THE SECRET RED MESSAGE
The damage the Hellsing headquarters sustained in such a small amount of time was astonishing. Nearly everyone was caught off guard by this unseen attack and most of the soldiers had either been eaten by the ghoul army or saved last minute by Seras. She was taking the injured to her room and it was slowly being filled up by them. Anna was trying her best to treat them, but the threat was still active.
There was no warning or anything, and the only information they got was who was leading the ghoul army. By report, it's said to be a young foul mouth vampire who has been taunting the organization over the loudspeaker and boldly proclaiming that their end was now.
Anna could feel her stomach fluttering with unease as the air grew stale with the smell of fresh blood and rotten flesh. She tried her best to hold back her nausea and focus solely on treating the exhausted and wounded soldier that Seras was bringing in one after another. Alucard watched silently as she paced back and forth across the room, treating multiple soldiers at once with the same kind of diligence you would see from a human nurse or something to that degree. He snickered under his breath and actually appeared pleased for some reason.
Anna stopped her pacing and looked over her shoulder at him. "Certainly, this isn't a situation to laugh at, Alucard," she said firmly.
"It's not that," he replied with a toothy grin. "Seeing you pace around the room so hastily and tending to the wounded. It just happened to remind me of when we first met."
"Reminiscing the old days, are we?"
"I suppose." Alucard sunk down low in his chair just as Seras entered the room once more, carrying a heavily wounded Fargason on her back. "So…I guess there's still one human left alive," he muttered.
"There's no time for that. Seras, bring him to me," Anna said while rushing past them with her arms open to take him. Seras handed him over and Anna carefully sat him down on the bed to look him over. She could certainly see that he was in bad shape but Seras must've gotten to him in time before anything serious could happen.
Seras looked over to Alucard and noticed that he wasn't doing anything. He was just sitting down at a table with his legs propped up and hands in his pockets. "What are you even doing? This is an emergency," she exclaimed.
"He's waiting patiently," Anna said while wiping the blood away from Fargason's face.
"For the enemy? They're all on the first floor."
Anna shook her head. "Not those guys," she said grimly and looked towards the wall behind her. It was then that the cobblestone began to drip with masses of liquid shadow. It leaked out from the crevasses in the walls and fell below Anna's feet, causing her small shadow to grow in size. "Ah. I understand now," she said with an air of clarity.
Seras appeared a little stunned at first. "Was that...your shadow?" She took a step towards her but stopped and shuddered when she heard the audible sound of dogs growling from within Anna's shadow. "What...? Dogs?"
Anna stomped on her shadow and hushed the aggressive growls. "Stop that. That's rude." She waited for a second for the growls to cease before explaining things. "My shadow store hellhounds inside. I sent them out a couple of minutes ago to sniff out the enemy and get an idea of the situation, and it appears they have finally returned. From what I've gathered...they've got one vampire leading the front with their ghoul army, and another vampire working solo, which is the one Alucard's waiting for."
"Is that so," Walter spoke while walking inside, gently closing the door behind him. "Anna, would you tell me the situation?"
"The first floor is completely overrun and the second is almost lost," she said.
"And Sir Integra?" Seras asked.
"She's upstairs." Alucard pointed his hand up to the ceiling. "Third floor."
"I was just heading up there myself," Walter said and turned towards Seras. "Would you care to accompany me?"
Alucard perked up to the sound of that and grinned. "The Angel of Death. It's been too long." He took his legs off the desk and suddenly tugged on the back of Anna's dress. "It's best for you to go with them, Anna." He said, much to her shock.
"Eh? you sure?"
"You said you would take responsibility for the police girl, right? Don't trouble yourself about what I'm going to do. Go on ahead and join them."
Anna furrowed her brows and felt a tinge of unease once again. "You say that…but why am I suddenly filled with anxiety about leaving you alone? " she questioned him and crossed her arms firmly over her chest.
Alucard didn't answer her and just smiled wickedly in response.
Jan's gold eyes pierced the dark hallway first, following the sounds of heavy boots and grunts from the ghoul army trailing behind him. They were dressed in riot gear and carrying shields and automatics in their hands. After wiping out everyone on the first and second floor, they moved up to the third one where Integra and the high-table members were trapped.
Jan stopped after a couple of feet and looked down the unusually dark corridor that seemed to favor one particular area. There was someone standing out in front of them, dressed in white but shrouded in living shadows that appear to have a mind of its own. The darkness climbed up the walls and took the shape of growling dogs.
"Evening," she greeted kindly but with a smoldering and dark tone in her voice.
"Huh?" Jan blinked and his army stopped a couple of feet away from her. He squinted his eyes to try and look past the darkness surrounding Anna and just stared at her, looking up and down but keeping his eyes extra-long on her chest too. He could tell who she was though by the report he was given. From the long blonde hair to the blood-red eyes. "Oh, damn. You gotta be Anna, right? Alucard sure as fuck hit the jackpot on you, but I'd prefer if your tits were a bit..." The tip of his burning cigar was cut clean off...but so did one of his ghouls standing behind him, falling to the floor in a pile of messy gray slop, "...bigger?"
Anna blinked and looked up to see wires fluttering around in the air, thin enough to remind her of spiderwebs. "Walter, he was talking." She looked over her shoulder just as Walter stepped out from behind her.
"No, he was just wasting air. I was planning on cutting off his tongue so he wouldn't finish that grotesque sentence, but...I missed." Walter took in a deep breath and shrugged halfheartedly. "I suppose I've gotten a little rusty."
Jan was quick to snap out of it when he realized Anna wasn't alone. "Who the fuck are you, old man? I thought I had Anna all to myself."
Walter scoffed and walked beside Anna. "Walter C. Doneaz. A member of the Hellsing Organization. Retired." He reached up and pulled tightly on his black gloves that had thin steel wires dancing on the edge of his fingertips. "Shall we?"
Jan's face turned up into an annoyed sneer. He snapped his fingers and ordered the ghouls out in front of him. They open fired and the silence of the hallway was instantly drowned out by the loud echoes. Millions of bullets hazed the air and headed right towards Anna and Walter. Not a single one made its mark though when Anna lifted her hand and forced up a wall of dense shadow that the bullets struck but didn't penetrate. The wall fell and a mass storm of wires pushed out towards the army, latching onto the ghouls. Walter pulled back his hands and the threads cut clean through their necks.
Jan was frozen stiff and remained in a state of silent denial over half his army being destroyed in a single blow. He was doing so well up to this point that he practically fooled himself into thinking that it was going to remain easy. The situation as of now…was enough to make him laugh.
"Ah, yeah. Yeah. Fuck yes! This is exactly how I wanted it to go down. I was getting so bored with these easy kills." He snapped his finger again and the ghouls took a defensive stance. They held their shields up in front and began to march down the hall towards them.
"Well...this is a little annoying." Anna made a quick motion with her arm and glanced over her shoulder to where Seras had positioned herself. She was down the long hallway and was laying on the floor, staring down the barrel of her Harkonnen cannon. "Seras, now."
Seras swallowed hard. "R-Right."
Her fingers twitched as she squeezed the trigger, firing off a single round. Anna gracefully moved her head to the side as the large bullet flew past her and struck down a long line in the ghoul formation. The bullet didn't even slow down and went clean through the riot shields. Seras could hardly believe it and was at a loss for words. She didn't think that it would have this much power.
Anna made another motion with her arm while using her free hand to grab Walter by his shoulder. "Next round. Fire down the center of the enemy battalion with a bursting shell. Do it now!" she ordered while moving herself and Walter out of the line of fire.
Seras popped open the barrel of the cannon and a smoking shell came flying out. She quickly loaded in a new round and fired down the middle of their formation, causing an eruption of flames and smoke. It instantly destroyed their ranks and body parts and weapons went flying out of the cloud, but so did Jan. He charged out of the dense screen of smoke as it filled up the entirety of the hallway, knowing that it would be hard for anyone to see him, especially during all this chaos. He ran, full sprint towards the meeting room where he knew Integra was at.
"It's time to die, little Hellsing bitch!" he shouted while calling to himself like a witch.
He got to the door and was just about to put his hand on the knob when a large shadow with glowing red eyes appeared at his back, as quiet as a grave but as cold and sinister as the devil. Jan broke out into a cold sweat and quickly turned around, yelling in pain when Anna's suddenly plunged her hand straight into his chest. She wrapped her fingers tightly around his heart and shoved him against the wall, not killing him just yet
"Sir Integra. It's safe to come out now." Anna called out. She wasn't going to kill him just yet. The first thing they needed from him was answers. Like why he was here and who could have possibly sent him.
The door from the conference room creaked open and Integra walked out. She appeared calm at first, but her eyes reflected a dark storm of rage. She was angry that this happened. So many of her men were dead because of Jan and his ghoul army, and for what? Why the full-on assault?
"Cutting it a little close, are we?" Integra said and stepped beside Anna's tall frame. "But good work." She peeked her head up when she heard Jan snickering to himself. Why on earth would he be laughing like that when Anna was literally holding his life in her hand? "Stop laughing. Give me the name of your master now. I won't allow you to die until you do."
Integra's cold demeanor didn't at all worry Jan as he continued to mock them with his ear-rattling laugh. "You all are nothing but a bunch of fucking idiots. You came here knowing this was gonna happen. A fucking suicide mission...just to deliver a stupid-ass message!"
Integra noticeably flinched at what he said. She would've ordered Anna to kill him on the spot out of rage if she didn't want answers more. "What are you talking about? You ate my men and destroyed my home...all to deliver a message?" she said through clenched teeth, her anger just on the boiling point.
Jan reached up and grabbed ahold of the arm that Anna had pinned into his chest. He looked up at her with one last wicked grin before spontaneously igniting into blue and purple flames. Anna gasped sharply and yanked her hand free from his chest and took a step back with Integra.
"Anna!" Integra shouted.
"It wasn't me!" She shielded herself with her hand and could feel the heat pressing against her skin, a sensation so familiar…that it was painfully bitter. "Fire…?"
Jan's deranged laugh echoed off the walls as everyone gathered around him. "Whoops, looks like my free trial of life has ended, so I'll leave you shit stains with this!" He raised his middle finger to the high-table members before snapping his eyes strictly to Anna. He was barely able to get his words out in time as the flames grew and consumed his very being. "He...llo...Ver...mili...on."
No one said a word for over a minute as the reality slowly set itself back into place. The high-table members took a sigh of relief, all except Integra. She was still upset about what happened and wasn't pleased with the 'message' she was given. In her head, it made no sense. All this...for a single dying word?
Seras moved in close and stared at the spot where Jan once stood, now in its place was a messy pile of gray ash. "I don't get it..."
"It's not really all that specific." Walter placed his hand on his chin and thought about it for a little before looking over to Anna. "Do you have an ide-" He stopped when he saw how pale she had become. Fear and horror had attached themselves to her pretty face and gave her a rather unusual human expression that he had never seen from her before. "Anna?"
The moment those words left Jan's mouth was when Anna could feel her quiet heart began to beat again. Her stomach turned over into a thousand uncomfortable knobs as she stepped away from everyone, falling to the back of the growing crowd. She pressed her back to the wall and slid down. "Vermilion?"