A/N: Before anyone gets too excited, this is not suddenly a crossover with Full Metal Alchemist. Sorry. :3
Also, I had a lot of people thinking that the new character is Anderson returned. Eheh…sorry, but no. I know for a lot of people, the accents are similar, but Anderson had a Scottish accent whereas this guy has an Irish accent. I'm sorry for the confusion, although I have to admit, the character has some similarities to Anderson. Heh. What can I say? I liked Anderson too, but I follow the manga cannon where Anderson is well and truly dead. :)
Chapter 27: Alchemist
Something cool and wet settled on her forehead and a line of water dripped down her temple to soak into her hairline. Alexis opened her eyes and squinted at the light that assaulted her dark sensitive pupils. A warm hand rubbed the line of moisture from her temple and she blinked, trying to clear her vision.
"Awake, are ye?"
That voice sounded familiar, but only just. She could say she knew the voice, but she couldn't seem to bring a name or face to mind that matched it.
Frowning, she squinted up at the man hovering over her. He had dark brown hair that almost looked black. Pale eyes that she thought might be green smiled down at her. He had a straight nose that turned up at the tip and high cheekbones. A fine shadow covered his neck and jaw, leading down into a black collar with a white rectangle in the center.
"Who are you?"
The man smiled and the expression consumed his entire face, from the curl of his lips to the crinkle at the corners of his eyes. It was a smile full of good intentions that made Alexis want to smile back, regardless of his answer.
"My name's Fadder Liam Kilduff. Ye passed out after I fetched ye from yer ordeal. Can't say as I blame ye, but ye've been sleeping for nigh on t'ree hours."
Alexis gasped and tried to sit up but her entire body protested at the attempt. The paralyzing effects of the venom hadn't completely cleared out of her system and she groaned as she relaxed back against…was that a pew?
"Where am I?"
"Ye're in t'e sanctuary of t'e church of St. Josephine."
"What happened to Stratonice?"
Father Kilduff frowned.
"I can only assume t'at's t'e devil t'at assaulted ye?"
"Yeah, that's her."
"She hasn't a chance o' settin' foot in t'is buildin'. Ye needn't fret it, none."
Alexis could only hope that the priest knew what he was talking about. Of course, the fact that she had been laying on a pew for almost three hours and Stratonice hadn't scooped her up seemed to support his claims.
"Well, that's a relief, at least. So, you're a priest?"
The man chuckled, giving her a quirky smile that only creased one side of his face.
"Of a sort, ye could say, although t'ey don't like t' let me out in public much. I keep t'e grounds and manage t'e books, y'see."
Alexis lifted an eyebrow. Why did he seem to find her question so funny?
"Are they ashamed of you or something?"
"Aye, ye could say t'at. Got some ideas up here t'ey don't care to have bandied about." He tapped his forehead with a knowing glint in his eyes.
"Are the higher-ups worried you think too much?"
Father Kilduff chuckled.
"Aye, somet'ing loike t'at." He reached out to retrieve the damp cloth from her forehead and pressed the back of his hand to her skin.
"Ye don't seem t' have fever. 'Twas worried, I was, for a bit, there."
"No, I wouldn't have a fever," Alexis said, lifting her hand. To her relief, she succeeded. Reaching up, she touched her throat where Stratonice had bitten her and found a large piece of gauze and medical tape in her way. "It's just going to be a little while before I can move everything again."
Father Kilduff turned to drop the cloth into a wide bowl of water on the pew above her head.
"Ye don't seem particularly surprised by t'e attack ye suffered."
Alexis gave the priest a narrow look. He'd driven Stratonice off, but did he know what he'd driven off? Would he think her mad if she told him the truth? Maybe not. He had to have some knowledge of the supernatural to have understood what he needed to do to help her.
"Well, it's not my first time to be attacked…like that."
The priest chuckled and shook his head.
"Let's drop the pretense, eh? You were bitten by a vampire and you obviously know exactly what it was, yes?"
Alexis blinked. A moment ago, he'd had a thick Irish accent. Now, he spoke with the cultured lilt of an Oxford graduate. Father Kilduff grinned and winked at her.
"Gave ye a start there, eh? I grew up with the accent until my early teens and then I came to live with my uncle in London. It only took two months of taunts and jeers for me to put a concerted effort into adjusting my accent."
"You do it well," Alexis said with a smile. "You switch back and forth so easily. Almost like you're two different people."
The man shrugged.
"It comes in handy. Any time it seems like I've said too much, I lay on the accent and everyone discounts anything I've said. It's amazing how people assume that anyone that isn't just like them must be inferior in some way. It's not even conscious on their part. It's just part of the egocentric assumptions that come of being limited to a single point of view…our own." The priest chuckled as Alexis mulled over his words. He stood and picked up the bowl, carrying it toward a door at the side of the sanctuary. Alexis heard the splash of water pouring into a sink and Father Kilduff reappeared with a towel in hand, drying his fingers. "So, I doubt you're actually interested in discussing the philosophy of human nature. Tell me, how did you come to be attacked by one of the undead and survive it?"
"Oh, that's an interesting story…and a long one." Alexis sighed, doing a mental inventory of what parts of her body worked and what didn't. She thought she might be able to sit up, but decided to give it a couple more minutes.
"Well, I have nothing pressing to do today. Please. Enlighten me."
The priest returned to sit on the chair he had set up next to the front pew where Alexis reclined.
"Oh, where do I begin?" Alexis bit her lip and stared up at the distant, vaulted ceiling. She wracked her mind and came up with a memory of Gran warning her to be careful who knew what she was and what it meant. She sighed. "Actually, father, I think it might be best if I don't enlighten you, for your safety as much as mine. Suffice it to say, I'm not your typical human and over the last few weeks, I've fallen deeper into the world of the undead than I ever thought I could, especially considering that a month ago, I didn't know it even existed."
"That's a shame. Your story sounds like it would be absolutely fascinating…and rather curious considering the vampire presence in England has been nearly non-existent for the last century."
Alexis smiled at him, her mind going back to the journals she had been reading. The Hellsings had used Alucard to hunt the vampires of England. Had he kept that up after the death of the last Hellsing? Entirely possible. She laughed softly.
"I think I might have run into the very reason for that, actually."
"Oh, really?" The priest's voice held far too much interest for Alexis's comfort. Deciding it felt like a good time to try sitting up, she reached for the back of the pew and began pulling herself up. Father Kilduff rose and she expected him to push her back down, but soon found herself sitting up completely. His hands steadied her shoulders and adjusted her knees, which still weren't working completely, until they fell comfortably over the edge of the pew. Alexis blinked at the man with surprise.
"Thank-you, father."
"Please. Call me Liam. I really am a priest in name only according to my superiors. I'm afraid I've made you nervous and uncomfortable. It was not my intent." He smiled and returned to his seat. He'd had his hands all over her for a moment there, but not once had she felt like he'd taken advantage of it. She cocked her head at him.
"Maybe if I knew more about you. A priest that claims his superiors don't consider him a real priest doesn't exactly inspire confidence."
"That's a telling point," he said with a smile. "What do you want to know?"
"How did you drive Stratonice back?"
Father Liam sat back in his chair, a grin on his face.
"That's easy. The power of God drove her back."
"No. That doesn't fly with me. I had a blessed cross on and she plowed right past that. I've seen a vampire a thousand years younger than her grab that same cross and rip it from my neck."
"Are you certain the cross is blessed at all? It sounds like little more than a pretty ornament."
"It's driven lesser vampires off. It glowed like a captive star. It just doesn't work on the big, mean ones."
"And how much confidence did you have that the cross would work on these 'big, mean ones' you speak of?"
Alexis frowned, thinking back. With James, she'd known it would work because Alucard had given it to her for that purpose, but she'd doubted it would work against Alucard because he would have had to handle it in order to leave it for her.
"Well, bugger me!"
Liam chuckled at the expression on her face.
"Faith is more than just a word or even wishful thinking. It is a force that science can never quantify because scientists approach everything from a position of doubt."
"It can't be that easy!"
"Well, it is and it isn't. The power of the faith is absolute, but the ability of the human mind to encompass it is limited. We don't believe easily, and for good reason. The world is full of deceit and to believe a lie is dangerous." Liam smiled and reached out to put a hand on her knee. "Suffice it to say that I have a lot of experience with faith and its power."
"Okay, I give. You have a point. But it still sounds too easy, and doesn't explain everything. How did you know I was in trouble? You got there too fast to be responding to my scream. And what about the fence? It just magically opened so you could pull me through."
"Ah." Liam frowned and tapped a finger against his chin. "You remember that. I don't suppose you would accept that your perception is confused because you had just suffered a traumatic attack?"
Alexis lifted an eyebrow.
"Yeah. Especially when you phrase it like that."
The man chuckled and gave her a goofy grin.
"I thought not. And, perhaps I said it that way because it would be nice to share with someone that might not assume my abilities are gifts from the devil."
Alexis tilted her head to the side, eyebrows raised.
"Why do I suspect this is the reason your superiors try to keep you hidden away?"
"Because you are very smart. You see, I'm an alchemist."
Alexis frowned. The parts of Van Helsing's journal that described the seal used to control Alucard had mentioned alchemy. She had wanted to discount it, except that Alucard had spoken of the seal as a very real, effective thing. Still, the idea of finding anyone that practiced alchemy in this day and age seemed ludicrous.
"Alchemy is a dead science."
Liam chuckled and shook his head.
"Alchemy has always been a valid science. It simply requires an unshakeable belief in energy that vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch cannot quantify alone. Some might call it magic, and they are related, but not the same."
"So, you're telling me that you used alchemy to open the fence?"
"And sense the presence of the supernatural thing attacking you."
"That's really something." Alexis crossed her arms, biting her lip in thought. She tapped a finger on her arm as she chewed on that lip. "So, you have the ability to wield power similar to magic, sense supernatural beings and call on the power of faith to drive back a vampire old enough to have seen the fall of Rome."
"Among other things," Liam said with a smile.
"And what is it that the church has you doing?"
The priest chuckled.
"I manage the funds and grounds for several buildings that belong to the church."
It did seem ridiculous for his abilities to be wasted that way. From the bitter expression on his face, Alexis thought he might feel the same way.
"So, you're a glorified estate manager."
"You could say that." Liam chuckled with a bitterly ironic undertone and shook his head. "As it is, I could be deposed if my superiors find out that I have revealed what I have to you."
"Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me." Alexis smiled at him. "I wonder, though. Just how attached to the church are you? I think I might be interested in offering you a job."
-ssSSss—
A cloud of bats whirled through the deepening twilight, the angry snap of wings and red glow of the myriad eyes giving it a threatening, unnatural presence. The creatures flew with single-minded determination instead of breaking up into a flitting, feeding pattern like any normal bat. A casual observer might mistake them for a low-flying flock of birds migrating to better climes, except that no self-respecting bird would still be out and about in the growing darkness.
The mass of bats turned, angling down toward a white washed steeple crowned by an ornate iron cross. They plummeted toward the building and then scattered as though they had struck an invisible barrier protecting the church and its grounds. Angry cries that only the most sensitive of human ears could register erupted from a thousand small throats.
The horde of bats skimmed the invisible barrier, flinching back from its surface as they tested its bounds. They dived down toward the concrete of the building's parking lot, whirling in a complex dance. Near the ground, they coalesced to form a shadowy pair of boots, built into legs bracketed by the folds of a heavy duster. The shadows picked out the buttons of a double breasted suit and a loose, flowing cravat. Tendrils of hair writhed back from a pale face and lips pulled back in a grin that was more than half snarl.
Piercing red eyes glowed from behind orange tinted lenses and the creature lifted a white-gloved hand to touch the invisible barrier. The red-clad figure took a step back as the barrier pulsed, rejecting his advance with a vehemence generally reserved for animate, aware creatures. With an arrogant sneer, the monster stalked along the edge of the invisible dome, testing its boundaries for any chink, any weakness that would let him through to retrieve that which he had come for.
Father Kilduff looked up, his olive green eyes gazing into the distance, seeming to track something moving beyond the walls of the church. Alexis trailed off in the middle of her explanation of why she needed an estate manager that could hold his own in a supernatural attack.
"What? What is it?"
"We have a visitor…one the wards aren't allowing through, which means it isn't human. Wait here."
The priest rose and hurried around the row of pews, down the central aisle of the church.
"Wards? What are you talking about?" Liam didn't even acknowledge her question as he disappeared through the distant doorway. He hadn't said anything about wards…whatever those were…until now. She could only assume they were what they sounded like…some kind of mystical barrier. Was that what he had used to keep Stratonice at bay? Was it Stratonice out there, now?
Alexis wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, remembering the feel of Stratonice's fangs in her throat. With a sudden wrenching in the vicinity of her sternum, she realized she missed Alucard. It should have been his fangs sinking into her flesh. Guiltily, she realized she hadn't even checked the time to see if he might be awake. She needed to get home. She only hoped Father Kilduff would be willing to escort her. She didn't want to risk Stratonice nabbing her again.
A distant shout reached her ears and her head came up. Was there a problem with whatever was snooping around the priest's wards? She strained her ears to listen and a faint masculine, manic laugh reached her ears.
"Alucard!"
Alexis scrambled to her feet, wincing as her aching hip protested at the violent movement. Pushing the pain away, she used the pews to brace herself as she hobbled down the church aisle, praying that Father Liam's offensive abilities weren't as effective as his defensive ones. Somehow, she didn't see Alucard giving up as easily as Stratonice had.
-ssSSss—
The creature stalked along the edge of the ward, a white gloved hand trailing along the invisible barrier. Father Liam scowled as he felt the wards bend and groan under the force of the thing's power. Assuming it must be a minion of the thing that had attacked his guest, he marched across the churchyard, one hand open as he summoned motes of dust from the air around him. They gathered in the palm of his hand, compacting down into a solid pebble of dirt, roughly the size of a pea.
Pocketing that in his cassock, he reached into an inside pocket of the clerical robe and pulled out a pair of black leather driving gloves. They bore no markings, but to the sensitive eye, they fairly crackled with energy. Slipping his right hand inside the close-fitting leather, he pulled the strap just above the wrist snug and repeated the process with his left hand.
The creature paused, looking the priest up and down with a contemptuous sneer.
"I order you to leave this place. Your kind is not welcome here," Liam said, his green eyes brightening with the intensity of the energies that the gloves helped him harness.
The vampire's arrogant sneer curled into a smirking smile. He reached up to pull the orange glasses from the bridge of his nose and looked the priest up and down, his red irises glowing ever so slightly in the growing darkness.
"You have something of mine that needs to be returned to me and she had best be unharmed…priest."
Liam shook his head, a grim look creasing his features.
"I think she has suffered enough at the hands of your master, devil."
"Master?" Alucard arched an eyebrow and his lips skimmed back to bare fangs in a brazen, mocking grin. Liam scowled at him, dark brows slanting down over the green irises that took on a glow to match the vampire's. He brought his gloved hands together and then drew them apart. A breeze picked up, increasing into a whipping wind as the palms separated. The nearby grass and trees swayed and moved, bending away from the wind that blew out from the space between his palms. A long, narrow rope of water vapor spun out between his hands, occasional flashes of electricity arcing from one palm to the other.
"Liam looked up from the harnessed power of a storm that he held in his hands and glared at the vampire. The green glow of his eyes flickered with the flashes of electricity that lit his face with an eerie blue glow.
"You will be gone, devil spawn. Now!" With that last shouted command, he gestured at the vampire, shoving the power of the storm at him.
The spinning rope of water vapor enveloped the vampire, soaking his hair and duster. Electricity arced from Liam's hands, striking the vampire and flickering through him, lighting the flesh up from the inside.
A shout of surprise escaped Alucard's throat and his body shattered into a hundred bats spinning out form a central point. They whirled and dove, coalescing again to reveal the creature standing five feet from his original position, grinning like a loon.
A laugh bubbled up out of his throat, rising into a manic cackle, complete with wide, crazed eyes and whipping, self animate hair. Looking like a thrill seeker plunging out of a perfectly good airplane, the vampire reached into the folds of his duster, pulling out a long, silver automatic handgun the likes of which no human stood a chance of wielding.
Baring his flat, human teeth at the monster, Liam made a gesture with his left hand, transferring the storm energy into his right hand. Flashes of electricity sparked between his fingers, occasionally arcing out to strike the ground or his shoulder and chest. His body absorbed the strikes with nary a flinch as he reached into his pocket to pull out the pebble of compacted dust he had placed there.
Sighting off of his free arm, the vampire took aim with that massive gun and pulled the trigger.
Liam tossed the dust pebble into the air and the motes scattered, flattening out into a wide, concave surface a molecule thick that deflected the bullet, sending it careening into the sky where it would expend its energy against the pull of gravity and fall harmlessly back to the ground.
Two more shots rang out and were deflected by the dust shield. Liam snarled and lashed out with his right hand, a thin arc of electricity flying out to rip a gash open down Alucard's left side. Blood poured from the wound and the vampire threw his head back with laughter.
"Finally!" he shouted, those glowing red eyes shining with excitement. "A real challenge! Drop this holy shield, priest and let us dance!"
"No!"
The shout came from the direction of the church and both vampire and priest turned to see Alexis hobbling as fast as she could toward them, stumbling as her injured hip gave out under her.
"Don't! Alucard, he saved me from Stratonice! Father Kilduff, he's a friend. He's not here to hurt me! Don't fight!"
She stumbled and went down, crying out as the fall jarred her hip.
Giving the vampire a distrustful look, Liam made a jerking motion with his right hand. Alucard held him at gun point but the priest didn't' seem terribly concerned as he adjusted the dust shield to create a paper thin barrier between him and the vampire that could stop a small bomb if need be.
He strode across the church yard, the folds of his cassock flapping around his legs as he hurried to Alexis's side. Alucard paced him from the other side of the invisible barrier, gritting his teeth as he lifted a hand to the wards and was again repulsed.
"Lower this barrier, priest!"
Liam looked up with narrow eyes.
"Not on your life, monster."
Alexis grimaced as she struggled to push herself up onto her knees and the hip sent a protesting shot of pain through her bones.
"Please, father. Let him in. He's not our enemy." Alexis reached out and grasped the lapel of Liam's cassock as he knelt next to her. He scowled at her and then glanced over his shoulder at the vampire.
"Very well," he said in a grudging voice. He made a gesture and a brief flash of light, like a camera bulb going off signaled the fall of the wards.
Alucard strode over the grass, moving with vampiric speed to Alexis's side. He knelt next to her and reached out to touch her cheek. His gloved fingers trailed down to touch the gauze pad that covered her throat. His lips skimmed back from his teeth in a silent snarl.
"You left the house alone."
"I know. I'm sorry, Alucard. It was the dumbest thing I've ever done, but Father Kilduff helped me. He drove Stratonice off and bandaged me up."
"She bit you." The vampire's red eyes flashed with livid, possessive anger. Alexis closed her eyes and nodded.
A gun shot rang out and Alexis's eyes flew open to see Liam drop next to her, a dark, wet stain spreading over the front of his Cossack. At first, she thought Alucard had shot him, but the vampire was on his feet, facing away from her.
He had his feet planted in a wide stance, his gun trained on the center of a crowd of bodies that had suddenly appeared at the edges of the parking lot. Two women stood at its center, one with a smoking revolver in her hand, the other with a massive hand cannon tucked against her shoulder.
"Yia sou, Lord Tsepish," Stratonice called out with a manic grin. "It's been too long, Vlad. Far, far too long."
With no more warning than that, Seras pulled the trigger, sending a bevy of semi-automatic, exploding shells careening at Alucard.
