A/N: That extra Seras POV chapter after chapter 8 is probably gonna come after Book 1 is finished, which is in ~2 chapters from now. I thought I could finish it faster but gahddang writing angst is harder than I thought and my brain just makes dial-up noises these days
Not willing to risk any more strife, Seras led Ales and Mika to the rear garden, where she cornered the latter between the hedges. "You have five seconds to explain to me just what you lot are really all about."
Mika cowered behind an apologetic grin. "Seras, relax. It's really not a big deal."
"Not a big deal! He messes around with people's thoughts and you think it's not a big deal?" She pointed to Ales, who sat sedate on a bench, admiring the fountain statue like none of this had anything to do with him.
"Alucard is grossly exaggerating," Mika said. "You can't believe everything-"
"I almost took a bullet back there, for a bloke I've only met once!"
"And we all think you did a great job!"
"That…!" Her hand itched to smack him across his stupid, handsome face. "That is not the point!"
"It's alright, Mika," Ales spoke up at last, as though he only now realized they'd been talking about him. "My apologies, Seras. He means well, but he can be overzealous. Go ahead, ask your questions."
Seras turned her attention to the troublemaker himself. "Did you use me as a shield back there?"
"Not exactly."
"That's not a 'no'."
The barest hint of upset disturbed his composure. "It's not always fully in my control. If I did influence you, I didn't mean to."
"What does that even mean?" She jutted her chin at Mika. "What about you, sweet-talker? You poke around in there, too?"
"Me!" Mika slapped a hand to his chest. "Of course not. It doesn't work like that."
If she had to listen to one more pointless, idiotic, or uselessly vague comment come out of anyone's mouth, she was going to explode and take these two twits out with her. "Then how does it bloody well work!"
The men fell silent, exchanging indecipherable glances. Mika's eyes bulged in protest at something shared over their bond. Undeterred by whatever was said, Ales pushed himself up off the bench and gestured down a winding walkway. "Let's walk, yes?"
Being alone with a vampire of unknown ability wasn't the smartest idea, but in the absence of a better plan, Seras followed him.
Rough winter winds had knocked the shriveled corpses of last year's English roses all over the cobblestones, though a few clung to their bushes like bits of dried flesh on an old skeleton. Black-browed clouds jealously guarded the moon and stars from their eyes. A dreary night on all counts, but fitting — beauty would be wasted on such a grim occasion.
As they walked down the path, Ales clasped his wrists behind his back in a pensive fashion. "How much did your Master teach you about the Fae faiths?"
"I think we've established very well by now that he doesn't tell me anything," Seras said flatly. "I've had quite a night, so let's skip to the point, yeah?"
If he found her snippy attitude offensive, he didn't show it. "In the vampire tradition, there are five venerated deities. Incarnates, as we call them, are the living people who act as their spiritual vessels — like a prophet, of sorts."
"Oh yeah. Vampire Jesus."
His playful smirk suggested he and Mika had already shared a laugh or three over her cheesy epithet. "Kinda. More like the Dalai Lama, times five."
"There's four other vampire gods running around right now?"
"Not gods, and no, not quite. Each has their own era, so right now, there's only me and the next one."
Most conversations with or about Ales always seemed to circle back to his weird cult. For his sake, Seras hoped he was not taking this inopportune time to brag, lest they both find out how thin the thread holding her sanity together was. "Cool, I guess. What's all that got to do with mind control?"
He snapped a dessicated rose from a bush they passed, plucking the crisp brown petals off one by one. "To make a long story short, each incarnate receives a rare power at some point in their life to aid them in fulfilling their divine purpose. The ancients called mine 'universal insight'. I use it to take people's pain away, so they can heal and move on."
"You brainwash people to make them better?"
Ales looked up from his slow dissection. "It's my mission. For as long as we live, and as strong as we are, the heart and mind of a vampire are fragile things, and often difficult to mend."
"Yeah, I believe that," she muttered. Guess that explained why every single one she met was some flavor of crazy.
"Rest assured, I rarely do more than talk to people these days." He broke the stripped stem into little pieces, tossing them aside one by one. "Prophetic powers can be quite taxing on the body, and mine isn't what it used to be. That being said, it's second nature to me, so accidents happen from time to time."
So he was a vampire shrink. A noble — and likely much-needed — vocation, but a far cry from 'divine'. Besides, shouldn't a messenger of the gods be able to convince one man to go home without cooking up a giant mess like this?
"Pardon my bluntness," she said. "But how am I supposed to know you're not just a crackpot with a savior complex and a special power?"
Ales offered a patient smile one might give to a precocious child asking way too many questions. "The mages of Atlantis confirmed it, but in the end, it's faith. You either believe or you don't."
"Your own daughter calls it a cult, you know. Far from a glowing endorsement."
He shrugged off the invitation to argue his case. "Most people don't understand the full extent of my powers. I promised my wife our children wouldn't be among the ones who do. They know what the public knows — I heal, and that's it."
"What's wrong with telling them?"
"Everything." His smile faded, and without it, he resembled a ghost haunting the manor grounds, his gaze longing for another place, another time. "Kids should trust their parents, not fear them."
To say her heart ached for him was an overstatement — for everything he'd done, Ales deserved to be in the doghouse. Still, the pain in his resignation was real, as though he knew this would happen and had no choice but to play his villainous part.
"Did you do it?" she asked, unsure if she should pry into their family affairs. "Did you alter Lily's memories? On purpose, that is."
"Sorry, do you hear something?" Ales peered back at the manor. "Someone calling us."
The sheer brazenness of his evasion bowled her over. A more obvious dodge didn't exist. "No, I don't hear-"
And then she heard something too, loud and insistent over her bond. "...Master?"
"Has he answered yet?" Alucard paced behind the couch where he set Lily down, pausing every few seconds to check the doorway for signs of Ales.
"No." Mika knelt on the ground next to her, working all the healing spells he knew. Thanks to him, she was no longer convulsing, but psychic life support could only do so much.
"Call him again."
"I can't. You call him."
"I can't. We don't have a bond anymore."
"Then you support her while I call him?" Mika said, growing exasperated. "Wait, no, lemme guess — you don't know any healing spells."
Of course not. Alucard never cared to learn such nonsense. Warriors took lives, they didn't save them.
"Fucking hell," Mika said under his breath. "Call Seras then. She's supposed to be with him."
That he could do — and he did, over and over, until she answered.
"Ah…hello?" Seras's voice tiptoed into his mind.
"Seras, is Ales with you?"
"Yeah…"
"Then bring him here at once. Tell him Lily needs help. Hurry."
Alucard closed the bond before she could prod him any further. Her questions would waste time, and she could not understand the severity of his mistake anyway — nor did he want her to.
Now, all he could do was wait. Minutes, at the most, but each second spent sitting around doing nothing grated his nerves. He was not used to being useless. More than that, he was not used to remorse.
"There has to be a way I can help," Alucard said, ready to jump out of his skin. "Tell me something I can do."
"I don't know." Mika rolled his eyes. "You could pray."
Pray. How quaint. "That won't do her any good."
"It'd get you to shut up and let me focus. Go on, pray for mercy."
"There's no mercy left in this world for someone like me."
"Not for yourself, you jackass," Mika groaned. "For her! Since you couldn't grant her any, perhaps the Five will be more generous."
Hmph. An utterly asinine suggestion. Prayer alone did nothing. Then again, Alucard was doing nothing anyway.
For Lily, he might as well try.
And so, for the first time in centuries, a godless monster prayed. To himself, begrudgingly, but he did, each recitation less half-hearted than the last. For the infinitesimal chance at a kinder fate, he demanded, bargained, and made pledges he couldn't keep to every god, spirit, and ancestor he'd ever believed in, and a few he didn't.
The thrust of doors flying open cut his prayers short. Ales rushed into the lounge, with Seras close behind him. At the sight of his daughter lying comatose, he transformed into a different person, donning the stern calm of a seasoned professional. "Tell me what happened."
"I…she wanted a psychic probe," Alucard said, negotiating between what he absolutely had to reveal and what he didn't. "Something went wrong."
"Such as?"
"I don't know. A lot."
Ales checked her eyes for any reflexive response. The pupils constricted to pinpoints, but followed nothing they saw. "Then tell me that last thing you saw."
"A memory, but it was mixed up."
"Mixed up how? Out of order?"
"The images didn't look right — distorted, holes everywhere. And I was looking at her."
"Like she was looking in a mirror?"
Alucard couldn't hide his culpability any longer. Not if he wanted to save her. "No, like she was looking at me. It was a shared memory. I was also there."
The next question came slower. "And you two have a proper bond, correct?"
"Yes."
A gap followed, the space where a normal person — a normal father — would shred him to pieces for such wanton disregard toward their child's safety. Ales knew better than anyone that Alucard knew not to attempt a probe under those conditions — he had taught him so himself. To go through with one anyway was deliberate negligence.
But in all the time they'd known each other, Ales never spoke a word in anger, frustration, or even annoyance. That, somehow, was always worse. His refusal to retaliate hung heavy around the neck, heavier still if one knew they deserved punishment.
"Okay. I think that's all we need to know," Ales said eventually. "Mika, could you please take them somewhere else to wait? This…this is going to take a while."
Seras hadn't stepped foot in the conference waiting room since the month after Integra died.
As expected, nothing had changed. The velvet settee was in the same spot up against the wall. The clock clicked its mechanical tongue at the same cadence. Even the old magazines remained exactly where they had left them.
In the year and a half since, everything beyond these four walls had changed. The only constant was an uncertain future, fast unfolding.
Mika held the door open for them, but instead of leaving immediately to attend to his duties, he hovered at the threshold, visibly torn between keeping his mouth shut and saying exactly what was on his mind.
"You." Mika jabbed a finger at Alucard. "You are exactly what everyone says about you."
"Hey, there'll be none of that," Seras said, wedging herself between the two. What the hell was he doing? Trying to rile everyone back up again?
Alucard stared back at Mika, acknowledging he'd heard him, but his expression was blank. No indignation, no hatred, no sadistic satisfaction. Nothing.
"What point were you trying to make, anyway?" Mika continued. "That you can get pissed off enough to take it out on an innocent bystander? Congratulations, you're a real badass motherfucker."
"Mika!" Seras shoved herself in his face so he couldn't ignore her. "Stop."
"She's your friend!" Mika said, directing his outrage at her. "It doesn't bother you that she might die?"
"Of course it does, but this isn't helping. Don't you have more important work to get to?"
With a harsh grunt, Mika fired one last hateful look at Alucard and left, slamming the door behind him.
Inside the too-quiet room, Seras sat on the end opposite from her Master, stiff as a board.
"Don't let all that stuff he said get to you. He's just wound up right now," she said, the weighty silence compelling her to fill it with something.
No response. His catatonic gaze stuck to the carpet, seeing nothing and hearing even less.
Seras didn't know what a psychic probe was. She only knew he'd put Lily in the state she was in, and he didn't seem too pleased about it. Her generous side wanted to believe it was an accident. Her pragmatic side knew it could have been intentional. This was, after all, exactly what she feared he'd do.
Alucard leaned forward, his hands covering his face. For nearly an hour, he didn't budge, didn't make a sound — a funerary statue frozen in despair.
What was she supposed to say? Everything would be okay? She didn't know that. He did the best he could? That wasn't really true. The wrong sentiment could set him off, and nobody needed that.
As Seras shuffled through a litany of pointless platitudes and clumsy condolences, the futility of her problem dawned upon her. This ordeal had been hard on all of them, but far more on him than her. In the span of a few short hours, all he had left in this world — her and Lily — had been snatched from him with little explanation, and partially of his own doing.
He didn't need words. He needed to know he hadn't lost everyone.
Before she could think too hard about it, she scooted over to him, reached out, and laid a reassuring hand on his arm. Immediately, it felt so very, very wrong. Any moment now, he would hit her with a bewildered glare, demanding to know what in God's name possessed her to put her grubby paws on him.
A few minutes passed. The recoil never came. He remained hunched over, hidden in his hands. To an onlooker, it might seem like he didn't notice her there at all. Yet, under her hand, his muscles relaxed ever so slightly, surrendering the tiniest bit of burden onto her waiting shoulders.
Outside, the argent light of a rainy sunrise peeked through parted curtains. As long as it had felt, this night would end. From underneath its shadow, they would emerge united, ready to face the trials ahead.
At the top of the twelfth hour, the waiting room door cracked open again, revealing a very worn-out Mika.
"She's stable," he sighed, and they all sighed with him.
"Can we see her?" Seras asked.
"Yes, but tread lightly." Mika aimed a pointed glance at Alucard. "She's pretty out of it."
Truly, Alucard didn't give a damn if Mika resented his presence. He needed to see with his own two eyes that Lily was okay, and he wasn't about to ask anyone for permission. At the go-ahead, he apparated directly through the floors and walls, materializing in the second floor lounge. Mika and Seras slipped in shortly after, moving off to the side to carry on some private conversation.
Lily lay curled up on the same couch where he'd left her. Her face, once sallow and lifeless, had regained its lovely moonglow complexion, tinged pink in all the right places.
Ales stood bent over her, wiping her face gently with a wet cloth. He, too, looked like death warmed over, his arms trembling as he lifted her head up to tuck a pillow underneath. Nevertheless, he made no complaint, the perfect picture of a doting parent.
Now if only the shameless fraud would get the hell out of the way. All Alucard wanted was to be alone with her, to hold her close, but he stood a respectful distance back, wary of showing any weakness in Ales's presence. "Will she be okay?"
"She'll be fine," Ales said. "Some of her memories might be compromised, and she won't remember tonight at all. Keep an eye on her for the next few days, just in case, but I expect she'll make a full recovery."
"Dad?" Her dazed eyes opened wide enough to look at the world, but no further. "What're you doing here…"
"Good evening, sweetheart." He sat down beside her, brushing back stray locks from her face. "I came to talk to your Master about all of us going back home."
"Nooo." Lily propped herself up on wobbly elbows, only to collapse back onto the cushion. Unable to escape, she rolled over onto her stomach, mumbling incoherent objections.
"I know, I know." He shook his head in sympathy, coaxing her back into laying on her side. "I'm so sorry I had to do this. But it's the way it has to be."
There it was. The meaningless non-apology. Nothing about him ever changed.
"No need to fuss, my dear." Alucard elbowed the grand mastermind behind all this suffering out of the spot beside her. "I won't let anyone take you anywhere you don't want to go."
"Master…" Her hand groped around blindly for him. When he took hold of it, the softest smile curved her lips, filling his heart to bursting. After so many hours spent unsure if he'd ever see it again, the very sight nearly made him tear up.
Until that abominable pest next to him piped up again. "She needs to rest-"
"I'll put her to bed," he growled low. "You should go now."
"I will, after I finish telling you what I came here to say." Ales gave her shoulder one last loving squeeze, then nodded toward the hallway to suggest they continue this conversation somewhere more private.
Fine. If it would get him to leave, he'd let him talk his empty talk and then they could all go to sleep already.
Once they'd walked far enough away from the others, Ales spoke again in hushed tones. "My offer to sponsor you is still on the table, but if that doesn't work for you, Lily can be your sponsor. However, you must lose your wager with her."
So much of what he said set off alarm bells in Alucard's head. How did Ales learn about their wager? It wasn't documented in the bond records. And why did Alucard have to lose? Concern for Lily's freedom? Safety? A reasonable fear, given the night's events, but Ales wasn't above using anyone, even his own children, as playing pieces in his sick games, and Alucard didn't know what Ales had altered in Lily's memory. This could be a trap.
"Why does it matter to you?" Alucard said.
"I owe you this much."
"Glad you've woken up to that fact, two hundred years too late. But your innocent puppy act doesn't fool me. Tell me the real reason."
"That is the real reason, but…" Ales cast a reluctant glance back at Seras and Mika. "I also need your help."
"My help?" Alucard laughed. "Why would I help you with anything ever again?"
"The matter's confidential," he said slowly, struggling to fabricate a lie fast enough to evade suspicion. "I can tell you the future depends on it. Not just mine or yours, but of supernaturals everywhere. It could very well be the end of our species as we know it."
"Dramatic, but meaningless. Did the Council require me to help you, or did you just toss that bit in there to sweeten the deal?"
"Well, no, but-"
"Then my answer is no."
Ales raked a hand through his hair, tearing out several strands. "Okay, okay. That's fine. You don't have to help. All you have to do is accept Lily as your sponsor and lose the wager."
"Hmm. I need to sleep on it." It would take more than a few minutes to scrutinize all the ways Ales could turn the tables against him.
"I'm afraid this is a limited time offer."
"How limited?"
"A week. Maybe two."
Unbelievable. No doubt he had waited until the last minute to crank up the pressure, forcing a snap judgment. To counter, Alucard feigned indifference. "That's a year of training she'll lose. She's going to be livid if I deprive her of a fair fight."
Ales shifted his stance, leaning in to reveal his devious cards. "She doesn't have to know she was ever deprived of anything at all."
An awfully familiar refrain. More familiar was the accompanying bout of dread, like ice water in his veins. "What exactly are you insinuating?"
"Her memories are the only way she knows how much time has passed, and right now they're riddled with more holes than a mandrake farm. You wouldn't be remiss to fill them in, ah…selectively. Understand?"
Unfortunately, all too well. That he would even dare to suggest such a thing made Alucard's fingers twitch with the urge to bash his face in. "I might be a monster, but I will never sink as low as you."
He tilted his head in a condescending plea to be reasonable. "Another year wouldn't make it a fair fight. You know that as well as I do."
"Maybe, but she deserves the truth."
"I think she deserves far better than something as overrated as the truth," he said, with all the confidence of a man insane enough to think such a sick belief was common sense. "How long do you think you can be the one to give her that, living in permanent exile?"
Ales never satisfied himself with simply crossing the line. No, he had to sprint right past it.
Kill him. He should kill him. Right here, right now.
But he couldn't.
Because despite coming off like a dopey, devil-may-care burnout, Ales was a genius. An evil genius, but a genius all the same. Nothing about the situations he concocted was ever accidental. Indeed, he had orchestrated this entire fiasco so that by the time Alucard pieced together what his angle was, he would have enough reason not to pump thirty rounds of blessed silver into the bastard's head.
That reason was Lily. She would never forgive him for murdering her father, and now, Alucard knew he could not bear to lose her.
Voilà. Ales was bulletproof.
The time where rage and violence would help had long since passed. The checkmate had been played. In the absence of an outlet, all the hate sitting in Alucard's chest condensed into a dense, lightless void, and from this void, a supremely wicked idea slithered out.
Somebody needed to beat Ales at his own game.
Alucard straightened up, masking his true feelings under bland consideration. "I see your point. I will think it over. In the meantime, however, you need to leave. Police Girl," he called down the hall. "Get over here. Now."
On the double, Seras trotted over to them. When she was within reach, Alucard grabbed her by the arm and flung her at Ales. "Take her with you. She won't be living under my roof any longer."
She went slack-jawed. "Hey, wait-"
One lethal look from him withered the words on her tongue. "Lily might not have known, but you did, didn't you?"
"Y-yeah, but as soon as I found out-"
"You threw your lot in with the man who ruined me. Or did you never even bother to find out who you were working for, or how he knew me? Shoddy work, even for you."
Ales held up a hand. "There's no need for this, we will take her-"
"Mind your own thrall," Alucard said, before returning to her. "Which one was it, hm? A traitor, or a dimwit?"
Dampness gathered at the rims of her eyes. "I…"
He nudged open their bond, shielding it so no one could intercept without him noticing. Outwardly, his sneer remained believably contemptuous. "I've had it with you. You were never grateful for anything I did for you. Truthfully, I don't know why I bothered."
"Come on, Seras. I'm not that good of an actor. Now you do one better."
A hefty dose of confusion mixed with the anguish bleeding across the portal between them. "I…I was never disloyal to you, Master!"
"Yes, I know. You're as true as they come." He turned away without another spoken word. As he walked away, the widest grin split across his face. "That's why you'll listen closely to the following instructions. You and I have some important work to do."
