From his towering height it was easy to survey the waning battle. There weren't as many figures standing as there had been when he'd hit the ground a few minutes ago. There were Iscariot and civilian bodies littering the square, but their opponents, both vampires and phantoms, didn't leave physical remains.
Alucard and the vampire who had stabbed him and nearly killed him were playing without him! That had to stop. Anderson ran across the square to the battling undead as he did his magician's act of making silver appear from nowhere.
Alucard had been having fun with the Captain. He took prodigious amounts of damage and kept coming, seemingly unfazed. He also kept his mouth shut. That was fine with Alucard. In his opinion, he was the only one who should be dropping clever one-liners in any fight.
At the moment they were standing toe to toe trading blows. The Captain had managed to decapitate him twice, eviscerate him once and had actually separated his torso from his lower body, although Alucard blamed the Police Girl for that last one. He didn't know what she was up to, but she had distracted him at the wrong moment. He made a mental note to return the favor at some point.
He was starting to think that maybe it was time to finish up with the silent German. He knew from Rip Van Winkle's mind what was on that zeppelin floating above them and he was looking forward to the main course in this delicious meal of death and destruction.
What was this? The German was opening his mouth? Alucard gave his opponent his full attention just as a deafening howl erupted from the Captain's mouth. Alucard could feel himself losing his hold on his form and pieces of his shadow self were streaming out behind him and tattering under the aural onslaught. This was new. New was good. Alucard adored finding something new.
Heinkel and Yumie were overwhelmed by the hellish noise that came from the Captain. It was beyond anything either had ever experienced and Heinkel felt sure that her ear drums would burst with the pressure in her brain. They both dropped to their knees unable to think, unable to breathe, bleeding from the ears and nose. Heinkel's last sight before blackness claimed her was of Anderson pushing forward against the hurricane of noise.
Alexander Anderson thought that hell would sound like this - a furious, wrenching shriek that brought tears of pain to his eyes. He was a paladin of God, an Iscariot, no thing of hell would keep him from his duty to God. Veins burst in his eyes to be regenerated as quickly as they were damaged, but it left a veil of scarlet across his vision. His nose ran blood continuously and his ears were bleeding, but Anderson did not slow his pace.
His eyes widened at the sight of Alucard's lack of cohesion. He'd seen Alucard's worst, he thought, earlier, but this didn't appear to be Alucard's doing. Instead it looked as though the Captain's scream was actually tearing Alucard to shreds. Anderson threw a containing spell of holy writ around the Captain, the pages pinned to the ground around the screaming vampire by more of the paladin's limitless silver blades. The volume lessened, but by no means could be anything less than wrackingly painful.
The decrease was enough for Alucard to pull himself together, literally. He threw a look at the paladin that Anderson could not interpret. Surely the demon knew nothing of gratitude. He looked as though he had enjoyed every moment.
Judas Priest, welcome to the game, the words resounded clearly in his mind. He growled at the Hellsing vampire, but could hear nothing above the Captain's continued fury. He built up speed as he rushed in to claim God's vengeance on the German who would have been his executioner.
The Judas Priest was coming to his aid? Surely not. The night and now dawning day were a wealth of surprises that would bear him through the next century with enough memories to quench his boredom.
He thrust his arm forward, meaning a killing blow, but found that the holy writs which had reduced the Captain's howl to something less fracturing also inhibited his ability to reach the howling man. He could get through, but his force was greatly diminished by pushing through the barrier. Instead of ripping the Nazi's heart out and reducing him to dust, Alucard found his arm seized and the Captain pulled him forward as though to embrace him. Both of them fought against the holy barrier and the Captain brought his face closer to Alucard's as though to give him an open-mouthed kiss.
Suddenly the mouth sprouted a silver tongue. The howl cut off as Anderson's blades found their marks in the Captain's mouth, neck and eyes. "Devil take ye, ye demon!" He leapt forward and in a mirror image of what had been done to him, thrust a long blade into the wounded vampire's guts. He pushed and twisted the blade until he felt it scrape against vertebrae and then cut through the Captain's spinal cord. As the vampire fell, Anderson delivered the coup de grace that the Captain had meant to give him, severing the Captain's head and plunging a blade into his black heart.
Before the Captain had even finished returning to the dust, Anderson had whirled around, blades at the ready against Alucard. Their eyes locked for a moment, the vibrant red of the vampire's glaring into the bloodied gaze of the priest. Before either could act, Alucard's head snapped up, following a streak across the sky that ended at the Nazi dreadnaught. Police Girl.
"Look at me vampire and see your doom."
Of course Alucard smirked. The paladin sounded almost piqued that he'd looked away from him at such a dramatic moment. "I apologize, regenerator, but the last act of this tragedy won't be played out down here, but up there," he pointed to the zeppelin, "and the curtain is rising."
With that, his phantoms were swept back into him and his form dissolved into a flock of bats that swarmed into the sky toward the final arena.
Anderson's red-tinged world turned black for a moment as he reeled at the abrupt departure of his one true enemy. He had been dismissed? Like hell! "We are not done yet, blood drinker!" He disappeared in a swarm of holy pages.