George Square, Glasgow, 1964

Günter Krupt.

Born, 1930, Latvia, to ethnic German parents – repatriated to the Reich from the Soviet Union, 1943. Family settled on the outskirts of the city of Danzig. Intermediate levels of education, joined the Heer, 1950, deployed as Panzer Grenadier with Grossdeutschland Division during the Turkish crisis of 1953.

Came to the attention of Millennium, 1954, after an engagement in Ankara province in which his unit came under sustained and severe attack from Asiatic rebels.

Extraordinary pyrokinetic abilities demonstrated as a result of extreme stress.

Operational codename: Fornjót

The Major had memorised the records of each and every one of his soldiers, he could bring everything from service history to prior employment to tax records instantaneously to mind. He considered it a part of his multifarious responsibilities, as a commander, to know the strengths and weakness of each and every member of his battalion, to be able to deploy every unique individual to a situation suited exclusively to their particular…talents.

Günter Krupt, however, was more than just 'another' member of his battalion.

He was one of the Doctor's pet projects, one of his eternally indulged 'psychics'.

He was a pyrokinetic.

A firestarter.

The Doctor maintained a unit of four, of which Krupt was the third. Although, officially, they were know as 'Kampfgruppe Galland' the men had christened them 'The Four Horsemen', a ridiculous moniker typical of the kind routinely doled out by combat units.

As Krupt made his way through the blizzard of ice and snow sweeping the square, trudging towards the shattered entrance to the City Chambers, the Major could easily make out the mass of livid, red scars that covered almost the entirety of his formerly comely face.

It had taken him many years, and much painful experimentation, to control his abilities.

A charred, fire blackened steel chamber beneath the Wewelsburg, along with Krupt's own horrific third degree burns, were testament to his truly heroic struggles in the service of the Reich.

With his long wrap-around coat of ochre leather, which was fashioned almost like the cassock of some obscene priest and which glistened wetly with fire-retardant gel, flapping around him in the howling gale he began his steady ascent into the war ravaged building with neither word not gesture of acknowledgement to his superior.

He slowly and carefully pulled a field gas mask down over his ravaged features as he passed, his calm, regular breathing suddenly amplified into a deep, disturbing rasp.

On his left arm, a simple red, white and black party loyalty band.

Below Glasgow City Chambers, Glasgow, 1964

Andrew Victoria pelted down the spiralling concrete stairway that led towards the armoury and small barracks complex, he was panicking, he knew, but that was something which he had absolutely no intention of ceasing to do any time in the foreseeable future.

In his blind rush he ran straight into Kelly, who was sprinting up the stairs, almost bowling the little resistance fighter from her feet.

'What the hell is going on?' she gasped at him, after untangling herself hastily from her friend.

'We're under attack.'

'Really? I never would have guessed' she replied, her voice positively oozing sarcasm.

Andrew made a snap decision and grabbed her hand.

'Come on'.

'Shouldn't we be going the other way, Andrew?'

'We have to get to the armoury'.

'I have a gun' she answered flatly, waving her M-14 in his face as he half dragged her back down the staircase.

'We're…' he paused, turned and looked at her 'under attack by…vampires'.

'What?' Kelly gaped at him, 'this is no time for fucking around Andrew' she snapped, suddenly angry.

'I'm not fucking about' he snarled back, before resuming his headlong charge downwards, once again almost crashing into a group of resistance fighters, a half a dozen men led by Bram, coming from the opposite direction.

'Air attack?' he asked.

'No' Kelly answered over her shoulder as she was pulled past them 'vampires'.

'Eh?'

'God dammit, just follow me!' Andrew yelled as he ducked around a corner and through the hatch to the armoury.

There had been just enough ammunition to equip the nine of them with bolt action rifles, and then to issue them with the correct calibre of silver bullets. Each round had been blessed prior to use, bathed in holy water, and then inscribed with minute devotions and holy catechisms.

Andrew thought that a solid hit from the powerful old Lee-Enfield's would be able to put down one of the Millennium troopers.

Well, hopefully, he thought, as they scrambled up the rear of the rough curtain wall, and lay down on the 'rampart' rifles pointed towards the single entrance to the junction room. To their left and right were other resistance troops, their motley collection of small arms pointed in the same direction.

'This is fucking stupid, Andrew-'

'Kelly, if there's one thing I ever wanted you to trust me on, this is that thing – ok?'

She just glared back at him; his hasty explanation of the situation as they left the armoury, combined with the obvious panic of the quartermaster when he had requested the special ammunition, had served to dull the sharp edge of her doubts.

He had no reason to lie, she considered, which only left her with the even less appealing answer of 'he's cracked up'.

A burst of static from the radio of a nearby officer served to belay her unwelcome chain of considerations.

'This is outpost three to curtain wall, we are under attack, no reports from outposts one or two, assuming that they've all bought it…hold on sir, enemy in sight…commencing fire!'

The thunder of automatic weapons filled the radio network.

'Fu-fucking, Christ, pull back to outpost four! Si-Sir they're fucking monsters sir, our weapons are useless, they're too fas-'

The officer on the curtain wall cut into the terrified chatter 'Lieutenant Bamber to outpost three, confirm withdrawal'. He paused, waiting for a reply. When none proved forthcoming he raised the radio again 'Outpost three?'.

There came a crackling, and then a clatter down the still open channel, as if someone were fumbling with the radio, trying to switch from 'receive' to 'transmit' with unfamiliar equipment.

'Gutentag Englanders! Wowohnst du? Millennium kommit, Englanders ich-'

The officer holding the set quite sensibly terminated the transmission.

The men on the wall exchanged worried glances as he contacted the radio operators a few metres down the corridor behind them, reporting the situation to his superiors.

'See?' Andrew whispered to Kelly, and at Bram's handful of men behind her.

They all retained a good degree of their scepticism, and yet, each had suddenly gone from wondering how this seemingly demented council agent, blithering frantically about vampires, werewolves and something called 'Millennium', had convinced them to take up ancient rifles and silver bullets to flat wondering what the bloody hell was going on.

'Shit! Here they come!' came a frantic cry from down the line.

And instant later the entire cavernous space was filled with the relentless hammering of frenzied gunfire.

Hermman Schmeisser ducked neatly out of the tunnel doorway and into the huge, open, area beyond. This massive subterranean sewage network was not exactly somewhere he would have described as his natural habitat, and this Rattenkreig, close quarters combat with assault rifles, grenades and sharpened entrenching tools, was equally not his chosen field of conflict.

The artificial vampires, on the other hand, revelled in it. They threw themselves forward, impetuously hurdling the deep concrete channels in the floor without even allowing the blood of the humans they had recently slain in the tunnels to dry on their hands, stocks and most disturbingly, teeth. The score of supernatural shock troopers blazed wildly at the defenders on the wall as they advanced, spinning effortlessly between the volleys of rifle fire that blanketed the prepared 'killing zone' before the barricades.

Schmeisser ducked behind a concrete outcropping not far from the entrance. He had no intention of throwing himself at a prepared position like some demented fool lost to the beserkergang.

As he watched he saw the first of the artificials, screeching hatred in what may once have passed for Romanian, crouch down on all fours like some terrible stalking predator and then spring the full length of the steep incline of the curtain wall, landing with a wide, dreadful grin in front of a group of resistance fighters near the centre of the barricade.

Andrew screamed and scrabbled back a few feet, towards the lip of the rampart.

The crouching SS trooper in front of him was like some primordial nightmare from a forgotten legend, its prodigious quantity of razor sharp teeth, scraps of viscera and hair wedged between them, dripping blood down the front of its mottled grey and black fatigues. In one hand it held a red smeared Stg-47, and in the other a wickedly curved entrenching tool.

A pair of severed human heads were tied, by their hair, to its exquisitely tooled leather belt.

Eyes still wide with shock, mouths hanging limply open.

It leered crookedly at him.

'Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he 'live, or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread'.

Andrew fumbled for his rifle, tried to raise it – too slow, the vampire moved to pounce.

Kelly shot it in the face, point blank.

The roar of the old Enfield, right next to his ear almost deafened Andrew. He could see the SS creature, one eye rolling grotesquely independent of the other, a single neat bullet hole below it.

With a groan it keeled over, dead, for a second time.

Bram and the other resistance fighters needed no further prompting to open fire, carefully taking aim and squeezing precious single shots off at the other vampires.

'That wasn't so manful of me, was it, Kelly?'

Schmeisser watched three of the artificials drop in quick succession after the failure of their over eager compatriot to get across the curtain wall.

He flicked on his radio 'Pull back you idiots, they have silver ammunition'.

He turned towards his newly arrived, human, soldiers – the dozen survivors of the brutal running battle through the barricades.

'You as well, back into to the tunnels'.

Andrew watched with some considerable surprise as the Millennium troopers began to retreat, both the group huddled by the entrance, and the vampires that had been attacking them.

Why are they retreating?

It didn't feel right. They should have pushed the assault, yes, a few of them had silver bullets – but most did not and he was the only one, as far as he knew, who had ever seen, let alone fought, a vampire before.

They were hardly the Siegfried Line.

A few woops and shouts of victory were raised from the troops, but most seemed too traumatized by their first encounter with the supernatural for any degree of celebration.

Andrew did not have long to dwell on the precise reasons for the German retreat, they quickly became apparent as a lone figure came into view, slipping between the retreating storm troopers as they dropped rapidly back into the tunnels.

Clad in a long ochre coat and black military issue gas mask, with party armband proudly displayed on one arm, what Andrew could only assume was a 'he' cut an eccentric figure in the blood and grime splattered underground warzone.

'Anyone think they can hit him from here?' Andrew mumbled. He had seen a Millennium werewolf, and a Millennium vampire, up close and personnel now and judging from those experiences – he had quickly decided that he was in no mood for a CQC session with whatever the hell this was.

Both Bram and Kelly answered in the affirmative, leveled their rifles, and took aim.

Twin tongues of flame lashed out, and a pair of silver bullets closed the gap between them and this latest foe in the blink of an eye.

Within that same moment, however, the ochre clad man raised his left hand in their direction, the air around it warping and twisting like heat distortion on a summer's day. The two bullets, hurtling at an incredible velocity, struck the blurred mass of superheated air and then melted. Not simply running from solid to liquid, however, like molten steel in a blast furnace, but actually striking the heat barrier and disappearing.

Gone.

Vaporized.

Andrew, squinting from the barricade, watched the ineffectual attack.

'Fuck'.

'OPEN FIRE' someone screamed, off to their left. In an instant, every man and woman on the rampart jammed their fingers down on the trigger of whatever weapon they held. Hundreds of rounds of all shapes and sizes lashed out towards the solitary German, as he took careful, measured, steps forwards – now with both arms outstretched to his sides.

The heat distortion expanded, as more and more rounds splashed against it, uselessly.

The air around him, suddenly, seemed to kindle as easily as dry timber and with a soft 'whump' like the lighting of a gas light blue fire enveloped his entire body, viscous tongues of liquid balefire dribbled from his arms, head and torso, carving deep black furrows into the concrete around his feet. The basic shape of a man could still be discerned, but his features and clothes were entirely obscured by the shifting, running, sheets of ethereal flame.

'Fuck'.

Sweat dribbled down from Andrew's forehead, and he swiped it roughly out of his eyes. The entire chamber was heating up, he could feel it. And not just from that 'burning' thing either. It was the air, all around them, getting warmer.

Rapidly.

Firing from the resistance troops had tailed off by now, they were starting to edge slowly back from this steadily advancing human torch.

'Piss and bollocks to this'.

Andrew grabbed Kelly by the back of her coat, and, once again dragging her behind him, turned and ran for his life.

From the other side of the barricade he could hear the grating rasp of the burning man's voice as they fled, filling the cavern:

'BuRn WitH mE'

There was a second, this time thunderous, 'whump' as they reached the hatch to the council chambers, which Andrew threw open, and tumbled through.

Every scrap of air in the huge junction chamber ignited in a sudden and blinding ultramarine flash, the oxygen was ripped from the still living lungs of the fleeing resistance fighters to feed the hungry flames a mere few seconds before they were struck by an expanding wall of fire which fused their weapons into their hands, and flayed black flesh from splintered bone.

Andrew, Kelly, Bram and a handful of others crashed through the opening a few meters ahead of the broiling cloud of supernatural napalm, before, with one desperate kick, Victoria lashed out with his foot and slammed the hatch closed.

The frantic hammering of those caught on the other side was cut of seconds later, as the steel door warped and bent under the impact of the napalm wall.

Andrew looked up at the ceiling.

His vision was badly blurred.

He reached behind him and felt a sticky, wet patch on the back of his head. He must have hit it on the concrete in his rush back through the hatch, he thought. The handful of surviving resistance fighters were moving sluggishly around him, the blast in the central chamber had affected them no better than it had he.

He sat up; his weight on his elbows. All he could hear was one long ringing from between his ears and his throat was red roar from breathing superheated air for the bare few seconds it had had to assault them before he had managed to shut the encroaching blast wave out of their little tunnel.

A massive impact on the twisted door ahead of him snapped him back to full consciousness.

It buckled in the centre, as if some great fist had struck it.

A fist.

'UP, UP!' he screamed at the dazed troops around him, kicking one off of his legs, and bodily pulling another upright. 'Down the corridor, now dammit, and QUICKLY!'

Staggering drunkenly, the seven battered survivors managed to make their way into the slightly wider section in front of the command room, ducking behind the walls where they could, and training their rifles back towards the hatch.

Only four of them had silver ammunition, and those a bare handful of rounds each.

Andrew yanked the radio Sir Islands had given him out of his recently singed coat pocket.

'Any help would be greatly appreciated about now sir; they've using some kind of…bloody…erm, human napalm bomb or something. They carved right through the barricade – we're holed up outside the council room'.

Another massive impact on the hatch.

'Just a little longer, agent' came Island's matter of fact reply.

The door behind them opened, Mayne, Churchill and Mountbatten appeared, side arms in hand.

'Sir I think that you should-' Bram began.

'The hell we will Colonel', Mayne interjected bluntly.

'With all due respect, I don't think any of you understand what we're facing down here, sir'.

Mayne looked at each of the terrified men and women before him, all deathly pale, some trembling, drawn up facing the hatch two hundred metres ahead of them.

'I think we do'.

The hatch burst open, and the first SS creature swept through, utterly graceful, totally silent, like oil running across glass.

One and all, the resistance fighters raised their weapons.

And then the lights went out.

'By the prickling of my thumbs…something wicked this way comes'.

A low, deeply mocking, rumble, that came not from one source but, seemingly, from the darkness all about them.

'Oh, for fucks sake' Andrew moaned.

It was black as the proverbial pitch, he couldn't see the rifle in his own hands and now, he grimly reflected, some new horror from the seemingly endless cavalcade of Nazi freaks.

One of the electric lanterns on the wall, not far from his head, flickered weakly to life, casting insanely stretched, wildly flickering shadows up and down the tunnel.

In the dim yellow light it provided, he suddenly caught sight of a single, massive figure blocking the corridor.

Both arms outstretched, a hand on either wall. Incredibly, it seemed to Andrew, facing not towards his own beleaguered little force – but towards the equally incredulous Millennium vampires still slipping in ones and twos through the open hatch.

At seven or even eight feet in height, he almost needed to duck to fit into the narrow space. He wore a dry and cracked leather suit that appeared half military uniform, half straight jacket, with a cluster of broken, loose straps hanging down from his arms. A pair of spotless white gloves covered his hands – some cryptic occult symbol emblazoned boldly across each.

His hair was long and a lank, lifeless, iron grey, reaching almost to his waste, his eyes a pale milky orange, his face split into a smirk of truly unparalleled malice.

'Wh-wh-what the hell?' the lead SS trooper managed to stammer out, just about recovering from his sudden shock.

'Who are you? Wh-wh-ere did you come from?'

An inane question, this latest monster mused.

'Valhalla' it smirked improbably at this obnoxious, presumptuous little thing.

'And I have been called many, many things in my long centuries, child, but here they like to call me Alucard'.

(I GIVETH THEE ALUCARD! Warning, the next four chapters will essentially be Alucard killing. So, if you don't like that – YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

And I know I changed the design of the Doctor's little band, from 'men in black types' to a more rounded carnival of crazy crap…but I like this more).