DISCLAIMER: I don't own Hellsing. If I did, I'd be creating a second series right now…
A/N: Just to clear this up, and so no-one bitches, this is one-shot, anime based, and no explanation will ever be given to answer any of the many questions you may ask. Now, enjoy. (And please review ^_^, be gentle though, its my first published fic)
The little church that stood on the hill above the village looked mournful in the dying moonlight, faint lines of blue and white tracing stonework and window frame, overlaying deep navy shadows. Inside, a single light burned, providing flickering orange contrast to the faint tinted moonbeams that shone through the stained glass onto the pews, the pillars, the crosses, and the silent altar. Standing over the light, a single candle burning in a rack capable of holding half a hundred, is a young woman, hunched in a long raincoat, collar pulled up over hair the colour of red gold, eyes hidden behind two circles of smoked glass.
The door swings open suddenly, and a man stands there. Tall, fierce looking, emerald eyes behind wire-framed spectacles, a priests collar and cross at his neck. He too wore a long coat, purple-trimmed grey over his suit trousers and reverse-buttoned shirt.
"We meet again, daughter of evil" said the man, in a broad Scots accent, a grin playing across his face.
The woman turned. Her face was shadowed, only the impossibly sharp white teeth glinting in the moonlight, fixed in a maniacal grin, one lip curled up to reveal a two -centimetre long fang.
"It's been too long, Priest."
The priest gave a faintly derisive snort, and in an eye blink there was a short sword of curious design clenched in each of his hands. He crossed them in front of his face, as if to ward off evil.
"Ready to taste the wrath of God once more?"
The woman flung out her arms. Sleek black pistols flew from her sleeves.
"Ready as ever. Are you sure your prepared for the terror of the dark, oh man of God?"
"Quite"
"Then let us begin."
The priest uncoiled like a spring, leaping forward on agile limbs, blades out-stretched. The woman jumped, sailing over him as she began to fire. Bullets exploded off flagstones as the priest slid into a roll, exiting it with as arms outstretched as in supplication, blades gone. The woman's foot blurred as it struck a table and catapulted it into the air, scattering leaflets and donation money. Two solid wooden impacts resounded across the church as the blades embedded themselves in it up to the hilt. She stepped up on one of the tables legs as it landed, and flipped it back over again, cart wheeling with one hand on the opposite edge that was suddenly flung up and letting loose a clip from one on her guns at the priest, a bullet striking his arm, seemingly to no effect. The priest laughed, turning the impact into a wild spin that sent silver blades flashing through the air in a line that chased the heels of the woman as she sprinted down a side aisle, firing off the rest of her bullets from the other gun, sending clouds of splinters and dust up from around the priest. Three impacts like the sound of a hammer striking meat indicated three bullets tearing into his torso and abdomen. The priest just laughed. Not a drop of blood fell from his wounds.
"Nowhere near enough, Hellspawn! You must be sorry your master took his guns to the grave!"
With that his arms crossed and a blade intersected with the woman, striking her in the side of the head. She was spun off her feet by the force of the blow, the blade passing clean through her skull and protruding on the other side. She landed on a rack of pews in a great splintering crash. All was still for a few moments. The priest lowered the two blades in his hands, slowly, keeping a relaxed guard, and slowly walked forwards.
A roar of sub-machinegun fire filled the church, and the priest cried out as a hail of hot lead tore into him, smashing his skull and his ribs, tearing skin, pulping flesh. He collapsed back against a pillar, then straightened again, bones snapping back together as he twisted like a rotting tree. Still, there was not a drop of blood.
"Nice move, vampire!"
She stood, throwing away her smoking submachine gun, its barrel burnt out by the HV ammo she had used against the priest. She casually wrenched the blade out of her head, shaking her hair to send out a shower of blood droplets. She let the weapon drop to the floor, and reached into her coat to remove a sawn-off shotgun.
The priest laughed.
"How many guns do you have?"
The woman smiled, baring her fangs.
"How many knives do you have?"
"Quite a few" He conceded. "Less now, though" he said, shaking his shoulders and pulling the flaps of his bullet torn coat to allow a shower of blade shards, shattered by her bullets, to drop to the floor.
"Maybe a bit of close quarters combat then, if you're running low" she said. The shotgun disappeared back into the darkness of her coat. When her hands emerged again they clutched a long rapier and a dagger.
"En garde?" she suggested.
"Aye" said the priest, and uncoiled again, his blades deadly arcs of silver in the air. She spread her arms wide to parry, blade sliding over blade in a shower of sparks as she turned, turning the energy of her parry into a spinning attack with the rapier, which he blocked with a pair of crossed blades. Turning back the other way she delivered the back of her heel into his face, shattering his glasses and sending the buckled frames skittering into the shadows.
"Saints preserve me, not another pair!" the priest muttered, pushing away the woman's blades and slashing her across the thigh with a backhanded sweep.
She grinned and her dagger opened up a gash on his chest, opening up the already scarred over bullet wounds. "How many is that now?"
"I've lost count" the priest admitted "I don't know why I don't wear contacts actually."
"It wouldn't be as fun if you wore contacts." The woman stated.
"Aye." He said, a devilish grin lighting up his face in the darkness. "You've got a point there." He moved like lightning, his blades pushing apart the woman's as his forehead struck her face, buckling her sunglasses. They fell to the ground with a delicate tinkling of shattered glass.
"They didn't teach you that in Rome!" she said, her crimson eyes narrowed in mirth.
"No, that's something I learnt on the streets of my hometown."
"Where was that?" She asked, as she lunged with her rapier, the priest deflecting the blow then turning aside her dagger inches from his face,
"Glasgow?" She asked, as she attempted to sever the priests left arm only to over-reach and allow him to stab her in the stomach. She repaid by giving him a sharp jab in the forehead with the dagger before pushing him back. "Edinburgh?"
"Fife, actually" said the priest. "Glasgow" he shook his head "Haven't your ill-gotten years of immortality given you at least some wisdom?"
"I've never been to Scotland." She said, exchanging a few more blows with the priest in showers of sparks. "Maybe I should go there sometime? Get a taste of the local culture, if you get what I mean." She grinned again, her face shadowed in the darkness.
"As I've always said, a corrupt and inhuman monster" the priest scythed out with his blades, and the woman back-flipped to avoid them, continuing her move back towards a stained glass window. After four flips she leapt, and her knife flew from her hand into the priests heart. The priests hand moved in answer and one of his blades found hers, sending her sailing through the air and through the stained glass window, which exploded in a shower of lead and liquid light as the glass caught the first rays of dawn. He was through after her. Leaping in the air…
Two shots ran out, and the priest suddenly found himself devoid of his hands, and the weapons they were carrying. He cursed silently as he landed, rolling a long the ground a few times before he came to lying sprawled on the grass. The woman stood over him with her shotgun smoking.
"I should carry more shells" she said, returning the weapon to her coat. "I'd finish you off, priest, but dawn is coming. That is the disadvantage of these southerly regions. We shall have more night to fight in up north. But now, I need to hole up for the day. Till we meet again, Judas priest." And with that, she dissolved into a cloud of bats that swirled away up the valley, keeping to the shadows of the hills. He followed her for a while, but soon lost her in the pre-dawn gloom. It was hard without his glasses. Fortunate that he had another pair in the car. As he walked, he reflected on it, the irony of the two of them. Immortals, a man of God and a daughter of evil, one pure, the other corrupted, both more than human and less, and both bound to each other by fate. To hunt each other through the night, fighting whenever they met, neither ever the victor. Sometimes he would leave her fleeing into the dark as a swarm of bats or crawling into the walls as a frenzied boil of insects, her human form taken apart by his blades. Other times, as tonight, it would be he that lay on the floor, dismembered and shattered after the battle. Yet, tonight, she could have ended it, and he knew it. She could have torn him apart, devoured his heart and thus slain him. Other times, he knew, it could have been he that pinned her out to burn in the sun, or threw the vial of holy water to cleanse her undead flesh. Why could they not bring themselves to kill each other, not bring themselves to end the trail of innocents they left across the world, drained of blood by her hunting or caught in his crossfire? Was it, he thought suddenly, a revelation almost, that this gave meaning to their lives? Was it the prospect of a familiar foe to battle, equal in power and experience, a true challenge, that kept their immortal existences bearable? Had they almost transcended natural hate and passed into friendship, perhaps even a twisted shadow of love?
He shook his head. No, there was some other reason, there had to be. Some other reason he had dug up her ancient police files, visited her families graves. Another reason she had broken into the Vatican to steal a set of his robes…
Know thine enemy? Yes, that was surely it. Just the natural obsession one must have with ones nemesis.
Natural, hah! Was there anything truly natural left in this world, trapped between science and magic?
He reached his car, noticing with a smirk the bat droppings that covered it, and opened the boot with a skeletal hand, the flesh slowly creeping along the new bones that had sprouted from his stumps. He removed a trunk, and from it took a new pair of trousers, a fresh coat, clean shirt and a pair of gloves, changing there and then, lest his bullet ridden clothing and half-regenerated body arouse fear in the townspeople. Packing the torn vestments neatly away, he withdrew a small case from the trunk, opened it and propped a new pair of glasses on his nose. Then, he packed up the trunk, closed the boot, hopped into the driving seat and drove slowly down the hill as the first rays of sunshine broke into a valley. He praised God for the beauty of the dawn that brought an end to the darkness of night. Now time for a quick breakfast in town, then he would have to drive to the local cathedral and make a hefty donation to pay for the damage he and the vampire had wrought on the church. No rest for the wicked indeed! She slept now in some comfortable velvet lined coffin, hidden in a distant cave or cellar, whilst he, a man of the cloth, toiled ceaselessly all the day and night, not sleeping sometimes for days.
Just another strange irony. He laughed, the sound breaking the peaceful morning noises that continued over the quiet electric hum of his car. The world was so full of those. Beautiful demons and vile priests.
He shook his head slowly and drove on down the hill.