This chapter is co-written with Master of the Boot
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Chapter 14
The chapter in which there is a great deal of violence
High on the sheer cliff, Seras is hurtling towards the red soyombo. The crevice in the stone wall is larger than she'd initially realized; large enough for her body to slide through, even with all of her extra accoutrements. She uses her toes on the ledge as leverage and pushes herself through the opening. Once Edward sees that she's no longer in danger of falling into the sea, he releases her hand and Seras disappears inside the cliff, falling onto rocky ground inside.
A few rocks drop from above her as Edward yanks his hand loose from the stone outside. He steps in behind Seras and stoops under the low ceiling. He sees that they are in some sort of tunnel that extends deeper into the mountain.
He looks down to the paper and reads in the deep grayness of the cave. "There are no more clues. It simply says: 'Viel glück' – good luck."
Seras gets up. She's barely able to stand erect, and her ponytail brushes against the rock ceiling. "Well, the symbol led us here, so I guess we need to follow this tunnel?"
Edward nods. "It would seem so."
Seras leads and they step further into the ever darker tunnel. As they move along, Edward hears voices. They are a low murmur, indistinct, but rhythmic.
"Seras," he says in warning.
Seras stops. "What is it?" She doesn't hear anything. Edward is reading thoughts…thoughts of somebody else in the cave.
"We're not alone," he informs Seras, and they both instinctively square their shoulders and flex their arms, ready for anything. Their cautious, deliberate progress through the tunnel becomes more panther-like and less human. The thoughts are becoming stronger, and now Seras also senses another presence. "There's more than one of them," Edward cautions. It's hard to say exactly how many; their thoughts are unified, but…but my guess is up to a dozen."
"A dozen what?" Seras asks; this presence is unlike anything she's ever felt before.
Edward can now make out distinct words to the song they are singing in their heads:
'Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit für das deutsche Vaterland!
Danach lasst uns alle streben brüderlich mit Herz und Hand!'(1)
"A dozen beings loyal to the Third Reich," Edward answers grimly.
The flesh on Seras's arm prickles as the tunnel opens to a wide, stone room. At the opposite end of the cavern, she sees a large wooden crate. Burned into the sides is a huge swastika.
'Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit sind des Glückes Unterpfand --
blüh im Glanze dieses Glückes, blühe, deutsches Vaterland.'(2)
* * *
Jasper turns away from the mystery crate to look again at Alucard fighting with the small grey object. After much cursing and hopping around, Alucard finally manages to yank it off his face and throw it to the ground. The creature lands on its feet and tenses its haunches. Jasper sees grey fur, long fangs, red eyes and . . .long rabbit ears?
Jasper lets out a chuckle, but Alucard is less than amused by the little vampy critter. He grunts in pain and rubs his rapidly healing eyes, which only a moment ago had been gouged out by the bunny. His vision clears and the rabbit and the No-Life King size each other up.
The whole scenario is so bizarre that Jasper can't help but ask, "Are you afraid of that rabbit?"
Alucard looks up in mock surprise. "Do you think that's a rabbit? Oh no, my friend, that's not a rabbit." Gracefully, Alucard reaches into his duster and starts to pull out a double-barreled shotgun, which is fully loaded. "It's a bull's-eye." He beams as he aims his twelve-gauge gun at the vampire rabbit. In about thirty seconds, Bugs Bunny will join Daffy Duck in hell.
Just as Alucard squeezes the double triggers, something materializes in front of him. The shotgun pellets harmlessly deflect off the solid chest of Jasper Whitlock, who has intercepted the gunshot on behalf of the rabbit. Alucard can only stare in shock as Jasper grabs his gun and smashes it against the stone walls of the volcano's interior.
This is an outrage! Alucard could never have anticipated this move in a million years. He continues to stare at Whitlock at a loss for words. He thought that he could anticipate every emotion and response of the so-called warrior. He thought that Jasper was nothing more than a dog, a spineless creature that existed only because of the will of others.
He is a dog -- the mongrel does not even abstain of human blood by his own desire; he merely follows the trends set by his family. Why then does he stop Alucard from extracting his petty vengeance on this creature? He cannot fathom Jasper's motive for denying him this small sadistic pleasure. Is it perhaps that Alucard's overly simplistic worldview of men, dogs and monsters cannot account for all the complexities of the natures of vampire and man? Or is it simply that Alucard cannot have known that someone would dare to defy him after he had struck fear into their hearts?
When Alucard does find words, they're hardly profound or mysterious, "How dare you! That gun was a gift from the North London Mafia."
"Why would the North London Mafia give you a gift?" Jasper asks. But really, he's only half surprised by anything the Nosferatu says anymore. What's more surprising is that he'd been able to sneak the weapon past CBS security on the way in.
As the two speak, the vampire rabbit begins to hop towards the big wooden box on the crater's edge.
Ignoring his prey, Alucard smiles as if Jasper were an idiot, and says enticingly, "For reasons that you're better off not knowing."
Jasper's attention is caught by the bunny, and he follows it towards the mystery box. He's suddenly aware of an excitement radiating from the crate. By the level and variation of the emotion, his gift tells him that the box contains about ten or eleven people.
Alucard is not blind to Jasper's diverted attention. He senses the alien presence, as well, but only feels disappointment that the Major would resort to something as boring as ghoul-like creatures to entertain him. He's having much more fun taunting the Cullen boy. He chases after him while raising his voice. "That's right; I have secret dealings with the Mafia. Illicit things…if you're ever in need of top-grade marijuana…" He expects the comment about the weed to grab Jasper's attention, but it fails.
Alucard finally catches up to Jasper. The red light, the last gasp of sun, coming through the opening in the cave causes Jasper to sparkle red. It's a fitting color scheme. The pair stands twenty feet away from the box as the vampire rabbit scratches and gnaws at the sides of it.
Jasper communicates with Alucard free of emotion. "There are people in that box. I think you should go first." He knows that they need to get into the box, but he deduces that whatever is inside might possibly be dangerous.
Alucard sniffs in distaste for a moment and then starts to laugh. "Ha! You're learning a few lessons from me; I like that." The Nosferatu casually struts his stuff over to the box, black hair flowing freely and eyes blazing red.
When Alucard is about six paces from the box, a sound is heard from within. It's the sound of a musket being cocked.
Jasper and Alucard both stiffen at the noise, but neither can react before something amazing happens. Something, some kind of shiny projectile, shoots out of the wood container. It zips through the air so fast that even Alucard can barely track its movements. The magic bullet turns around one hundred and eighty degrees in mid-flight and strikes the vampire bunny. The rabbit is torn to shreds but Jasper can't tell if the rabbit is dead or not. If it truly is a vampire and the heart is intact, then the rabbit will survive.
Twisting and turning in a midair ballet, the magic bullet jerks this way and that before it strikes Alucard in the head, reducing his over-inflated noggin to a gory mist. Alucard's headless body falls and is struck by the magic bullet at least a dozen more times before it finally hits the ground. Alucard must have spirited his bombs into a kind of null space, because he does not explode...yet.
Jasper tries to run, but even his thousand-and-one-foot-per-second speed is not enough to evade this strange projectile. Before he can blink his topaz eyes, the magic bullet strikes him dead in the heart. The force of the impact causes Jasper to slam against a cave wall. The bullet twists and turns several times in insane patterns before it strikes Jasper again, this time through his lower back and out his stomach.
The cave rumbles from Jasper's impact; several tons of volcanic rock land on top of him. Effortlessly, he throws the dark grey stone off of him and assesses the damage to his body. The entry wound of the magic bullet is small, but the exit wounds are the size of bowling balls. He can feel that several of his ribs are shattered, and the muscles below his left shoulder blade and in his abdomen are obliterated. On the floor in front of him he can see the missing pieces of himself scattered around like shards of statue. Except that shards of statue don't crawl towards each other and unite to form larger pieces.
Jasper immediately begins to run towards the pieces and shove them into the new holes in his body. The venom that courses through the body of every Unstet also functions as superglue to hold dismembered body parts in place long enough for them to reattach. Almost immediately, Jasper feels shards of his body moving around and fitting into place. The muscles and bones will fully heal in two to five minutes, depending on Jasper's level of physical activity. He can only hope that it's two instead of five.
Once more, Jasper appraises the situation. The giant wooden "prize" falls apart and shows its deadly content. In the back, there are ten figures dressed in the uniforms of the Waffen SS, the elite fighting force of the Nazi regime. But these are not human fighters; their hearts do not beat, yet neither are they ghouls as Alucard had thought. Their teeth are sharp like razors and their eyes are bloody red. There is no mistaking that they are, in fact, vampires, and they're armed with rocket launchers and machine guns with incendiary ordinance. They've come with the right weapons necessary to kill an Unstet. One in the back is hauling around a massive flamethrower that is meant to be carried on a vehicle.
The leader of the group is a musket-wielding woman in a man's suit. She looks at Jasper and says, "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor; my varhead vill punish all vithout distinction."
It's the lamest thing Jasper has ever heard.
* * *
Walter and Integra leap in opposite directions to avoid the enormous crate that is plunging down to earth straight towards them. The ground shakes and wood cracks and splinters as it makes impact with the forest floor. But more terrifying than the thunderous noise is the crate's contents, now revealed as the eight-foot walls fall away.
There's no crazy fräuleinwith a musket, but other than that, Walter and Integra's "prize" is virtually identical to that of Jasper and Alucard's: men – or what used to be men – with glowing red eyes and mouths stretched into gruesome smiles that reach almost to their jawbones and open to rows of jagged, razor-sharp teeth. They all wear cropped, military haircuts, except for one, who has long, ropey dreadlocks hanging loose beneath his stahlhelm helmet.
Integra's rapier, borrowed from Leon and now strapped to her hip, and Walter's wires are paltry defense for the wartime arsenal they are suddenly faced with. Integra dives behind a large rock nearby, and Walter ducks his skinny body behind a tree, but these shields can only be expected to protect them for so long. The Nazi vampires raise their weapons and blast away at the rock and the tree, one straight line of five soldiers marching toward each. They'll not be satisfied until every square inch of the Hellsing heir and servant is obliterated.
But these guys aren't the brightest bulbs in the chandelier and don't account for what's going to happen to the top portion of the tall tree as they disintegrate its base. The thick trunk falls forward and crashes through the branches of surrounding trees, slamming to the ground and taking down three of the vampires that are blasting at the rock. The five shooting the tree are undaunted, and rush the decimated stump with their bayonet-tipped Ak-103 Kalashnikov assault rifles to poke at what's left of Walter.
Trouble is, Walter isn't there. He'd deftly dropped and rolled before their bullets could penetrate the trunk, and he's now halfway up one of the nearby trees. Before the vampires can figure where he's gotten off to, his wires whip down and slice off two of their heads, sending a splatter of blood onto their three comrades. Said comrades pull back their rifles and scan the area. They look up, down, and all around. One locks eyes with Walter. The vampire's lethal grin widens as he raises his barrelhead toward his target. The gun is ripped from his grip by one bionic wire, and a burning sensation flashes clean through his torso. The top half of the Nazi thuds to the ground, and the bottom half takes a couple instinctive steps forward before falling to the ground and spilling its putrid guts. Walter spins the rifle up to him like a fancy yo-yo trick, and perches in the branches, taking aim at his two remaining foes.
Meanwhile, Integra's protective boulder has been shrinking chunk by chunk, but when three of her attackers are temporarily incapacitated by the falling tree, she uses the opportunity to kick with all her might and shove the rock into the kneecaps of the remaining two, throwing them off balance. She leaps up and pierces the chest of one of her assailants, sending him to his knees. Blood gushes out of his chest as she withdraws her weapon. She's met her target, and if these vampires follow the rules of the Nosferatu, he won't be getting up again.
She quickly slams the side of her blade into the barrel of her other assailant's rifle, but the thin slice of silver does nothing more than annoy the Nazi soldier. He swings his weapon into the side of Integra's head and knocks her to the ground. Because of the strength of the blow, she is slow to recover, and by the time her head clears, the vampire is directly above her, pressing his bayonet tip to her throat. Any movement on the young knight's part will result in a fatal slit.
The undead soldier looks down on her with its red eyes opened wide in an eager glare. He looks like a rabid Rottweiler getting ready to chomp on a tasty bone. Thick saliva foams around his fang-like teeth and drips, dropping warmly onto Integra's face. He's not going to shoot this one or stab her. Oh no, he's going to drink her. He was in that crate for a long damn time, and he's thirsty.
The moment the pressure of the blade eases up, Integra bats the rifle away, feeling it scratch a shallow slice across her throat, and thrusts the rapier up. She pierces through the vampire's soft belly and up into its ribcage. The thing takes a step back, and Integra is pulled up with the motion. She pulls back on her weapon, but it doesn't budge. It appears to have become wedged between two of the monster's ribs. Integra yanks and yanks, trying to free it, but she's merely giving her attacker a good tickling as his torso is jerked back and forth with every pull. It tires of the game and reaches out, grasping Integra's wrist and thrusting her fingers off the hilt.
The vampire pulls her closer and closer to its dripping, menacing mouth, and Integra struggles like hell against it; being bitten by a vampire is not on her list of things to do in this lifetime. But this motherfucker is strong. It's got both her shoulders in its slimy hands now, and she's pressing her forearms against his chest with all that remains of her fleeting strength, but she's not going to be able to keep his mouth off of her already bleeding neck for much longer. She gasps and grunts and does all she can to not scream as inch by inch, her struggle appears more futile.
And then its face disappears before her eyes. Its forehead, nose and lips inexplicably peel off, and Integra is now staring at a mass of slaughtered pulp surrounding a now enormous-looking jawbone filled with white daggers. Her face contorts in a repulsed grimace, and she feels the weight of the gore and flesh that have jumped from her attacker's face to hers.
The thing still grips her shoulders like a vice and continues to pull her towards it. She grunts and pushes and suddenly, the vampire's body unexpectedly yields under her struggle and falls easily backwards. Most of it falls backwards, that is, but the arms have been severed from the torso and hang at Integra's sides as its fingers continue to cling to her shoulders. She digs her nails under the persistent fingers, pries them loose and throws them on the ground. The emancipated fingers twitch like spasmodic spiders on the forest floor, and Integra feels a long strip of the vampire's flesh slide and drop off of her chin.
Without losing a millisecond, the Hellsing knight stomps one foot on her assailant's ribcage, and yanks her weapon free. Then she plunges it back in, surely stabbing through the heart this time.
"Excellent job, sir. Walter praises, surveying the chop suey they've made of the vampire. "Sorry it took me so long to get here."
"Better late than never," Integra responds nonchalantly as she slides the rapier from the beast. She notes the rifle that Walter is holding and says, "Couldn't you have just shot it?"
"Out of ammo," Walter says with a shrug.
A flurry of leaves rustle and wood splinters with a loud crack. Master and servant spin on their heels to see that the three Nazi vampires that were previously smashed under the tree are reanimating, trusty assault rifles in hand.
* * *
Since she is the only one in the group with a musket, Jasper can conclude that she is the source of the magic bullet. Even so, she is not the only threat of the group, and he is eager to get out of their weapons' range.
Jasper leaps from the spot so fast that he almost appears to fly. He does so just in time to avoid a burst of aerosol napalm from the flame thrower. The blast of fire is slower than a bullet, but with its mushrooming effect it has an equal chance of hitting him. The blast of fire lights up the cave almost as if it's being lit by the noon sun.
Quickly finding cover, Jasper ducks behind a stalagmite. The cave is large, but there are only so many places to hide. At best the volcanic outcroppings can provide only temporary cover against the weapons of the FREAK soldiers not forty yards from Jasper's position. Right on schedule, a hail of incendiary bullets rains on Jasper's hiding spot, quickly reducing it to white-hot rubble as the phosphorous bullets unleash their hellish heat.
Jasper suffers only minor wounds from their guns; he has smoldering streaks running across his left side. The wounds are purely superficial and aren't even worth noting. His tactical mind begins to run through options and alternative battle tactics. He knows that the two main threats are the magic bullet marksman and the flamethrower operator, the more dangerous of the two being the marksman.
He can estimate that now the marksman is reloading her musket, and soon she'll be ready to fire. The only disadvantage that her weapon has is its slow reload time, and Jasper plans to exploit that before she does some more serious damage.
Casting his sharp gaze around, Jasper notices a fault line from his end of the irregular shaped cave to the high ceiling. As he raises his fist above his head, he almost regrets the damage he's about to do to this beautiful cave.
The FREAK soldiers are having fun, they've been told that their enemy sparkles in the sunlight, and so they assume that he'll be easy prey. The flamethrower operator busies himself with igniting Alucard's headless carcass, laughing like a child as he does so. Really, they're almost disappointed that Alucard was taken down so easily.
The FREAKs shout to their leader, "Lead us, Obersturmfuhrer Rip Van Winkle; lead us to kill the sparkling heretic." Yes, the Major has told his troops about the Cullens' refusal to partake of human blood and their overall concern for human life. Needless to say, the Nazi soldiers are angered and offended by these claims. To think that such creatures call themselves vampires!
Rip is almost finished loading her gun when she hears a thundering noise in the cave coming from the direction of their sparkling quarry. To her surprise, she sees a fissure opening up in the roof of the cave, spreading from where Jasper struck.
Some of the smarter soldiers jump out of the way, but one of them is not so lucky. Massive boulders start to fall from the ceiling as parts of it fall in. One FREAK is crushed like a bug, splattered into a puddle of gore. Even with advanced regeneration, he won't be getting up from that.
The Nazi vampires all howl with rage at one of their own being slain by such a laughable foe. Their howls are cut short when Jasper grabs a boulder the size of a hummer and charges at them, using the rock as a shield.
Rip Van Winkle barely jumps out of the way before being hit by the impossibly fast-moving rock face. The boulder must weigh at least three or four tons of the metric variety. Rip Van Winkle can barely manage lifting a single metric ton, but this creature is running with at least triple that. It would seem that he's not so laughable after all. She must be extra careful and kill him now.
Jasper grits his teeth as the flamethrower Nazi tries to turn him into Southern barbecue, but the broad face of the volcanic rock shields him. The heat from the flames is enough to instantly melt the skin off of a human or a softer vampire, but Jasper suffers literally no damage. His sparkling Unstet skin is fire resistant. Without either being first dismembered or the use of a chemical accelerant, the hottest fire would take seven years to burn him completely.
Wanting to give the flamethrower Nazi a stern lesson, Jasper hurls the rock forward. He ignores the pain from his healing wounds in his chest and stomach. While his companions jump out of the way as if lifted by anti-gravity belts, the flamethrower operator is weighed down by his heavy weapon and takes the full impact, shattering close to every bone in his body. He is grievously injured, but his weapon hasn't exploded. The operator will heal and will fight the sparkling faker.
"Faker? Rather hypocritical of you, wouldn't you say?" The musical, baritone voice frightens the operator. He can't even let out a scream before a pair white gloved hands grabs him by the throat and drags him into the darkness.
Jasper dodges and weaves the hail of gunfire. The FREAKs are enraged, but they're so mad now that they've forgotten their military discipline and have become nothing more than an angry mob that Jasper will be able to pick off one by one. Trying to get a good look at her enemy, Rip Van Winkle screams for her men to get back in rank, but in their livid fury they don't even hear her.
Jasper is using his empathic power against these FREAKs, turning their own warrior spirit against them. He didn't survive the vampire wars in the south simply because he was the best fighter or the best tactician. It's true that he was a great fighter and a good tactician, one of the finest, but evolution has shown that being the fittest is no guarantee of survival. By mastering his empathic power and using it for something other than calming people down, Jasper had been able to gain an edge over his enemies and win. Batman has his utility belt and Jasper Cullen has his emotional powers.
Rip can't get a good sight on the enemy, and if she can't get a bead on her enemy then she'll risk having the magic bullet miss. The magic bullet never misses, but an un-aimed gun never hits what you want it to.
Suddenly, the Unstet leaps in front of her, causing a mini quake as his heavy weight slams into the floor of the cavern. She would shoot him, except that she's suddenly shot by several of her own men. Their incendiary rounds were designed to punch through the dense bone and muscle of the Unstet species and go right through Rip. She can't help but scream as the white hot bullets burn through her.
Taking advantage of Rip's pain, Jasper slashes at her. Fortunately for Rip, a few of her men retain at least a little of their arms training and shoot the Unstet scum.
Jasper surpasses the growl of pain that builds up in his now half-healed stomach. In order to avoid more potentially devastating hits, he jumps up and clings to the ceiling. Instead of staying on the ground to pick off Jasper, the enraged FREAKs jump after him, hoping for a bit of personal glory in close-quarter combat. Ah yes, the ability to read and manipulate emotions is a potent power, indeed.
Nevertheless, Jasper knows that his power can only buy him so much win. He needs to get out of this cave, and fast. In this enclosed environment, he'll be at a disadvantage against foes that have him constantly in their line of sight. He also needs to dig the incendiary bullets out of his arm. If he doesn't, he might lose his entire arm to the white phosphorous projectiles.
Besides the pain from his arm, there is another feeling that has him worried. He can feel Alucard's emotions again. It's like having an ice cube inside of his brain. The overwhelming, pitiless fury that he has come to associate with Alucard feels familiar, yet different. The madness is now reined in by a cunning and brutal sanity, and this frightens Jasper even more than when the rage ran free.
Rip looks at Jasper, feeling pain from her gunshot wounds and strangely from her hands. The sparkling faker hangs from the ceiling; his hands dig into the stone like it's plastacine. Rip's men fight him like a mob of drunken fools instead of trained soldiers of the Reich.
The filth stops to dig the bullets out of his arm, ripping away most of his bicep and upper forearm in the process. This is Rip's chance to kill him for good. Raising her musket and smiling with her pointed teeth and bright, blue eyes, Rip utters to herself, "My varhead vill punish all vithout distinction." But nothing happens. What is going on? Rip looks down at her gun. Oh, that's what's wrong.
When Jasper had lunged at her, he used his harder-than-steel fingernails to slice the trigger, middle and ring finger off of each Rip's hands. Now she only has a thumb and pinkie on each hand, totally useless for firing a gun.
It is then that Rip can hear a sound. It sounds like somebody is screaming. Or is it singing? It's almost too horrible to be singing, but that's what it is:
Your shindig's kinda boring
Shall I spike the punch with cyanide?
I gotta warn you - You'll need a coroner tonight
If you see me, better flee me
If you hear me, better fear me
I help you from the fryer into the fire! (3)
That musical baritone voice sings. Clouds cover the night sky, blocking the moon's glow through the hole that Jasper and Alucard created. Now the cave is lit only by the burning pools of napalm from the earlier flamethrower blasts.
* * *
A song of a different type – the sieg heil type – hums through Edward's brain in a cave across the island.
"We've got to get this crate back to the beach?" Seras says.
"We've got to get the contents back to the beach," Edward corrects. "And I get the feeling they aren't going to stay neatly packaged for us."
As he says it, a thunderous droning rips through the cave and the walls of the crate shudder and shake. Edward's acute vision makes out every single quarter-sized hole that tears through the wooden box. The holes multiply by the second, melting into each other until the entire crate is disintegrated into dust, revealing another set of Nazi vampires amidst the blazing smoke of their weaponry. Each one is equipped with a good old-fashioned rotating-barrel gattling gun, complete with eight barrels and a massive ammo-pack strapped to its back. They are a formidable lot.
Seras dives back into the tunnel they emerged from, but Edward is undaunted by the attack and marches straight at them. Round after round of bullets rip away at his overpriced Hollister tee and Abercrombie cargo shorts until they're nothing more than shreds clinging to his sculpted physique. The bullets sting, and leave small, pale welts on his ivory flesh, but they ping right off. As he gets closer, the impact of the bullets pushes him slightly back. He pauses to steady himself, but then begins moving towards them again. As he gets closer, the stinging is more intense, but he sets his jaw and marches on. He'd refused any weapons from Leon's cache, said that he was naturally equipped to fight the enemy, but he's seriously rethinking the wisdom of that refusal.
One of the gunmen produces a grenade. But not just any grenade -- it's loaded with blessed bits of silver and shards that are supposedly from the axe of St. Bonafice, patron Saint of Germany. Such a grenade will do nothing to Edward other than to give him a migraine and maybe a few unsightly pockmarks that will linger for an hour or so, but it's just the kind of thing to make a pile of goo out of Seras, the grenade's intended target.
The gunman tosses the blessed weapon, but Edward, seeing his plan, leaps to the side and catches it. It only takes him a millisecond to toss it back at the Nazis and drop to the ground and take cover. The mini bomb goes off and the soldier it landed closest to explodes into a red splatter. The nine remaining gunmen are now strewn about the cave, but any wounds they suffered are already starting to heal.
One soldier has landed right next to Edward, his helmet has been blown off and his weapon knocked across the room. It's the first good look Edward is getting at one of these guys. There is a modestly greenish cast to its complexion; its eyes are red, its teeth sharp, like the pointed edges of a serrated knife, and Edward understands that this, as well as its comrades, is a vampire of sorts, although he can't quite make out its origin. There is something vaguely familiar about the roundness of this one's gruesome, yet somehow babyish features, something oddly sentimental about the carefully arranged pale-blond spikes of his hair.
The vampire-of-sorts knows exactly who Edward Cullen is. Cullen is the son-of-a-bitch that stole his girl.
"Newton?" Edward says, feeling a bit like Leisl when she first saw young Rolf dolled up in his Nazi uniform. "You've got to be kid-"
He's cut off – quite literally – when a titanium axe wielded by one of the super-strong vamps hacks off his right arm. He spins and grasps the weapon's handle with his left hand, ripping it free. He's not exactly sure how to kill one of these things, but he hears its internal shriek: "Not my head, not my head, notmyhead!" so he slices cleanly across it's neck, shuddering at the horrid, wet gurgling that sounds as the creature tries to scream for real while its head thuds to the ground.
He swings the axe backhand and sends another head rolling. He kicks out at yet another alien vampire coming at him, and sends him crashing into the back wall, where it bounces off and falls to the ground. He wants to scoop up his missing arm up from the ground, but that would require setting down the axe, and that's not a good idea right now, because he's got four more guys on him. He starts spinning and whipping the axe around like a quarterstaff at his enemies, but the weapon is getting batted around by the force of the never ending blast of bullets.
Edward is tapping into their thoughts, but "Kill" is pretty much all he's getting, and that hardly requires mind-reading ability. His impatient dismembered arm, meanwhile, is taking matters into its own hand. It has inched itself back to him and has grasped his ankle. It's tugging up and down, trying to get his attention. "Not now," he says through gritted teeth, flicking his foot to shake it off while his attached arm spins and swings like mad. His arm does not enjoy being ignored and tugs with extra force on his ankle, causing Edward to lose his balance, and he falls to the cave floor. On his way down, he sees that there's a soldier at the entrance to the tunnel, firing away at Seras.
He senses the thoughts of something ferocious in the tunnel; Seras is there, too, but she doesn't seem frightened. Still, he worries for Seras as he looks up at the four Nazi vampire soldiers that stand above him. They have lowered their weapons and now lick their chops, ready to start ripping him apart with their teeth.
The vampire at the tunnel entrance is suddenly blasted back as a U-shaped hook slams into his chest. It hurtles him across the cave, and he knocks over the four hovering over Edward like they are bowling pins. The gunman smashes against the back of the cave and the hook slams all the way through him, driving straight through his heart.
Seras steps out of the tunnel with that double-pronged harpoon shooter that Leon had used to strap Rosalie to the tree about four chapters ago. It's Seras, but it's not Seras. Her irises cover almost all the white in her eyes and they are a glowing, electric red. Her lips are pulled back over her gums, revealing her full set of long, pointed teeth and fangs. But she's not snarling – she's smiling, and it's the most chilling smile Edward has ever seen. She is the beast Edward heard in the hallway.
* * *
Alucard could have slaughtered them all in a heartbeat; broken them in half one by one before any of them even realized what was happening. He could have gone and killed them without as much as a whisper. He could have given them a quick death.
Not likely.
He wants a show. He wants a big show. He wants to make these German scum know how big a mistake they've made. He wants to see them scream and cry. They won't die with a bang and a blaze of glory, they'll all die bleeding on the ground, lying in pools of their own filth while they cry and beg for the painless death that they ain't gonna get.
Alucard appears on top of the boulder that crushed the flamethrower operator. He stands at exactly seven feet tall and looks like the kind of vampire you'd see in your nightmares. Gone are his red duster and charcoal riding suit; instead he's wearing a black leather straight jacket and his stark white gloves.
Upon seeing Alucard, Rip becomes undone with a crippling fear and it doesn't have anything to do with Jasper. "Samiel!" she half gasps half shrieks. It's the lord of hell from her favorite opera.
The Major had warned her, he'd warned Rip that one day Samiel would come for her and he would take her to hell and throw her body to the wolves just as he'd done to the opera's main character, Casper.
Alucard can't feel Rip's fear like Jasper does, but he can smell it, and the smell of fear has never been so sweet. Jasper can feel her fear, and fear has never been so paralyzing. It's as if Rip's terror is so great that he's become as frozen as the statue he resembles.
Even as the FREAK soldiers fire upon him, Alucard does not stop grinning. The teeth flash white before they're blown out the back of his skull by incendiary bullets. The red eyes can see into your soul before they explode into jelly and gore. Alucard shakes and jerks like a scarecrow in the wind. In a bizarre way it looks like he's dancing.
Finally, the guns stop blazing and Alucard falls to the ground, unmoving. Jasper watches from behind a fallen piece of rock. He feels not only Rip's terror and the terror of the FREAKs, but he can feel Alucard's emotion. The sick bastard is enjoying this. It's not about following orders or defending himself; he's doing this for the sheer pleasure of it. He's known people that killed for nothing but pleasure, but none of them lusted for the kill like Alucard does now.
Jasper feels the lust for carnage that Alucard feels. He can feel these emotions that have no names, because Jasper has never experienced anything like them before. He'd thought Alucard was scary, now he's about to see what Alucard can do.
Alucard's mangled, smoking corpse lands in a heap before the feet of the Nazis. For a second the Nazis dare to believe that he's dead, but Jasper knows better. He feels amusement, for Alucard this is just the warm up sequence.
Rip doesn't believe that Samiel is dead. The daemon lord of the hunt won't be brought down so easily. It is then that the glamour wears of off the body, revealing the mangled, dead corpse of the flamethrower operator who will no more operate a flamethrower.
Jasper watches this spectacle; it's rather like a movie. He's removed from the action. It's all about Alucard and the freaks now. But unlike a movie, this isn't make believe. It's happening right before his eyes. At any moment the brutality might spill over into his personal space.
Rip breathes heavily, the men have a confidence that she doesn't share. Where is Samiel?
"Hello." The voice of the lord of the hunt is in her ear. Alucard stands right behind Rip. She turns around and screams like she's never screamed before.
The Millennium huntress's scream is cut off by a spray of blood. Alucard stands in fighting stance. In his hand is a bayonet that he'd liberated from Paladin Anderson. Jasper can only look on in horror as Rip Van Winkle falls into two pieces, sliced in half at the waist.
With a bayonet in one hand and a giant meat cleaver in the other, Alucard does what the Hellsing family hires him to do. Alucard is the star of the show, the Nazis are the extras and Jasper is the audience.
Jasper's power is a double edged sword. He can manipulate the emotions of others, but it also means that he'll feel what they feel. So right now, he is divided on the inside. Half of him feels the call of Alucard's madness while the other half feels the anguish and horror of the unfortunate Nazis. It's almost as if his heart is straddling a giant chasm that's growing wider with each passing second.
Inside and out, Alucard is grinning from ear to ear. This is his element; this is what he was born to do. The only thing that matters is destruction, not the abhorrence of heaven, not the orders of his master, or even survival. Survial is secondary. Some were born to die, he was born to kill. His only regret is that he's not fighting against a thousand of these so called vampires. Even thought they don't sparkle, these pricks are worth less than the least of the Cullens. These fools are nothing, they're merely butchers and bakers turned and given weapons. In his heart he hopes for better adversaries very soon, but for now he makes due with what he has.
His technique is flawless, Alucard moves like one of the shadows. Now you see him and now you don't. He glides with the grace of a ballerina and slashes with the geometric perfection of a master swordsman. His meat cleaver becomes a metallic flash in the air; one of the Nazis is sliced from head to crotch and the pieces fall on opposite sides to each other. It's a brutal and elegant kill.
Another flash of light in the air; the stolen bayonet slashes one vampire from shoulder to hip. The screams are lovely. Alucard doesn't want too many of them dead yet. This is merely an exposition of his power and ability. He laughs, because laughing after ferociously dismembering somebody is always scary. It's a way of saying, "Your death is funny."
Rip Van Winkle is in a bad place. She drags herself across the bloody stone of the cave with her mutilated hands, trying to get to her musket. At this point, she's sort of starting to regret joining the Nazi party. The further screams of the troops under her command spurn her to get her ass moving, even though her ass is about ten feet behind her and severed from her body.
Alucard now stands still, bayonet and butcher knife bloody with the vital fluids of his enemies. It's time to get ready for the finale. The surviving Nazis are horribly mutilated; one of them has literally had his face sliced off, another has had the pleasure of being castrated with a blessed blade. All but two of them are dead and at a cry from their second in command they start to unload their grenades at Alucard's feet sans the pins and fire their rocket launchers.
These poor bastards have no idea just how futile their actions are, but Alucard decides to let them cling to their illusions for a few seconds longer. The incendiary and fragmentation grenades blow him apart and burn him to a crisp in the same stroke. The rockets double the power of the explosions. His smoldering ruins produce a thick black smoke.
Rip turns around, one incomplete hand wrapped around the handle of her musket. She screams, "Nein! Er ist nacht toten!" He is not dead.
Right on schedule, the Death-by-Alucard express pulls into the station. The black smoke chokes the cave while the napalm fires burn low; their fuel nearly spent. Hundreds of red eyes open in the smoke while a form solidifies from the choking fumes. Alucard appears once more, whole and still in charge despite everything that his foes have tried to do.
Like a hell-born maestro, Alucard raises his hands to conduct the grim reaper's orchestra. His eyes gleam and his smile is wide. Oh, if the Grim Reaper would smile and if he had a gleam in his eye, he would look just like Alucard.
To the horror and shock of all the participants of his fight, hundreds of arms start to grow out of Alucard's back, like a horde of multi jointed tentacles ending in white gloved hands.
The second in command can only gaze in horror at this impossible sight before him. His lower jaw is torn off, but he tries to say, "What the fuck are you?" And like the wrath of God, hundreds of grasping and clawing arms lunge at the Nazis. They stand no chance, they shoot but it doesn't even delay the inevitable. They're all shredded like meat in a grinder. The once proud soldiers of the Waffen SS are completely, totally and utterly fucked up. All except for one.
Rip Van Winkle cries. She sobs like a baby. Her time is up, there's no escape and no way to fight back. Death is coming and it will provide no relief or salvation. Her tears break Jasper's already divided heart. God, how did she get involved in this mess? What had she done in life that took her to this place? Jasper is no stranger to the killing of the innocent. Three quarters of all the vampires he's killed were poor victims that were forcibly recruited into bloody, pointless wars and forced to abandon everything they held dear. But this girl, it's like she's the poster child for all the people that got screwed over by the bosses in power. Rip is only a foot soldier, one of the pawns.
And Alucard is the physical personification of karma. It doesn't matter what your intentions were or what you thought you were going to do, you're going to pay for your crimes.
Rip catches Alucard's eye. She cringes and starts to weep again. Jasper weeps in time with her, even though he's incapable of shedding tears.
Alucard's voice is rich with sneering, biting sarcasm. "What's the matter? Are you out of those magic bullets?"
Seconds pass. Rip chokes out one last sob and then pulls off her glasses. She wipes her eyes, the terror and despair is gone. There is only a fiery determination left.
Alucard sneers once more, "Go ahead, shoot at me, bitch."
Rip then takes hold of her gun and pulls the firing mechanism close to her mouth. She yells one last time in German, "My warhead will punish all without distinction!" Then with her tongue, she pulls the trigger.
BLAM!
The magic bullet zips at immeasurable speed out of the barrel and makes a bee line for Alucard without any deviation of its path. Alucard patronizingly smiles as the bullet blasts through his chest.
In his crevasse, Jasper involuntarily mimics Alucard's smile almost perfectly.
The magic bullet ricochets off the wall and ceiling before ripping through Alucard's heart. The Hellsing trump card grunts, but shows no concern for the pain he feels. Alucard is a masochist as well as a sadist. He loves pain.
The bullet desperately zigzags through the air and starts to tear in and out of Alucard's body like a needle through fabric. Through desperate fury, Rip tries to formulate a plan. In the original entrance of the volcanic cavern there is a bridge which goes over a fast flowing river. If she could just push him twenty feet more then he'd fall into the river past the cave entrance. She screams, "FALL! DIE!"
Jasper imitates her cries, but very softly, "fall, die." He's totally a slave to the emotions of Rip and Alucard. They're the performers and he's the voyeur.
The magic bullet shreds Alucard the same way that he shredded the troops. But the troops didn't smile as they got pulverized.
In Jasper's heart, Rip's dominating emotions are briefly overtaken by those of Alucard. He can taste Alucard's satisfaction. It makes him wish that he could get another crack at Rip, but something keeps him anchored to the spot.
Yes, that's it! Alucard is almost over the edge! Just a little further, just a little more and then . . .
Alucard decides that it's time to stop fucking around; this is starting to get stale.
There is a deafening chomping noise, which stuns both Rip and Jasper. Before them, Alucard stands with half his face ripped off. The magic bullet is clenched between his jaws. "Gotcha" he rasps. And with no further ado, he chews up the magic bullet like candy.
This is it; there is no more hope for Rip. Her sheer hopelessness crushes Jasper like a massive weight while Alucard's pitiless thirst for carnage threatens to puff him up like a toad. Between the two of them he feels like he's going to blow up like an over-inflated balloon.
Rip tries to reload the gun. She panics and spills the musket balls all over the floor. Frenzied with fear, she tries to grab a stray musket ball but it slips from her pinkie and thumb. Squealing with horror, she tries to grab another when Alucard's booted foot slams down on her hand. As she cries out, so does Jasper.
Alucard is content; he's like the junkie that found the perfect high. Now all that's left to do is to shoot up another hit. He grabs the bisected FREAK by her shirt collar and lifts up her to his eye level. Pathetic. Is this all that Millennium sees fit to send against him? He's insulted.
Rip thrashes her mutilated arms, trying to break free. She doesn't want to look at Alucard's face, because if she does she'll break down completely to the level of a baby.
Alucard merely clucks his tongue. "You're so clumsy. Look, Jasper, she's all thumbs today." If the situation wasn't so dire, it would have sounded corny. A moment later, Alucard lunges with his shark-like teeth and bites off Rip's thumbs.
Her scream makes Jasper cover his ears, but with his acute Unstet hearing he can hear every whimper, every desperate murmur and each dying plea.
Laughter rings throughout the damaged cavern. The laughter is just as fractured as the various shattered stones along the cave floor. "And now, she has no thumbs! AH-HAHAHAHAHA!" He laughs as if he truly finds humor in this.
By now, Jasper's heart is split nearly in half by the contrasting emotions in the cave. He just wants to get out of here. He wants to go home and go shopping with Alice, listen to Edward's music and put up with Rose's vanity.
Once more, he hears that mad, lilting voice reach for his attention, "Come here Jasper, I know you're there! I can read your thoughts, I can smell you."
Alucard sniffs and then runs his long tongue around his lips; they got stained with blood when he chewed up his prey's thumbs and spat them out. The blood is stale, but nutritious, as all vampire blood usually is. "Get down here, boy. Have some fun with your good buddy, Alucard! Put that limp prick of your to good use and abuse!" This final line elicits more chuckles from Alucard's gut.
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Footnotes:
(1) Lyrics to the Anthem of Nazi Germany
(2) Ibid
(3) Lyrics to Mr. Killjoy; written and performed by Lordi
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Author's note:
Voting next chapter, promise!
Thank you to Master of the Boot for his tremendous patience and expert guidance throughout the production of this chapter, and most of all for the dark brilliance he lends to this story.