Had to kinda panic and squish in the editing for this story, because I originally wrote it on AO3 and I started and formatted all the note portions in JULY. And having to copy-paste, copy-paste the whole damn story not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES to keep all the nightmare fonts and editing intact was not something I was willing to go through. When August finished up I had to copy-paste the whole thing over because I wasn't done, when September was finished up I had to copy-paste the whole thing over because I wasn't done, and I bloody well REFUSED to do the same thing now in October. Nah man. You guys are getting this as is, I'm not going over it with a fine-toothed comb if that means another re-creating of the entire fic, tags and all, on AO3.

July 6th, 1920

Another London Murder

Yesterday a solicitor of Holborn, London, was murdered in his office. The solicitor, Enrico Maxwell, practiced alone, in a small two-room office suite on High Holborn.

Police are appealing for any passersby or the occupants of nearby offices to come forward so that they can piece together the details of the brutal killing. Our correspondent was unable to gain access to the property, but a source inside the police department confirmed that the crime scene was chaotic, with signs of a violent struggle and obvious disorder to the chambers.

Maxwell himself was found on the floor, clutching a revolver that he never had the chance to fire. Cabinets and drawers were opened and the contents were strewn across the floor, but there was no clue as to what the assailants were seeking or whether they found it.

Mr. Maxwell leaves a wife, Elsa, and two children, Yumiko, four, and Heinkel, eight. Our sympathies go to his family.

My dear Anderson,

If you have found this letter, then you will have reached the end of the book. You must choose to become the Protector or run for the shadows and be devoured along with the rest. If the pieces of the puzzle have not yet fitted into place, I will present the facts clearly: the shard and dagger contained within this book are two of the pieces from the Sword of Angels. The locket has been forged from the third shard. You must find the fourth shard and reform the sword. With this task complete, the powers of vampires will be weakened, and they shall be overcome.

I fear that the Count may have been in touch. You cannot trust all that he says. I must tell you that once, he and I were engaged to be married. During those happy months he fell victim to a vampire...I need not say more. It pains me to even think it, but you, Anderson, must destroy him.

You have the dagger, and you have a lock of his hair; the odds are not all against you. My predecessors have doubted the bravery of humankind for too long, fighting proudly but alone. The dice are in the cup. Can you make the last throw for humanity?

Godspeed, Alexander.

Sir Hellsing

Hotel Marconi, Venice,
July 7th, 1920

The newspaper I bought yesterday contains chilling news. My friend and solicitor, Maxwell, has been murdered! I feel the weight of his death on my shoulders. It is I who have caused this. In my gloom, I noticed a corner of paper protruding from a panel on the last page of the book. I pulled it and discovered that it was a hidden letter -addressed to me from Sir Hellsing. It confirms all my worst suspicions –I go today to destroy the vampire who has captured my heart, and retrieve from him the fourth shard of the Sword of Angels, if indeed he really does possess it. I cannot risk taking the book, so I will entrust it to the care of my hotelier with forwarding instructions, taking with me only those items that I may need. Am I strong enough to resist his deadly wiles, or will I fall victim like so many others –chosen to be cursed with bloodthirst for all eternity?

Anderson sat in his hotel room in Venice. The opened curtains of his window let the golden, bloody light of the setting sun stream into the room, bathing him in the ruddy glow of flames. On the desk before him was Sir Hellsing's final letter, and the opened book.

He had found the last reason for the manuscript's odd weight and thick covers –a core for a slender silver dagger had been cut into the back cover, a dagger with a heavy golden hilt emblazed with a single deep blue jewel.

So then. He now had a weapon with which to utterly destroy vampires with a single blow.

The priest, however, was not looking at the silver dagger that gleamed like fire in the setting sun. His head was in his hands, his body bowed in utmost suffering as he sat slumped in his chair, and he was struggling with all his soul not to curse Sir Hellsing.

She had not told him.

She had not warned him.

He had trusted her to guard him, even from beyond the grave, and she had failed. She had not been able to protect him from the Count. Not in time, anyways, and not nearly enough. She had failed to warn him, and now Anderson's heart was in the possession of a vampire –his soul, too, if he was not careful in the coming hours. If he went to Vlad unprepared, the Count would eat him alive. Figuratively or otherwise, it mattered not: he would be dead, all the same.

The crumbling fragments of his broken heart couldn't help but trace out how it might have been otherwise, as though singing an endless lament for dreams now buried –how things might have been if Vlad had not fallen afoul of a vampire in his younger days. How it would have been like for Anderson to get to know him. How it would have been like to truly love him.

But now it was all dust and ash and cold, ringing despair.

Part of Anderson wondered how much of Vlad was still…Vlad. How much of the man in the pictures Sir Hellsing had kept all her life had remained in the Fallen One he was now? How much of that mischievous, cat-like aristocrat had been subsumed by the nature of a vampire?

In this, he was not wondering strictly because of his aching emotions. Vlad had been reluctant, perhaps even unwilling, to destroy Sir Hellsing when they had faced off –even to the point where she had snatched a lock of his hair and, implicitly, had him at her mercy. He had warned Anderson time and time again through his letters, and if he had not been honest about what he was, he had also not done much to hide it.

Even with these most recent revelations, even with the finishing of the book and the soul-shattering honesty of Sir Hellsing's last letter, Anderson was still faced with a single question:

What did Vlad want?

He almost certainly knew that Anderson had the book –had Maxwell's attackers been in his pay, or the enemies that Anderson left behind? Why had the Count been so bound and determined to draw Anderson towards him in Italy? Did he want a new plaything? The book? Did he actually want to give Anderson the fourth and final shard to the Sword of Angels, and know the peace of true death?

The letter that had prompted this trip seemed to imply, at least, that Vlad assumed Anderson had known of the shards scattered throughout the book, and had been deeper in Sir Hellsing's confidences than he actually was. The Count may have been offering the fourth shard as a lure –but he had also assumed that said lure would work.

Or was that just another trick?

Although Anderson knew far more than he had ever wanted to know (or be true) about his mysterious correspondent, the Count's true motives seemed as inscrutable as ever. Did Vlad want to kill him and recover the book, or was this a genuine attempt to gift him with the last fragment of the sword? The cards could fall either way: the letters Anderson had obsessively read and reread seemed to imply a dual nature in his mind's eye, a seamless and unholy blending of human and vampire natures at work. Which, exactly, held the ascendency in regard to Anderson and the book?

If Vlad was overcome by his more human nature, then he would want to die. His vampiric side, however, would be holding him back, urging him to deceive and prey upon Anderson as just another meal, or perhaps a brief toy. Struggling between the two as Vlad may be, both sides would nonetheless want Anderson in Italy.

So far, so logical, but what he was to do now –and how Vlad would react to him now that he was, in fact, in Venice– was a question that swirled restlessly in Anderson's mind. Was this a trap? A gift? Or a strange, pitiable mixture of both?

And in either case –what was he going to do about it?

He had spent most of the remaining journey here –what little he could remember of it– with that question revolving around and around in his mind. What was he going to do about Vlad? About…this?

The answer he arrived at was one he came to after long, agonizing hours of thought, of prayer, of searching on his bended knee for answers and appealing to a God who, for the first time, had not soothed the pain and turmoil writhing in Anderson's heart.

He was going to destroy Vlad –try to, anyways. Eventually, amid all those hours of prayer and soul-searching and tears and grief, he had come to that conclusion. He had fallen in love, or been pulled into love, or whatever he had been, but the emotion remained the same: he was in love with Count Dracula. And he knew, somewhere so deep that he wasn't sure if it was his own feelings or the teasing tug of the hypnosis that must have been planted in him somehow, that the crumbling remains of the man that had been wanted to die.

Even now, he was steeling himself, resolved as he was to end Vlad's torment and, if possible, reforge the Sword of Angels. Anderson would do this because he owed it to Sir Hellsing, and the memory of her once-lover. He would do this for Vlad, finally blessing that bitter soul with peace. He would do this for himself, even as some part of his heart withered and died forever with the Count's destruction.

And he would do it for humanity –so that no one else would ever, ever go through what he was feeling right now.

No man should ever be presented with this choice.

That, more than anything, managed to dredge some flickers of his fiery nerve up from the ashen remains of his heart again, brought his head from his hands and straightened his spine. If he could do this, reclaim the last piece of the sword and reforge it, then vampires would be severely weakened, and he could destroy them all. He could prevent this from happening to anyone else ever again.

Bathed in the light of the setting sun, now darkening quickly with the rumbling approach of clouds, Father Anderson began to ready himself.

The dagger, he placed on his belt, alongside a wallet that carried the remaining loose shard –the locket, of course, he kept around his neck, still hidden beneath his shirt. For a moment, he toyed with the idea of keeping it out in the open, perhaps to remind Vlad of his humanity…but no. No, he could not risk the Count finding some way to break the chain and leave him defenseless. With the infatuation that still pulsed sticky-sweet in his mind, Anderson needed every defense against this vampire that he could get.

He wore his clerical garb –anything else seemed like a façade, a lie that he was not who he was. If Anderson was to die this night, then he preferred dying in his vestments as a faithful man. In a cold mockery of his flustering from before, he twitched his cuffs straight, smoothed the collar of his shirt: making sure that nothing would interfere, if it came to close-quarters combat.

He closed the book, now much lighter with the removal of dagger and shard. Carefully, with mixed reverence and revulsion for all the repulsive truths it had brought into his life, Anderson began to wrap it with twine and paper, with a sachet of vampire-repelling herbs tucked into the middle. At the very least, if he did not return, he would make things difficult for his enemies…and perhaps even himself.

His things were already neatly packed. If he didn't return, at least he would not leave a mess.

Book wrapped in twine, himself armed and ready, Anderson paused a moment, taking in his hotel room as though he had never seen its like before.

This…

…this…

This might be the last time he looked upon things as a living man. This might be the last sunset upon which he looked while alive, the last hotel he paid for while a human. It was a macabre thought, somehow. He didn't feel any different, other than the fact that he was keyed-up and nervous like a man at the start of a race. Nothing marked this evening as any different than any other that he had ever known, save that it might be his last.

Taking a deep breath, he picked up the wrapped book and left his room. The concierge had already been notified of his forwarding plans, and he left the parcel at the front desk and stepped out into the threatening gloom without looking back.

The setting sun was already being pushed back, crowded by the thick storm clouds racing in from the west. There would be thunder and lightning tonight, and as he looked up at the sky, the priest's hand wandered to his cross, curling over the smooth metal.

Another sign of Vlad's devious forethought, or a mere coincidence?

It was an ominous coincidence all the same, if so, and it took some effort to push the rumbling skies from his mind as Anderson crossed the short landing and entered one of the boats. It dipped and swayed under his weight, alarming for someone not used to water, but he bore it as best he could and told the owner to shove off.

He gave Vlad's address, and wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not when the man looked at him sidelong.

Their journey through the watery canals of Venice was quiet. With the falling of night and the storm racing up, the chill in the air had plummeted, making it seem like he was being poled through an autumn stream rather than the calm streets of a balmy Italian city. Shouts and merrymaking sounded in the distance, but that made him feel all the more isolated, like he was riding Charon's boat.

Charon's boat.

Anderson scoffed quietly at the mental comparison, but he could not shake the foreboding that had stolen over him again, making him feel as though he was weighed down by an icy blanket. Here he was, being poled silent and swift towards an unknown but deadly enemy, hearing the laughter and the cheers of the living world slowly recede behind him as he moved on into gathering, deepening gloom. In a strange, poetic way, he truly was being rowed down the Styx –if his errand at the end of this journey was unsuccessful.

The boat creaked softly as it moved through the water, swaying in a gentle counterpoint to the owner's movements as they were steadily, almost mechanically rowed along. With his newfound dread and heightening anticipation, fear coiling like a spring in his stomach, Anderson was finding every detail to be fondly reminiscent: if he were met by the most annoying of his acquaintances, he would gasp in relief.

They met no vampires: in fact, they saw no one at all. Whether it was a grim twist of fate or merely chance, their boat met no others before it turned into a wider stretch of water, floating serene and quiet before an absolutely palatial dwelling, situated along in a small square harbor on the waterfront. Another gondola was tied up at this landing, a great deal more comfortable and ornate than the hotel's. There was no one out at the front to greet him, but Anderson could see dim lights burning through the thickly-curtained windows on the ground level.

He swallowed, suddenly feeling chilled and clammy. Was he coming down with a fever, or was this another hypnotic reaction?

Either way, he had to call steel into his spine to leave the boat as it bumped up along the dock, and his voice was gruff when he paid the driver (boater?) and told him not to wait. The man shrugged laconically, pocketed the money, and turned away, poling his boat back the way it had come as Anderson stood, watching it slowly vanish into mist and gloom. Now…he was utterly and truly alone.

Well, perhaps not truly alone.

There was still the dead.

Taking another deep breath that did nothing to dispel the tightness in his chest, Anderson turned back to the building in which Vlad lived. It was quite beautiful, tastefully decorated in the height of medieval Italian style, and he wondered gloomily if it was Vlad's sense of art that had drawn his progenitor to him. Or perhaps it had been a general sense of aesthetics –Vlad was so very handsome, after all…

His feet sounded firmly on the wood and stone as he climbed the steps. His knuckles sounded no less firmly on the carved and painted door as Anderson knocked three times. He did not have to wait long before his knock was answered, and there was no use hoping for a servant –the flash of red at the throat and the dark hair told him before he even fully saw the man that this was Vlad himself.

For the vampire's part, he opened the door with absolute suavity in the face of a possible Protector –even one self-trained. The hinges swung smoothly as it was opened to its fullest extent, and the Count stood calmly in the gap, looking across at the priest. Even knowing what he knew, even feeling as he had felt not one hour previous, Anderson's eyes widened slightly.

The paintings, the photograph –they did not do Vlad justice.

He was more breathtakingly exquisite than any monster had a right to be, even those that worked by seduction and trickery. The grave man of the painted portrait and the laughing hellion of the photograph had been blurred and smudged together to form this creature, with all the grace of the afterlife and the darkness of the grave, poised forever in utter perfection. His suit was immaculate, the body beneath it that which would make any man feel faint with desire, and the lines of his face were sharp and clear. Anderson could see Vlad's eyes at last, and they were a deep, unnatural red –the exact color of blood.

Even prepared for it –attempting to be prepared for it– the Count's appearance shocked the breath from him, and Anderson simply stood and stared for a long moment, neither glaring nor smiling. They had both acquired an almost-mythical mystique, perhaps, in each other's minds, and it was more startling than he had realized to finally see the other man made flesh.

Vlad seemed to feel the same way –there was a long moment when they both were silent, and seemed to be mutually sizing one another up. Anderson didn't know how he felt when Vlad's eyes finished sweeping him up and down, and the vampire's pleasantly neutral expression did not waver –only that he should probably not be feeling that way.

"Please," Vlad said at last, stepping aside and sweeping a graceful arm towards the interior of his palatial home. His voice was exactly like how it had been in the dream, deep and smooth, with an undercurrent of firm control. "Come in, and be welcome."

After a moment of hesitation, Anderson accepted that invitation with a stiff nod, stepping past the motionless vampire. This close, the Count's cologne was stronger, filling the back of his mouth with the taste of pine resin and the sharp-sweet scent of funeral lilies. Anderson closed his eyes, savoring it for a painful moment. They were almost close enough to touch, and yet a vast and agonizing gulf separated the two men.

The door slowly, quietly swung shut behind the priest, swathing them both in gloom. There was an air of finality to that –a moment in which there seemed to be no chance of going back– and Father Anderson opened his eyes again in the aromatic darkness.

"So." he said, striving to keep his voice calm and even. "Dinner?"

VENICE IN PERIL

The local police are investigating a blaze at the fifteenth-century Palazzo d'Dracul in San Polo, Venice, yesterday. At around 7.45 p.m., not long after nightfall, smoke was seen rising from the roof of the palazzo by diners at a nearby restaurant. The fire brigade was alerted, but by the time they were able to negotiate the canals, the fire had taken a firm hold of the building.

It is unclear whether the Count was at home at the time of the blaze; he has not come forward and is reported to have been planning a trip to Padua. His private gondola was found to be missing from its usual berth.

The Count lived a reclusive lifestyle at the palazzo, with only an occasional servant to assist him. It is believed he was entertaining a houseguest from abroad in the days before the incident.

No bodies were found on the scene, although police report that the heat was sufficiently intense to reduce a corpse to ashes. The interior of the palazzo and its many treasures are lost.