrument, the Vatican. After I became a monster and lost my faith in human virtues, my view of Hellsing has also changed. I now see it as several generations of brazenly wishful yet worthless humans who wanted to battle Darkness; but once they realized how vain their efforts were, they buried their main principle of standing against Darkness – and managed to recruit one of the most formidable creature from the rank of their enemy to fight on their side. Hellsing has always reeked of hypocrisy and audacity, having never admitted that their fame and success in fighting Darkness cannot be attributed to anything else but Darkness itself! Thus, whether in human or monstrous eyes, Hellsing has always been my enemy. And tonight, the last remaining link of their historical chain of undeserved glory will perish under the gaze of the Moon. But… My friends, I want you to never forget that there has never been any obligation for you whatsoever to help me if you do not see the purpose as clear as I do. And if any of you do not wish to participate, you may simply take a step back right now, and I will think nothing of it…"

He took a pause, letting the meaning of his words settle in and awaiting response. When none of the shadows around him moved, he smiled satisfactorily.

"Very well. I will ask again once I give you the details, because the last thing that I want to do is presume on our friendship. Behind these walls, my friends, lie the Hellsing headquarters. Supposedly, the perimeter is under constant surveillance, and the building itself is guarded. While such laughable precautions obviously do not daunt me, I cannot be certain that I would be able to overcome them without making somebody aware of my presence. And if that happens, then our opportunity will be lost. This crushing blow can only be successful if it is sudden. You, my friends, are my only hope to land this blow as I see it fitting. Once again, I admit that this time I haven't just prepared entertainment for all of us – I did it with additional purpose in mind. But if there is anything that I can promise you for sure, it is that this night will be the most interesting of all that you had ever had in this world after I had freed each one of you from your pathetic hosts. Aside from human masterminds, the premises are also protected by a very interesting creature. According to bishop M'Quve, who wholeheartedly considers me to be a secret ally of the Vatican for some reason, the Hellsing manor is shrouded by Seras Victoria's shadow. Apparently, Seras Victoria, the only living Draculina, who, just like her master, had allowed her magnificence to be reduced to serfdom, has infused the mansion with a portion of her shadow. The being that lives inside the walls of that house must be of extraordinary nature. A monstrous guardian shadow… it is host-broken, like all of you are, and yet its host, Seras Victoria, had willingly set it free and is able to fully control it whenever she pleases. What a fascinating creature that shadow must be... Magnificent, mysterious, thrilling, tempting, and undoubtedly exciting to play with... You know how ecstatic I am about trying to understand the nature of shadows… Unfortunately, I cannot indulge this urge for exploration at this time, because everything else will be compromised if we are discovered early. So, you get to enjoy this miracle of Darkness first. Such big and naughty being is certainly very powerful, but the nature of its condition, if I understand anything at all about shadows, ought to bear one significant weakness: being so large, that shadow cannot be sighted. It has to rely on its host's commands or on its own ability to feel presence of another creature within its domain. And if that's the case, then it shall be no problem for you to enter the mansion stealthily. Just as a lake will never notice a droplet of salty water added into it, that guardian shadow will never be able to recognize presence of another tiny shadows within. Still, you must keep in mind that dealing with that guardian shadow can be dangerous. If you decide to be bothersome guests, you might end up getting absorbed and devoured, so I would say that minding your manners is the best and only way to get inside the mansion safe and sound. Once there, you will need to quietly disable everyone and everything that may interfere with our fun – security forces, video surveillance and outside communications. According to the latest information that I have, they have a command center, two control rooms and three guard posts, including the one at the front gate, which I will take on by myself later on. I suggest that you only knock the humans out, rather than kill them, during that first stage. That way we will be able to fully enjoy feasting on them afterwards to celebrate the success. When everything is ready for the main event, I will join you. We will meet again in presence of Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing. I will need your help in dealing with that guardian shadow while I put to rest that undeserving heiress of that bogus century-long legacy. As you can well imagine, I will not take much time at all with her. It has been long enough already, and gradual and quiet death is definitely not something that she deserves… So, that's my plan in the nutshell. I shall now repeat myself: those of you who do not wish to participate need to take a step back now. There will be no hard feelings, I promise…"

In response, the six shadows only made room in their circle around Gregory. As they did that, his own shadow rose from the ground and stood erect. All seven shadows then raised their arms and joined them above Gregory's head.

"Excellent," he smirked, "Now, go in there and put them into nightmare from which they will not awaken!"

Having entered the forest, Seras did not take long to discover the police officer's gruesomely mangled body. She looked around and then squatted to study the body closely.

"Well, I understand having a feast, but why make such a mess after yourself?" she muttered, "See, officer, that what happens to brave and dedicated idiots like you…"

"I wouldn't want to disappoint you, but he was not brave at all… and definitely not dedicated…"

Seras stood up immediately and pointed her rifle in the direction where the voice came from. She knew that just a moment ago nobody was there. But she also knew that it would only take a moment for any vampire to move there from a concealed location nearby. And indeed, she saw a person standing by a tree, some distance away.

"Hm… you must be an interesting little fellow," she smirked, "I'm already surprised twice. For one, you have just had a fiesta here and you didn't bother to run away. And secondly, your executioner has just arrived, and you are revealing yourself as opposed to hiding and hoping that I won't find you."

"What if I had just decided to stick around for desert? That wasn't one of your thoughts, was it?"

In response, Seras fired a single round straight into his head. Watching the flight of the bullet, she was astonished when he simply bent his neck to the side and avoided getting shot in the forehead, without moving any other part of his body. She knew that any vampire could evade bullets if they wanted to, but it was his fearless attitude that baffled her. Over the years she has gotten used to a completely different reaction of those whom she had been sent to eliminate: the majority of them would always try to run away or defend themselves frenziedly.

"All right," she said curiously and somewhat tensely, lowering her rifle, "As I understand, this thing won't do anything if used head-on… Also, I somehow feel that everything is much more complicated than a case of a meagerly intelligent vampire indulging his hunger… Care to break the ice? Who are you?"

"So far you are the interesting little fellow here," the person grinned, "First you shoot and then you ask questions. It should be the other way around if a pleasant dialogue is expected. Fortunately, a pleasant dialogue is not on my wish list at all. And whether you are curious or not as to what is on my wish list, you, my dear, are already participating in it. Let's not take much time for talking. I'm Victor. That's my name and my nature. I hope that this little wordplay is not too complicated for you to understand."

"No, it isn't," Seras smiled slyly, "I'm just more used to letting my fists and bullets talk for me. That way I don't need to back up anything that I say with action - because I speak action. You, on the other hand, have just given me a warrant to beat all your guts out of you and see if I get as much of them as you assert to have. And, going by your own logic, nothing whatsoever is already settled about all this. You are Victor… that's your name and your nature, as you said. Well, I'm Seras Victoria, and that's my name and nature. How about that?"

"Hm… I've never thought of that before," Victor smirked, "Still, there can only be one winner."

"Winner? And what do you mean 'before?'" Seras asked confusedly and then her eyes widened as she understood the startling implication, "Wait, this is a set-up, isn't it?"

"Ha! You are a true blond, aren't you!?" Victor exclaimed mockingly, "I was wondering how much longer it would take you to start figuring things out. I hope that you weren't planning on asking about the nonexistent woman, who was supposedly attacked by a vampire, according to the police report that the Hellsing headquarters received!"

"What!?"

Realizing the seriousness of the situation but not understanding its full meaning, Seras didn't know how to react. Multiple thoughts began flooding her mind, making her unable to deliberate. She anxiously clenched the rifle in her hands, breathing angrily. But when the first wave of emotions passed, she sharply looked at Victor with a malicious smile on her face.

"I see… so, that's how it is, eh? You lured me here so you could fight me? Well, I don't care about your motives, but if it was a fight with me that you sought, then you got it! Whoever you are, you better brace yourself, because I will not hold back! I never do!"

"Ha-ha-ha!" Victor laughed, "You are a true blond, aren't you? You are saying that don't care about my motives? Really? Well, that makes it easier, I suppose. Those who live clueless must die clueless!"

With lightening-fast speed, bouncing of trees in order to making it difficult for Seras to predict the trajectory of his movement, he darted at her. Surprised by such sudden attack, she didn't even prepare herself for it. He struck her in the chest with his shoulder, and the impact sent her flying backwards. She crashed into a tree back first and spat out blood all over her face. Victor immediately proceeded to follow up with another hit, but that time she was ready for it. She blocked his attack and countered with a devastating punch in the forehead. As he briefly lost balance, she uppercutted him and then kicked him in the stomach, knocking him backwards. While he was getting up and taking a moment to recuperate, she used her shadowy arm to retrieve her rifle that was lying on the ground approximately ten meters away, and fired several shots at him. She watched in slow motion how he, following the trajectory of the bullets and evading them, caught one in his palm and then immediately flung it back at her. Not expecting such turnabout, Seras couldn't dodge in time and the bullet pierced through her thigh. She winced from sharp pain, but did not retreat even one step.

"It's always possible to get hit by your own bullets, but this is ridiculous, Seras! You are an idiot! What are you thinking trying to shoot this guy after you've seen his speed?" she heard Pip's voice in her head.

"Oh, good timing as always, Captain Bernadotte," she smiled sarcastically, "So, are you here to mock me or help me?"

"Ha, a little bit of both, perhaps."

"You never change, Captain."

"Do you?"

"Good point. Any plans?"

"Only one for now."

"What?"

"Try to hit him, avoid getting hit and don't do anything stupid – and we will go from there…"

"I could have figured that out by myself!" Seras exclaimed in her mind and focused her attention on Victor.

Looking at her spitefully, he grabbed his lower jaw with both hands and put it back in proper position with a dull cracking sound. He the wiped the stream of blood that was pouring down from the corner or his mouth and licked it from his palm.

"I'm impressed so far. No one has made me bleed in many years," he smirked, "But why don't you just drop those toys of yours? It's pathetic to see you eating your own shots like this. As they say, don't shoot if you are not ready to get shot yourself."

Without saying a word, Seras tossed the rifle aside and then immediately turned her shadowy arm into a series of spikes and cast them at Victor. As they came near him, she felt a familiar yet forgotten sensation… The next scene caused her to shudder instinctively: Victor transformed into a terrifying monster, with shining aura radiating all over his body. Unable to pierce it, Seras's shadowy spikes surrounded it falteringly. Victor, on the other hand, did not hesitate for a moment. He grasped one of the spikes with his clawed paw and yanked on it.

"Oh, no-no-no-no-no!" Seras exclaimed impulsively, being tugged sharply towards him.

"Don't doze off! Be ready to attack or at least block, you idiot!" she heard Pip screaming in her mind.

"How about this!?"

Swiftly passing by a tree, she managed to grab one of its boughs and broke it off. Waiting on the other side with his clawed paw ready for the fatal strike, Victor did not expect Seras to arrive for her supposed execution bearing a three-meter-long club in her hands. With nearly perfect precision, she took a wide swing just in time and bashed him on the head, breaking the bough in half. While that didn't appear to have done any real damage to him, it dazzled him and made him miss with his attack. Using his confusion to her advantage, Seras pulled her shadow from his paw and immediately relocated herself further away in order to create some distance between them. The last place where she wanted to be was anywhere within range of his terrifying foot-long claws.

"Well, that explains everything, doesn't it?" she heard Pip's voice in her head.

"What do you mean?"

"He is a werewolf, isn't he?"

"Oh, thank you, 'captain Obvious,'" she replied sarcastically, "That realization is very helpful right about now."

"Brings back memories, doesn't it, Seras? At least now we know what to expect and how to fight him, right?"

"Yeah, I suppose. So, what's the plan?"

"For now, keep doing what you are doing. With the only exception that you must stop letting your lovely behind be kicked so easily."

"Stop it, Captain!" she exclaimed embarrassedly but then sighed and smiled, "But… I guess… I should just take it as a compliment from a very straightforward guy, as you called yourself recently, right? Besides, you aren't really suggesting that I'm getting it kicked, are you, Captain? We are only getting started. He is a pretty scary one, I must admit. But he is not the only monster around here…"

"Now we're talking, Seras!"

Firing round after round into the crowd of Elizabeth's familiars and reloading magazine after magazine, Alucard was purposely not taking his time to aim in order to test Bennett's theory. He realized very soon that it held true in reality: even those gunmen who could clearly continue fighting after having been shot in the arms and legs started quickly collapsing on the ground one by one. At the same time, however, it seemed that his own body was also beginning to yield under the barrage of bullets. Not bothering to dodge, he was taking in everything that was coming straight at him. As the last familiar fell on the ground, Alucard himself dropped on one knee, dripping blood all around.

"Ingenious, Bennett" he said excitedly, "It's just as you thought: poison does not distinguish between life and afterlife. Because it attacks something that lies far outside those concepts... living cells are always living cells, no matter what body they are in – human or monstrous…"

"Poison?" Elizabeth puckered her brow, unsure if she heard him correctly, "You have poison in your bullets? Who would ever think to make poisonous bullets!?"

"Someone who obviously spends much more time thinking than you do," Alucard smirked.

"That's ridiculous!"

"Someone like you could say that, I guess. But if you think about it, it took just two pistols to bring down your entire squad of meat shields. It went quite well with my principle of 'just one shot for every pathetic excrement of Darkness.' By the way, I'm eager to find out what else you have to fuel my fire. We are only getting started, aren't we? I demand more, Elizabeth!"

Elizabeth looked taken aback for a moment but then grinned and started laughing.

"You a such a poser, Count! Look at you! On your knee already, bleeding like a stuck pig, but trying to pretend that you are all right! Where are you going to get more strength to take on more of what I can give you? You have no familiars now… you have no reserves aside from what you have locked within your own essence, and it looks to me that you are pretty much out already! And if you think that that pathetic bunch that you just killed was all that I had, then you are quite mistaken, Count! There is plenty more where that came from. I do wonder, though, how many more of them it will take to eat up all your supply of bullets and all your leftover strength. What will it take for you to helplessly drop on both of your knees so that we can reenact our centuries-old encounter, only with our roles reversed, so that you will get to beg for your life before me?"

Alucard lowered his head and remained silent for a moment. Then he tucked his pistols in the inner folds of his coat and sighed sadly.

"I see. It's all the same with all of you," he said with growing fury in his voice, " I hoped to engage in something worthwhile, and yet it looks like I simply wasted my time. Was that your plan, Elizabeth? You expected to overwhelm me and run me down because you believed that you had more survival resources within you than I did? You are so pathetic that I cannot even laugh at you anymore! Do you think I need those guns to kill a hundred like you? Or a thousand? It may be too horrible for humans to admit, but one of the few things that they have always been great at is devising ways to kill each other. So, over the centuries of my life I've kept up to date with development of human weaponry for the sake of my own amusement. Why tear somebody apart with my bare hands if I can cut them with a sword, shoot them with a gun, blow them up by crushing an airplane into them? It's just much more entertaining this way. But that doesn't mean that I have forgotten the basics of being a monster! Prepare yourself, Elizabeth! You will be sorry that you made me go back to those basics!"

Staring at her angrily, he stood up and spread his arms apart. Terrified, Elizabeth watched how all the bullets that he took into himself started slowly coming out of his wounds and falling on the ground, and then the wounds themselves began closing while reabsorbing the blood that was around them. Then his arms burst in shadowy flames, and he disappeared and immediately reappeared in front of her. He grabbed her by the neck and lifted her in the air.

"B-but… h-how?" she gasped, shocked and suffocating, "You… you were… I thought…"

"You thought that I was at my limit?" Alucard smirked, "You were right, I was at my limit… as you correctly suggested, giving up on having familiars should and does impact a vampire's survival. But not in my case. You see, thirty years ago I accidentally absorbed a creature of very interesting nature. It could be anything it wanted and it could be anywhere it wanted. But it had to realize its own existence in order to be present. Before I could understand that, however, I got lost in my own world, amidst millions of essences. It turned out to be impossible to possess familiars and the essence of that creature at the same time. I took me a few moments to make the choice between the two, but it took me thirty years to correct the aftermath… And now, I'm anywhere and nowhere… as long as I'm aware of my own presence, I exist in this world… and as long as I believe that I'm unharmed, I will be… So, while there obviously are limits for my body, my nature effectively makes them meaningless. Such ability is far better than having any number of familiars, don't you think? And speaking of familiars… you said that there were plenty more where that pathetic bunch came from. I actually wonder how much you are truly worth, Elizabeth…"

He released the grip on her neck, letting her fall on the ground, and then disappeared. Coughing and trying to catch her breath, Elizabeth anxiously looked around, trying to figure out where Alucard went. Suddenly, she heard his voice in her mind.

"Hm… to be honest, I expected a little more out of you, Elizabeth…"

"What!?" she panted, "Where the hell are you?"

"Where am I? Why, I'm in your inner world, of course. I can be anywhere I want, remember?"

"What? But that… that doesn't make any sense!" she exclaimed, continuing to nervously scan the surroundings, "Stop messing with my mind! Where are you?"

"It doesn't have to make sense, Elizabeth. And I'm surprised that you even consider limitations like that, having lived for nearly five hundred years… nothing truly makes sense in this world. And trying to make sense of things is pointless anyway. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean that it cannot exist. And even if you do understand something, most of the time that doesn't mean that you can deal with it or change it. For instance, it doesn't make sense to me that the majority of your familiars right here are helpless women and children… is that you survival pool? You have sucked the lives of people that weren't even going to fight you and couldn't even defend themselves? I admit that I've done things like that too in my days, but this is outrageous! These pitiful souls are the source of your power, Elizabeth!? That doesn't make sense to me, but you still exist, don't you, you pathetic coward? You dare to think of yourself as a vampire!? You took the lives of those who didn't have enough strength to even try hold on to them! It is only fair if I put them to rest right here and right now! And something like that truly has to be done with bare hands!"

Spitting out blood, Elizabeth dropped on her knees. She felt terrifying and painful sensation as if she was being stabbed in the heart repeatedly, and with every strike a little part of her was dying inside. She looked at her palms and was horrified when she saw blood starting to ooze through the skin. At that point she realized that her body began bleeding everywhere. She felt blood running down her face and neck and also felt it soaking through her clothing.

"What is this? What are you doing?" she cried hysterically.

"I'm putting your pitiful familiars to rest as we speak," she heard Alucard respond softly, "Once their essence is freed, it has to leave your body somehow. As you know, blood is the medium through which life is transported. You've trapped their lives inside of you a long time ago. And now they will be leaving you… one by one… Who is bleeding like a stuck pig now, Elizabeth? Once I'm through with your little world made of these wretched souls, nature will take its toll on your five-hundred-year-old body. It will take me a little while to free every last of them with just my bare hands, but it's well worth it! Because after that I'll get to see your most dreadful fear coming to life, and I cannot wait to witness that!"

Meanwhile, back at the Hellsing mansion, Bennett was sharing with Integra the information from his underground investigation.

"…and so, as you can see, Sir Integra, I have compiled a preliminary list of seventeen more-or-less professional freelances who are believed to operate in London and its vicinity at this time," he continued commenting on the information files while browsing through them, "At the second stage of my investigation I was able to eliminate four of them… right here… and here… because I was able to confirm that they had been seen elsewhere during the timeframe in question. Out of the leftover thirteen, I managed to exclude seven more when I matched additional sources and references, including some detailed information that I obtained from miss Victoria herself. So, the remaining six… right here… are supposedly our primary suspects. I haven't gone into investigating those people one by one because… well, you understand my concerns, I suppose…"

"Of course," Integra replied ponderingly, "Going so deep could compromise the safety of our underground sources."

"Precisely," Bennett nodded and proceeded navigating through his electronic directories, "However, I also have an interesting account on one of those people right here… hm… either it's unusually slow today or… hm… I seem to be unable to get to my files… our internal server appears to be offline… that is a little strange, considering the fact that I'm the one who is usually responsible for rebooting and maintaining it… and I haven't noticed any issues earlier today… if the connection doesn't restore itself in the next couple minutes, I might have to…"

He didn't get to finish his sentence because in the next second he and Integra were knocked down on the floor from their seats by something that thrust itself though the window. When Bennett, covered in shattered glass, opened his eyes after a momentary blackout, he saw a hooded figure standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by six shadowy silhouettes.

"When full Moon controls the sky, dead arise and living die."