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Hellsing belongs to humans whose identities I do not share.

I'm stuck with the Templars. I've been thinking and thinking and thinking, and short of the Flaming Sword from the Garden of Eden, I'm not coming up with many weapons that would hurt Alucard.

Okay, time for me to shut up and entertain you.

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I could feel it. He was out there.

All of us sensed it, and we all reacted differently. Walter withdrew into himself, carefully going through his daily routines. He seemed almost obsessed, as though by acting normal he could change the reality of the world around him. Seras seemed to be daydreaming; she moved from meticulous checking of her equipment to staring into space. Maxwell wrote pages and pages in his latest work, which he hadn't confided to me. The soldiers argued, or wrote home, or cleaned their weapons and polished their boots and set their things in order.

I kept touring the grounds. I would cut around the graveyard, pass the old well that provided some of our washing water, over a ridge to the back of the church, around the back of the building and over a second rise, and end up again where our vehicles were parked.

At sunup, after Seras had slipped away to wherever she hid during the day, I took a map of the region and pinned it to the church's stone wall. I carried a short sword with me. About twenty paces from the shed, I swung around, whipping the blade through the air. I walked back to the map and pulled my sword free. A clean line was cut through the map to the north of the church. I walked the same distance and turned, throwing the sword again. Walter, crossing the yard, paused to watch. I retrieved my blade and started away. I whirled, sending the sword on its course once more. I could see from where I stood that it was in a different place. "Hunh."

"Is that an unusually evil wall?" he asked, when I pulled the blade free again.

I grinned as I walked. "I'm finding out where they are." The sword cleaved the stones behind the map again.

Walter approached when I had the map down and was sheathing my sword. I pointed at the intersection of the first two cuts. "Alucard is sleeping right there." I moved my finger to the next cross. "And this is where we are. I must have detected the Knights Templar."

"What does that mean?" Walter had picked up on my tone.

"I think it means we woke them up." I sighed. "I can find the most powerful sources of active evil in the area. I got Alucard's location with two hits, then the Templar's. I hope they're stronger when they're freed, or he and Integra will clean up too quickly."

"What else?" Walter asked sharply, picking up on my concern.

"I'm half blind," I admitted. "Right on top of one site of evil, with another locus approaching, I can't detect anything else. I'm blind to Seras right now. Even when she's awake I keep losing her." I turned, looking at the flat scrub around us. "I wish we'd had more time to search around. The presence of the Knights Templar may have drawn lesser evils."

Walter frowned. "There's no prey here. And we've blessed the church again and consecrated its grounds."

"Nobody goes in the graveyard," I decided. "We'll place it off-limits now. I'll scatter some host around it."

He seemed to be about to comment, but decided to let me overreact if I wanted. "If you know where Alucard is, why don't we go take him?"

"He's an experienced traveller. He undoubtedly took himself, his coffin, and Integra deep underground." I looked wistfully up at the sun. "Did you think to bring a backhoe? I didn't."

"I'd like to go look." Walter was still staring at the map.

"Fine. I'll go warn Maxwell."

Maxwell reacted to my interruption like a war dog awakened from a sound sleep. Having heard that I was a paranoid idiot who needed constant management, I went back to find Walter. He was already in the car, studying the map.

"You're coming?" he asked, looking up.

"Obviously," I said, climbing in the car.

He started the engine. "I thought I heard Maxwell order you to clean some more brush out of the well."

"He did. I'm working."

Walter chuckled and put the car in gear.

We found the spot on the map, between two roads. There was a smooth hollow of dying grass. That was all.

"He's under there?"

"Deep." We stood over it, unwilling to move quite yet, not wanting to accept after we'd come this far that there was nothing we could do. Walter moved into the brush and found a long, straight stick. He looked at me. "May I have a sword?"

Curious, I unsheathed a blade and passed it over. He used it to cut a short length of wire, tied sword and stick into a cross, and planted it in the center of the dying grass. We both spoke a short prayer over it, of hope for our mission and a prayer for the night's safety. Then we climbed into the car and headed back to the church.

Maxwell was overseeing the opening of the first part of the barriers between the Knights Templar and freedom. He was watching the men tear down the rear wall of the church. Boards splintered as they were pried loose. Light spilled through the old wall to strike a recessed door in the back of the church. "Anderson, what do you make of this?"

I walked forward, looking over the shoulder of one of the soldiers. A dusty broadsword hung point-down on the door. Its crosspiece was unusually wide. The suggestion of a human figure was raised over the metal, its arms along the crosspiece, its toes pointing towards the ground. "Don't move the sword. It acts as the bar on the door of their prison."

"How were they trapped?" Walter asked.

"People died to shut them in there. A priest on the outside, along with one of the virgins they had been hunting." Maxwell answered him. It was one of the few times he'd spoken directly to Walter. "We are doing a very unholy thing in undoing their work."

"We want to destroy the Knights Templar," I argued. Maxwell gave a slight nod, acknowledging the point.

"How did the virgin die?" Walter asked.

"How else would the priests get them all in the trap?" I shrugged.

"They're that powerful?" Walter looked at me suspiciously. "You can't drive them?"

"The priests then couldn't harm them," I said. "Avert them, yes, but only temporarily."

"They were men of lesser faith, unprepared to fight evil," Maxwell interceded. "The capture of the Knights Templar was something of a textbook case for myself and my peers. They only leaned on their faiths when building this trap. The best of them died foolishly long before."

"What are those symbols around the door?" Walter squinted through his monocle as more boards were handed away.

I moved up by the soldiers again to look. "Arabic. I can read modern-day, but old Arabic has many variants. I see the word for 'God' and a common way to say 'danger.'"

"That's clear enough," said Maxwell as the soldiers began to expand the hole in the wall. "We don't want them out all at once, or they'll tear apart our church defenses from the inside."

Something jingled inside the door. A layer of dust jumped off the sword. Maxwell and I jumped. Walter had spools of wire between his hands in an eyeblink.

"I think this many living people should get out of the sanctuary," I suggested. The soldiers were already moving, putting the last of the boards out of the way and retrieving their tools. I looked at Maxwell. "Aren't they inert during the day?"

"They're supposed to be," he agreed. "They've been in there without feeding for centuries."

"That sounded like a horse's bridle," Walter contributed. "You didn't mention how they fed?"

"First they drink the blood, then they eat the body," I said. "Or parts of it."

Walter stopped halfway to the door. "So they're related to vampires."

"Vampires and the Knights are both undead creatures cursed by God. They have to sustain themselves on the essence of the living. Of course they're similar. But the Knights Templar cannot spread their numbers as vampires can." Maxwell turned away, following the men. "Anderson, guard, please."

"Of course." I stood between the pews, watching the door. When he was out of sight, I said, "They can only feed on the living. To them, Seras is about as edible as a rock. Her blood would have no good effect on them."

Walter watched me, weighing my words, trying to judge for himself if I were telling the truth. He closed the door behind him.

I rested in a pew, listening, watching the door, waiting for sundown.