Disclaimer information: All characters belong to their proper copyrighted owners. The descriptions of the vampire society and even how they come by their powers are my own invention. Please use your own discretion in reading, as the content of the story will lead towards 'Yuri" and possibly lemon (I do not know the criteria of these definitions) which accounts for the R rating as there will be, in the upcoming chapters some violence and other adult themes. This timeline takes place after the Incognito incident after the series end. I have not read the Manga and the assumptions regarding Arucard and his 'age' were based upon a now defunct fan site called "Intensity-Integral Shrine". If you have not seen the following website Solid & Etc you should get there as soon as you can. It is some of the most astonishing Hellsing inspired art I have ever seen. Reviews and feedback are welcome.
Chapter 4
Arucard sat patiently in the damp mausoleum. He hated that he had to be here but Camilla's being wounded dictated he had to bear witness to this council.
It had been so long since the house had met that there was a mixed sense of uneasiness and camaraderie. In the centuries, as they passed, the traditions that had dictated so much of their lives began to fade into the background. There were so few of the ancients that even bothered to show themselves anymore that age old feuds and politics had lost their meaning with each successive generation.
He listened as they talked about reviving the war. All that were here were his own 'kin' or loyal to Camilla for their own reasons. Descendants, or descendants of descendants of Alexander, or even further down the line than that. He suspected many of them were here because they wanted to see a gathering of the House of Alexander. This would be the first in many centuries that such a gathering took place.
They were all here and many of the elders were furious that Herod had dared to attack Camilla with no other declaration.
This was what he spoke of, when he tried to let Hellsing know that there were laws that she had no understanding of. He could no sooner attack Camilla than attack Hellsing. It would be the undoing of him.
All the other true vampires he had fought, he knew of where they had come from, but in the looser world of the later centuries, many were now 'rogue'. That meant that they could be killed without fear of reprisal from the houses.
"Arucard, you come to represent the house of Alexander in Camilla's absence?" The eldest vampire present spoke to Arucard.
"I do. I will say what she said to me. There is to be no war. This battle is hers to fight and she seeks no other aid." Arucard replied.
"That is not acceptable." The eldest spoke again.
"Do I enjoy her words? No. However, I will respect that I cannot engage until Camilla can be reasoned with and come to the decision that war is all we have left. She would say that if we fight amongst ourselves, then we have already weakened our selves to our enemies. We will wait another day." Arucard replied. He was stating the truth, he hated that he could not hunt down Herod and destroy him but he also knew that a vampire war could drag on for centuries, so he would wait for Camilla to speak for herself.
The other vampires nodded at his words. Then began to speak. Arucard knew he was going to be here for a while, his kind, could be, incredibly verbose.
*-*
Camilla opened her eyes. She checked against her own internal clock and estimated that another night had passed and it is daylight once again. She is almost fully healed. She was surprised she had taken as much damage as she did; it had been so long since she had truly been beaten.
She stretched and luxuriated against the Egyptian cotton sheets. Camilla glanced over at the table and noticed that there are no replacement bags of the medical blood.
"That is a very nice invention. I will have to look into getting a supply of that stored." She thought to herself remembering the convenience of the medical bag. She smiled wryly to herself, as she thought about all the 'conveniences' now available in this new millennium world.
She got out of bed and walked around the room. Now that she is healed, she felt confined. She turns her head; she can sense Hellsing coming down the hall.
Integra enters the room and looks first to the bed and seeing Camilla is not there looks around the room. She sees the other woman standing across the room, gazing at her calmly with her dark eyes. Her hair is unbound and ripples across her shoulders and down her back like a sheet of black silk. Even after 3 days of recuperating, she still had that calm air about her.
"May I sit?" Hellsing asks as she moves towards the table.
"Of course." Camilla replies. "I would offer you tea but I am afraid that I do not know my way around."
"Please, there is no need." Hellsing said as she sat down and looked at Camilla.
Camilla moved towards the table and sat across from Integra.
"How are you feeling?" Integra asked.
"Much better, thank you for your kindness." Camilla replied, a small smile crossing her lips.
"It was not kindness." Integra answered quickly.
"Can you tell me Integra, I understand how you feel about my kind, what I cannot gauge, is how do you feel about me? Do you truly think I would bring a war to your door?"
"You did not know he was here." Hellsing answered, narrowing her eyes. She liked the sound of her name rolling off Camilla's tongue with that slight accent.
Camilla smiled again, and this time, Hellsing thought there was more sorrow than joy in that smile.
"No, no I did not. Sometimes, it is very tiring to move through the years and never be able to forget or to have your regrets follow you and in this case, come back for revenge. I think there was a quote I always believed summed up the difference between my kind and humanity. 'Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.'"
Hellsing was quiet. There it was again, that disconcerting feeling about Camilla, as if she should actually feel sympathy for this creature. A vampire that could quote one of the Bronte sister's, she had never actually felt as if Arucard had any interest in literature or art.
Camilla could sense that Integra was uncomfortable, although she was not sure why. She moved the conversation into safer territory. She could pry and read her thoughts, but she would not disrespect the willful woman before her with that trick. Camilla began speaking of some trivial item she had noticed about London. She was nothing if not a skilled conversationalist.
Hellsing surprisingly followed the conversation into the safer territory.
The conversation was polite and Hellsing found herself engaged by Camilla's intelligence and wit. Likewise on Camilla's part. Once she was able to get past Integra's initial guardrails, she found the woman to be quite charming.
Well into the conversation, without missing a beat, Hellsing reached into her pocket and pulled out a small silver pocketknife. She unfolded it and quickly drew the blade across the palm of her hand. Not a deep cut but enough that a well of blood rises in the valley of the cut and began to pool in her hand. Hellsing turned her palm downward and the blood dripped on the polished wooden floor.
Camilla did not stop her storytelling, a trivial tale of Hellsing's grandfather and his penchant for certain French delicacies.
The scent of the other woman's blood stirred the hunger within her. Camilla realized that there was a reason why there was no blood left for her.
"But Monsieur, I assure you, she is with me." Camilla finished the story.
Hellsing laughs at the punch line, of her grandfather and a French serving woman in the finer part of Paris looking for his delicacy, and his comment to the French storekeeper. Her blue eyes never left Camilla's face, she was watching the other woman intently. The pain in her hand only mildly stinging as the blood slowed to a trickle. She squeezed her hand into a fist to re-open the wound and the blood began to flow again.
Camilla smiled in return, but now the conversation has stopped. She can feel the hunger tickling across her spine. It is almost surreal to her, that the creature she is hungers for the blood dripping from the hand of the woman across from her, and at the same time, knowing she would never allow herself to take any of Integra's blood. Primal need and rational thought waged a war that she did not display outwardly.
"I confess, I must still be slightly overtired, would you please excuse me for a moment?" Camilla finally said, breaking the silence.
"I wish you wouldn't, I find your stories to be absolutely brilliant. Will you indulge me again? With another?" Integra replied, smiling a rare but winsome smile.
Camilla smiled again, although the scent of blood is overpowering to her now and she has that feeling, the one she likens to what she remembers desire feeling like. An electricity running through her veins, but this was not desire; this was a hunger deeper than any physical lust.
Camilla focuses on holding Integra's gaze. "I would love nothing more."
Integra noticed, not for the first time, that Camilla was a striking woman. Not in the way that Arucard was, no hers was an eerie combination of human like beauty and something else. In her current state of dishevelment, she was beautiful and almost innocent. When she looked at her, with those dark eyes, holding her gaze, Integra would have that disconcerting feeling creep up on her again.
Integra narrowed her eyes slightly; she wasn't listening to Camilla now so much as just letting the cadence of her soft voice rise and fall. Why did she find it soothing to listen to Camilla talk? That was not why she had come down to see her. There…Integra smiled to herself, Camilla's dark eyes were beginning to display the red fire that Integra normally associated with Arucard's gaze. When the red fire began to flicker in those eyes, her that feeling was chased away and she could distance herself from that disconcertion.
Camilla could feel the hunger now in every fiber of her being, racing through her entire body. She caught the look in Integra's eyes and paused in her story.
"Lord Hellsing, what was the purpose of this exercise?" She asked softly.
Hellsing pulled out a silk handkerchief from her pocket and began to wrap her hand. "Exercise? I thought we were merely having a conversation." She replied coolly, her defenses well in place again.
Camilla nodded; she would not be forced to act on her hunger. She was not just some creature to be provoked.
"I understand. You wanted to make sure I was still the abomination you believed me to be. You mistake however the reason for my weakness. It is not the blood that causes the electricity to thrill along my spine. It is you.
"The blood…As distasteful as it will sound to you, arouses a passion in me. It is part of the creature I am. Yes, creature. You think I do not know that I have a fury within me that I have spent my entire immortal life trying to quell. Whatever you think you know about my kind, it is only what has been exposed to you. You have seen and hunted those who mistake the power for some kind of directive that we are a superior race and as such, can act as we please. The same problem exists within the human race. It was not a vampire that betrayed you not too long ago, was it? It was a human…" Camilla paused, then stood.
"There are those among my kind that are too weak to live with this contradiction of feral hunger and human emotion. I promise you, on my word, as the daughter of a tribe long forgotten by history, your blood will never pass my lips Integra Hellsing." Camilla sighed.
"You have proved your point, it is apparent to me that my welcome here has expired." Camilla began to move towards the door.
Hellsing stepped in front of her. "Why do you speak as if you were a human when you clearly are not?"
"Why do you act like a heartless creature when you clearly are not?" Camilla replied, the red fire shimmering along the edge of her dark pupils as she stared into Integra Hellsing's Nordic blue eyes.
"You would dare speak to me such?" Integra moved closer to Camilla. She realized her mistake only as soon as she got closer.
"I would dare to do much more than that." Camilla whispered softly into Integra's ear before she moved past her. Her own hand briefly resting on Hellsing's own before she headed out the door. Once she was in the hallway, her presence disappeared into the very shadows.
Integra stood there; realizing that her heart beat had accelerated. Her skin burned where the cool touch of Camilla's hand had paused. She felt the spark of anger and let it blaze to life to extinguish this other feeling. This other feeling that left her feeling helpless by her own doing.
*-*
"She has re-appeared again Milord."
Herod turned his head to gaze at the sniveling creature that knelt before him. None of his new line had the strength of his first family. Some showed promise but they struck him as so dim witted it was like having a pack of wild dogs. None of the other houses were interested in his vendetta.
"Let the past stay dead, the houses no longer war amongst themselves."
How often had he heard that? Those he thought to be allies had become lazy and complacent. The rogue breed could be bought and he had some of them lined up, but he had been sickened that none of the other houses wanted to bring down the aberration of Alexander's successor.
"I expected she would. She had to recover. Interesting that she should be able to find a place that I cannot sense. When will the summoning be complete?"
"The mage says he will need more bodies, and the doppelganger is…Well…You will have to confirm it is what you expected."
Herod turned away. Soon, he would have Camilla crawling before him, begging for mercy. He would let her bleed as he bled and not die. He would bring her down once and for all. Alexander's little experiment, his precious 'daughter'. She was a disgrace to their kind.
*-*
Camilla appeared before the Council of her peers and loyalists. Arucard looked bored beyond belief. She suspected he had done as she asked and had been here since she last saw him listening to all the reasons why they should go to war.
"I will not declare a war on the house of Herod because there is no house of Herod. There is only Herod and his gaggle of fresh blood. Barely totaling my age between the lot of them." Camilla spoke, in the manner that her kind often did when together, interrupting the current debate.
"Camilla."
"My liege."
"Lady Camilla."
"My lord."
"Milady."
Several murmured responses and bowed slightly in her direction.
"There shall be no war in this city. The time has past when we could wage open war across the streets. The cities are packed now. I know what Herod wants and I will give him the battle he seeks, but I will not do it in this city."
"Begging your pardon, but we are not the ones who engaged in this battle. It was Herod who bought this to us."
"I am well aware of what Herod has bought to us, and I am saying that he is not worth this entire effort."
"M'liege…He would have, could have killed you."
"Perhaps. I was ill prepared and I thank you all for coming to aid me. We cannot take action now. We must discover all that we can. How could Herod have been alive all this time and none of us, not one, knew?" Camilla asked.
"Maybe that is not the right question. The better question might be why did no one mention that he was still alive?" Arucard finally spoke. He always trusted Camilla to run the politics of the family name. She was Alexander's heiress in the truest sense of the word but sometimes, he believe she trusted those around her far too much. Integra was like that as well. Evidenced by the fact of the most recent betrayal that she had experienced when he was battling the vampire from the dark continent.
The others turned to look at him. Camilla did not. She walked through the group of them and sat on the stone inlay before them.
Arucard settled back in. This was going to take awhile longer.
*-*
Hellsing sat at her desk. She was reading through an old leather bound book, searching for details of the names that Camilla had told her in the course of her story. It was not an easy task but she found some information on Herod, mostly that he had been destroyed.
Hellsing scoured the archives and could not find more than a mere mention of Camilla. There is reference time and again of the journal, but unlike Walter's recollection, it did not appear to be her great grandfather's. Unless she misunderstood what she was reading, Hellsing began to suspect that it was Camilla's own journal and she had left it with the Hellsing organization.
"Very interesting." She murmured aloud.
"Suddenly, I am interesting." Camilla said from her position in the chair she had been settled in.
Hellsing startled at her presence.
"How did you…" Hellsing started.
"Get in with you unawares? I know, I am baffled by it as well; I thought I had made a better impression than that. I guess not." Camilla replied, smiling at Integra.
"I wanted to speak to you, about before. You were right in your assumption. I wanted to see the evidence of the abomination, the creature, that I know you are." Hellsing said, picking up a cigar and moving to light it.
"I know. You were right to make sure you confirmed the creature I am. I have never denied what I am Integra. I would not be so presumptuous as to try and deny what I am before you of all people. But all is well, since you are calling me by my pet name again."
Hellsing inhaled and then exhaled slowly. She narrowed her eyes as she looked like she was weighing her response. Finally, she spoke.
"I do have a question for you, what did you mean when you said you would dare to do more?"
Camilla smiled again, this time coyly. "Do you really have to ask? I find you to be…Most intriguing as well."
Hellsing blushed at Camilla's response. "You…you mean to imply…" She stammered.
"Surely you have read the fictions written about me, it is true, I have a weakness for beauty and strength. When you have lived as long as I have lived, one discovers that gender plays little factor in one's attractions. You are quite the combination of aesthetic beauty and a depth of strength I can only imagine." Camilla said, her smile broadening.
"That would be blasphemy. To…With a creature…" Hellsing struggled to articulate her outrage at the very suggestion.
"There are those that would say it was blasphemy only because I am a woman and being the creature I am has little to do with it. Relax Integra, I would never be so bold as to act on any 'passing fancy' as Arucard would say, unless you were equally intrigued." Camilla said, laughing softly. In the past 3 days, she had been meeting with members of the council, talking to advisors privately and in groups. Herod had been quiet, which only made her more nervous. Truth be told, while this flirtation with Integra was nice, Camilla knew to go any further would endanger the entire Hellsing organization and she was not willing to do that.
"You are incorrigible. I cannot believe the audacity you have." Hellsing finally articulated.
"I said to you once before, do not shun what you do not know." Camilla replied, rising with a small leather-bound notebook in her hand, she placed it on the desk before Integra and began to fade.
"Herod is a dangerous enemy, do not make the mistake that modern weapons will fare any better against him than my own powers." Was her parting comment before she disappeared.
Hellsing picked up the small notebook. It was Camilla's journal, she was sure of it. She flipped it open; she would have some homework to do. The beginnings were written in a dialect, one she did not recognize. Some Latin…She thought about the last exchange with Camilla, Hellsing knew that Camilla had to already know she was having an effect on her. However, Integra Hellsing was not one to give in so easily to base emotions, least of all when an abomination was concerned. Pet name indeed…
Walter stepped in the room. Lord Hellsing was reading very intently and making notes in a notebook.
"Lord Hellsing." Walter bowed as he approached bearing a tray of tea.
"Walter." She replied without looking up.
"May I inquire what you are reading?" Walter asked as he set the tea tray down.
"I believe it to be Camilla's journal." She said, finally putting the journal down.
Walter raised an eyebrow but did not speak. Instead he began to start preparing the cups of tea.
How long has it been since I have been this creature? I would have to know how time is measured again, and it seems to keep changing, every time I think I know, I appear to be wrong. It has been sometime since I learned to master the reading and writing so I could record my life. It is strange, my tribe, we spoke of everything, and those we spoke it to, we remembered. So many stories, perhaps, I can capture some of those stories in this journal. That would be more interesting that the life, if you could call it that, which I am forced to endure. How many years now, have I lived as this dark creature of the night? How long has it been before Alexander broke me? Alexander…He still expects me to believe that he is my father. What father destroys his own child? I still have scars, as if he could beat the humanity out of me. I should not dwell on the turning; it only makes me angry all over again.
The others they do not know what to do with me either. They watch me, as if waiting for me to do something. I have nothing to do, especially if they expect me to do it at Alexander's behest. There is nothing about this life that I find appealing, and yet, with the strange instinct of self-preservation, there is nothing that I can do to stop living this life. I have found that the one benefit this life brings is the ability to destroy those vermin of the evening hours. Those that prey on the weak and the helpless, I like to show them what it means to be helpless.
Alexander thinks this is a sign, that I am willing to take a human life, that I am becoming like him. I am nothing like him. He even knows that, since, unlike, him, I can walk in the light of day, I can see what it is I have become. I am, as he likes to boast, the best of both worlds.
More decades have passed, I think. I can finally look back on my transformation and not become completely enraged. I am still angry but the time has come to recount what I have been trying to avoid and that is how I became this creature. I am not sure why I need to write this down, it is not like I am going to forget it, but since I have learned this skill of writing, I wonder if there will ever come a day, when I die, that this information should be here.
Alexander was persistent and brutal in the months that passed since my first arrival into his home. It was so damned important to him that I accept willingly the transformation that he offered me. Time and time again I spat in his face. Until the day, how many days, weeks, months had it been, I could not continue to mutter the name of my tribe. I could barely remember my name or the name of my parents. I was getting to the point where I could not remember when my body did not hurt, I could not move without pain. There was a day, when I was carried past a large shield, that I saw the scars across my back. Each time, Alexander would ask. One day, he did not ask, the pain stopped long enough for me to see him, standing over me, as he always did. He grabbed me by my neck and put his face before mine. His eyes blazed into mine and he drew his lips back. I could see, for the first time, the creature my tribe called 'Upir'. Then that word over time became 'vampire'. His eyes were blood red, his fangs extended and the familiar features I had tried to ignore since my arrival were fading quickly into shadow and darkness.
"I am tired of coddling you Camilla. I am your sire, and you will learn what that means. I am your master until you prove to me you don't need a master any longer." He hissed.
He turned my body away from him and I felt his fangs slice into my neck. I struggled; I remember that, to no avail. He drained me until I was faint, and then tossed me to the floor. He opened his wrist and held it to my lips. I tried not to drink, but he gripped my jaw in his hands and pried my mouth open. I was too weak to fight as his blood filled my mouth. I finally had to swallow and felt the burning all the way into my gut. He filled my mouth again and again I had to swallow. I began to try to rise and he snapped my neck with the hand that still gripped me.
There was nothing but darkness. I was dead. When I awoke, it was 3 days later. Alexander was waiting at the edge of my bed, I tried to lunge at him but found that I had been bound by rope and chain. I snarled at him and then stopped. I was not an animal. I fell back against the bed. Alexander did not bother to speak to me, but instead dug his fangs into my neck again. I struggled again, but again, it was to no avail. This time, Alexander drained me almost entirely. The difference was, this time, when he opened his wrist and the blood began to flow, I felt a hunger that threatened to overwhelm me. When he held it to my lips, it was all I could do to not lunge up again. I opened my mouth and drank, eagerly, hungrily. And he snapped my neck again.
He did that to me three times. The last time, when I awoke again, he sat again on the bed and this time, he only waited. He moved and despite myself, I twitched.
"You are so willful. I admire that in you. I have chosen probably as wisely as I ever have in my life, and that is saying a lot. You are, unlike anything before you, or since. You are flesh of my flesh, your parents, and your mother especially, there was an entire season where we practiced the magick of your tribe and my own powers to conceive you. Now, you are exactly all that I envisioned."
"You are nothing to me. You are less than nothing to me." He was surprised that I could communicate back via this method of the mind. Truth be told, so was I.
He released me then and said to me, in the speech of humans. "Your choice will be your own, but you are what you are now. You are my heir in every sense of the word and with our kind, I can wait until you know what that means. You will always be welcome in my house and among my kin."
Naturally, I escaped the house as quickly as possible. It was a mistake but of course, Alexander knew that and bothered not to tell me. The stories of my first months as this creature are not nearly as interesting as I make them sound. I was hunted by Alexander's enemies, vampire enemies in general and had to learn how to survive on my own. To dwell on that bleak time would serve no purpose. Plus, I would not bother to give name to them, many who are already faded in the dust of time. That was the impetus for learning the controls. There are so many controls and I cannot even begin to imagine learning them all. Of all the things that being this creature involves, I must say that this was the most intriguing.
Hellsing looked up from her reading and sipped her tea. Walter was non-committal as he also sipped his tea.
"So, it would appear as though the lie is consistent from what you understood and what she has said before." Hellsing said.
"Indeed." Walter agreed.
"What did you mean when you said she was an anomaly even among her own kind? Were you referring to this thing that she refers to? This 'specialness' that her sire speaks of?" Hellsing asked as she flipped ahead in the journal. She paused when she saw the name 'Laurian'.
"I think she has said more about it than I could possibly know." Walter deferred answering.
"What do you know of this other vampire she speaks of? Laurian?" Hellsing continued, pausing only to begin flipping back through the journal until she thought she located the first time she saw the name mentioned.
I met a woman at Alexander's court today. Laurian was the only name she would give me when I asked. I cannot tell you how beautiful she is. I am used to seeing the preening and primping peacocks that gather to Alexander's court, but she outshone them all.
She has eyes that are astonishingly green. I could see them gazing at me from across the room. She commands the room. Almost as much as Alexander does when he walks into the room. I have never felt like this before. I find it to be somewhat disconcerting that a creature such as myself would have this effect. I have been taken with the human form but nothing like this.
It has been 6 years since I first met Laurian. I find this to be the strangest statement I could possibly make, but I wonder if it is possible to be in love being the creature that I am. I think she is simply amazing. I have learned more from her about the power that is inherent with the creatures we are than I have ever bothered to learn from Alexander. Alexander is pleased, I can tell, he approves of Laurian. Not that it truly matters to me that I have his blessing or not. What intrigues me more and more is how I feel, the fact that I can feel. For all of Alexander's 'instructions', I find that I cannot remove the right and wrong from each action. Laurian and I spend hours, days, discussing the depth of human emotion. Human action, humanity. She is like Alexander, they were not creatures 'created' or 'turned' by another, they were always vampires. I am not sure I understand that, though we have talked many times. She always knew what she was and never had reason to doubt it. Never doubted her inherent right to exist, with all her powers. She did say to me though, that the difference with the true species and those that came after was the clear understanding that with power such as theirs, came the responsibility to the species. Such was the foundation for the houses, the councils, the rules and laws that came into being, for if left unchecked, especially the brutal leanings of those turned by the firsts and those after, that they would destroy themselves into extinction. It is these talks that I love, ah, that word again, assigning such a strong emotion, about Laurian. That and other things that appeal to my more primal instincts, but it is not for that that I cannot wait when I will see her again.
Hellsing looked up again.
"Milord is troubled to read such words from the abomination? Your grandfather once referred to listening to her speak as if it were his own soul speaking to him. He once said to me, 'Walter, my boy, Camilla is to her kind what we are to ours. If we were ever turned, one could only hope that we could survive with as much compassion and wisdom as Camilla has.'"
Hellsing raised her eyebrow.
"I admit, I find it to be very odd that such a creature cares so much about humanity. She is also quick to point out how lacking many of our own breed are. How can one such as she have lived as long as she has with such compassion intact?"
"I cannot begin to imagine. She and Arucard are unique in their own ways. It has often made me wonder what their sire Alexander was like." Walter replied.
"He sounds like a beast and not unlike most vampires we know of." Hellsing replied curtly, and then asked, "Why would she give this to me? She talks about workings of the machinations of vampire society."
"Do not worry milord, to find her intriguing is quite common. She can be quite persuasive when she wants to be and she is a formidable force. She really has not told us very much, as if all those machinations were incidental to her feelings for this woman, Laurian." Walter said as he rose to collect the teacups and tea tray.
"So it would seem." Was Hellsing's only reply.
*-*
Hellsing closed the journal. She could not explain what she felt as she finished the last line. Camilla did not write anything from the time she returned to take over the house of Alexander and past Herod. She wrote very few details of the 100 years between Herod's destruction and the next series of adventures she wrote. Hellsing could not help but notice that the tone of Camilla's journal was never as forthright or even as passionate as she had been during the beginning and through all her adventures with Laurian. She did not even describe what she had done to exact her revenge on Herod. She had written some things of Arucard, as well as some of the others that Alexander ultimately turned. Hellsing realized again that the affairs of vampires was not unlike the affairs of the court from olden days. There was politicking and manipulations that seemed to be quite intricate. Camilla wrote about such affairs sparingly, Hellsing had the impression that she accepted the mantle of the house of Alexander cautiously.
Hellsing lit a cigar. The more she discovered about Camilla the harder time she had comparing her against the light if her lifetime convictions. Why had Walter told her what her grandfather had said? Did her entire lineage know of this woman…Creature? She was a creature. How much had the creature trusted her, to give her that journal? To let her realize, even if only surface descriptions, how things happened in that world? There she went again, putting human terms to the creature's actions.
"You are attracted to her, are you not?" Arucard said as he appeared in the room.
"I am not." Hellsing replied without turning around.
"She is attracted to you. I am not sure of the wisdom of such a thing. It has been a very long time since she has even bothered to indulge in any kind of attraction and she has much to do in the coming weeks. She has to keep her wits about her." Arucard continued to speak, his voice calmer than Hellsing had ever heard it.
"And you? Where will you be in the coming battle?" Hellsing asked.
"I will be where I am always." Arucard replied.
"Are you sure?" Hellsing said.
"I do not think, in this coming war, that the Hellsing Organization and the House of Alexander will be on opposite sides." Arucard replied.
A few more minutes passed in silence. The thin plume of smoke curled in the air above the chair Hellsing sat in.
When Hellsing turned to face Arucard, she discovered that he was gone.
How did she feel to know that Camilla was attracted to her as well? No, wait, not as well. So, the creature had expressed an interest in her, as was to be expected from a predator. It was irrelevant information. She picked up the phone and dialed Walter.
"We have more planning." She said before she hung up again.