Still disclaimed, still not mine, and Kouta Hirano, bless her, still doesn't know I'm writing Hellsing fanfiction. Er, not that she'd care.
..
Seras woke up with a jolt of anxiety.
She sat up, pushing her hair away from her face. By the empty feel of the apartment, Sir Integra had already gone. She checked the time, packed some things in a small bag, and started out.
She didn't have much trouble finding the shop. A sign hung in the door reading "CLOSED" in neat lettering, but it opened when she pushed it.
"Hello?"
She stepped inside. The door swung shut behind her.
"Well, well, well. What have we here?" purred a voice from above.
The fine hairs on the back of Seras' neck rose, and she swung around angrily.
"Oh! I'm sorry, I wasn't expecting you yet!" The girl wore shorts, a pink shirt, and a rather silly-looking nautical hat with a silver anchor on it. She crossed from a ceiling beam to in front of the plaster wall, where she wouldn't be seen from the street, and dropped down. "My word, you're good at handling sunlight. I break out in blisters when I get close."
"I think it was daytime when I got turned," Seras chirped, trying to sound not at all dangerous. "That probably changed things."
"You're the gas mask girl, of course, and I'm Belita."
"Oh?"
"What's your name?"
"Sara," said Seras firmly.
"I thought that was it." The girl gave her a friendly smile. "I tried to talk to you once, but it was hard with that mask on your face and it was always noisy. Why did you wear it?"
Seras made a calculated gamble. "Luke wanted it to lend atmosphere to the club."
"That English boarding-school reject." Belita sniffed.
Seras was busy making a running tally. Jasmine. . . the girl who'd grabbed her. . . Elenore, and now Belita. . . she felt she should have some sort of score card for this.
"Can you give me an idea who else is here? I met Jasmine, of course—"
"We're all here but Christine. Oh, and I'm a more," she coughed, "recent addition. Yan's, the night before they went and got themselves killed."
"What happened to Christine?"
"They sacrificed her." Belita's lip curled in an unbecoming snarl. "You missed the whole thing? You must have been made the evening I was. I liked Christine. She was friendly. She actually told me what was going on while those idiot men were still dropping hints. And they threw her to the wolves."
Seras now put two and two together. There were only so many groups of two men that left a female FREAK for someone to kill.
"That's terrible," she said, inwardly dancing about the room with elation. Now to find a way to go back and tell—oops. Now to find someone to report to.
Hmm. This wasn't going to be easy.
"I got you a hat," Belita said, fishing through a cardboard box (Seras wondered if the riding crop was somewhere in there) and coming up with another silly-looking nautical hat and some folded blue clothing. "This is yours."
"For?"
Belita smiled. "A woman's work is never done. We wanted to save on the crew's pay, right?"
"Right," said Seras, returning her smile, and trying not to shudder.
"Same old, same old." Belita moved past her to lock the door. "The rest of my uniform's in the back room; I'll be there changing if you have any more questions."
"Right," said Seras, looking around. After a moment's hesitation, she moved to a door, opened it, and found a very empty, clean closet. She turned on the light, stepped inside, and unfolded the blouse. It looked a little too small, but still smart, and the patch over the left breast—
She turned it to the light.
"Sea Queen."
..
Integra stared around the cabin.
Not too bad. Considering the twee silver anchors decorating the luggage handler's apparel, she had been braced for a picture of teddy bear sailors.
The room was large pleasant, and well ventilated. She looked at the air vents and a few thin, red ribbons showing which way the air was flowing and how strong it was. The décor was cream and silver, which she could have lived without, but someone with a good deal of restraint in the use of ruffles had decorated. It served well enough. The portholes were large enough to shed good light. She investigated one, but it didn't seem to have an opening mechanism. She tested the door, from force of habit, and found it solid (but not solid enough to resist an angry FREAK.) She found the ventilation controls and flipped them shut. They didn't entirely close, but she didn't think anyone would be trying to gas her.
She opened her suitcase and put the gas mask on the bedside table. Just in case of very obvious attack.
The bathroom was serviceable and made a good attempt to communicate luxury with comparatively small size. She glanced around. The air conditioning was less here. She flipped the light off and pulled the door shut. This door was of less substantial thickness than the one to the corridor.
Well, if FREAKs managed to drop out of the sky on the ship, she'd just have to be sure she wasn't in the bathroom. She smiled a little at her caution. She started unpacking the things she would need.
She'd gotten a rushed escort onto the ship, and was trusted enough so that nobody had done obtrusive metal detecting around her. She unpacked the box of hair curlers with a wry smile. They certainly did want to get rid of her.
Alucard was feeling. . . sad, and for a moment she wondered why. Then she laughed at herself. He was packed off in a room to starve into mummification. Why wouldn't he be sad? She refrained from prying.
She picked up her reading material and settled back in her chair. To her surprise, she'd found a few gaps in her education, beginning with Chinese Hopping Vampires and ending with Vodun. She'd have to finish those off so that the next attack would not find her unprepared.
She glanced at her watch. They wouldn't be leaving for some time yet, and she didn't want to miss dinner, not when she had a new identity to establish. She'd need some practice.
She yawned, mentally going over her checklist. Anti-nausea medication just in case, healthy fruit and vegetable snacks, water bottles—being pregnant was a nuisance.
There was a knock on the door. She checked through the peephole, found a worried-looking man about the height of her shoulder, and opened the door.
"Oh, no," he said, looking at her. "Is this room B212e?"
The ship did have a rather confusing layout. Integra had never been on a ship with a deck split into A and B.
"Dear, we're a hallway to port wrong," said the man's wife, who had spread the ship's map out on her husband's back.
"I'm afraid I couldn't tell you," said Integra, who had followed three luggage bearers straight to her room.
"We got turned around somewhere," said the man, picking up two suitcases again. His very pregnant wife smiled at Integra. "We'll see you around."
Integra smiled back and closed the door, flipping the deadbolt again. She wondered with a twinge of anxiety if she would get that big.
She glanced around the room again.
She was lonely, to her surprise. She wondered how Walter was doing. She knew how Alucard felt. And she couldn't do anything about Seras—the vampire was on her own until she could join Integra in peaceful exile.
A faint tremor passed through the ship as the engines kicked up and the ship started on its way.
About time. Integra put a bookmark between the pages she was reading and checked her watch again.
..
Seras watched the crew members leave the boat. Some remained. Seras looked them over carefully and decided they were most likely vampires or on their way to being them. She heard a variety of accents as they spoke among each other.Wait. That girl wasn't a vampire.
Seras tried to hide her curiosity. The girl was probably an islander. She looked exotic, brown-skinned and straight-haired. To her surprise, Seras saw several more. From their easy banter, it sounded as though they knew their crewmates were unusually strong.
"The day shift," Belita said from behind Seras. "Not all of us have your ease of movement when the sun's out."
"I—is everyone on the ship a—"
"Certainly not." Belita sniffed. "Some people are using this as a cruise; they get down to the islands and hop from island to island with the ship. Some people are staying on that first island, though." She stretched, smiling.
"Oh. So that's our stop?"
"Mm-hmm."
"So what do we. . ."
"Here, follow me." Belita started through a small door and down a mystifying labyrinth of corridors to a long row of freezers and two motel- sized refrigerators. "At the end of your shift," she swung open the refrigerator, "grab some blood and pull some from the freezer to thaw in its place."
Seras looked at the plastic bags curiously. "They're not labeled."
"That's because we draw our own. We don't steal medical blood."
Seras nodded, resisting the urge to plant her boot in the vampire's face and stomp her to ashes. Now her primary concern was to find Integra. Once the other vampires were aware that a preternaturally strong and fast creature was killing them, they'd close ranks immediately.
"One more thing," Belita said. "We have a rule. The Valentines don't kill the pregnant women."
Oh, good. Sir Integra would be all right, then.