Disclaimer: It's in chapter one.

A/N: Are we having fun yet? Glad you all think folks are in character – we'll see if that lasts after this one, eh heh heh....well, here's number three, and I hope you enjoy it!

Chapter Three

That an undead vampiress should call him a murderer was ridiculous. That it should actually disturb him was unthinkable. Yet Paladin Alexander Anderson found himself in precisely this situation as he lay on the cot. There had been a stone wall of silence between him and his caretaker for the past two days after their confrontation on the night he'd torn his stitches.

More precisely, she was not speaking to him, and damned if he would make the effort anyway. But her words rankled, and he found himself...doubting. Perhaps it was the helpless position he found himself in that made him susceptible. Maybe she was drugging his food.

He shook his head a bit. Nonsense that thought – as a regenerator any drugs or poisons passed right through his system so fast they were a mere buzz. Sucked for trying to get drunk or take an aspirin, though.

And he was regenerating – he'd realized that while the wounds Incognito had inflicted were healing at a normal human speed, any new wounds healed at his regeneration speed. He'd bitten his lip so hard it bled after she'd stormed out that night, and it had closed right up. Clearly, God was still with him even in this bleak hour.

And still...he wrestled with his conscience, something which seemed to go numb when he was in combat. Then, anything in vaguest collusion with the undead was tainted and deserved death. Now, in the cold artificial light of this cell, he wasn't so certain.

The past two nights he'd surreptitiously watched her attempt to drink the medical blood and fail repeatedly. He was coming to realize that this Seras Victoria was truly a baby of a vampire. He'd pieced together a few comments and figured out that she'd only been undead for a little over a year. She was younger than he was, and she was clinging to her humanity. Which was something he'd never even have considered a vampire could have, a few weeks ago.

It was getting close to the late evening meal time. Anderson had been reluctantly switched onto a night schedule – since that was the only time his captor was awake to care for him. She was due to come in the heavy door any moment, bearing whatever she'd managed to concoct in the kitchen.

Her kidney pies were actually very good. Everything else was barely palatable.

Time passed. His green eyes became locked on the clock hanging on the wall. 6:30am.

6:45.

7:00.

7:15.

At 7:30, his stomach growling, he realized that not only was she late, but she was out far past sunrise. That made no sense. An ancient monster like Alucard could walk abroad in daylight – a fledgling like Seras would be burnt to ashes.

It was now 8:00am and Anderson discovered he was worried. He immediately began to pray for forgiveness, disgusted at this weakness that had developed in him. Yet the familiar, comforting prayers could not blot out the niggling little concerns in the back of his head. Where was she? Had she abandoned him? Would he be left down here to starve to death? Had she been hurt? Was she unable to get to her daylight refuge?

"AMEN!" snarled Anderson, and turned his face to the wall, refusing to look at the clock or the door. He might have dozed off. He wasn't sure. But suddenly the door was slammed open with enough force to tear the top hinges free of the stone wall. Anderson's head snapped around as Alucard stormed into the room. His hat and glasses were missing, and his coat was not on his body. Instead it was – and Anderson felt a strange hollowness in the pit of his stomach – wrapped around a limp, still strawberry-blonde figure cradled in the vampire's arms.

"What the –"

"Silence." Alucard didn't shout. His voice was little more than a whisper, but somehow there was enough power in it to make the priest's mouth snap shut so fast he nearly took off the end of his own tongue. Moving with quick surety, the elder vampire placed the unconscious girl on her coffin/bed and unwrapped the coat with a care that startled the paladin.

He could not bite back his gasp as Seras came into view. Her limp form was pierced in nearly a dozen places by – again, that hollow sensation in his stomach! – chillingly familiar blessed blades. He lifted his head and shoulders up off the pillow as far as he could to stare in disbelief. One by one, Alucard pulled the swords from his fledgling's body, ignoring the soft hiss as the blessed silver contacted his hands.

He tossed them carelessly to one side, and ran an astonishingly long tongue over the wounds. It was hard to see from this angle, but it looked like the wounds closed up as Alucard passed his tongue over them. Anderson shuddered, but found himself unable to look away from the strange spectacle.

As blade after blade clattered to the floor the smell of blood thickened in the room until even Anderson could smell it. When the last sword had been pulled free and the last wound closed, Seras lay white and unmoving on the bed. The priest's neck was aching from holding it up at this angle, but he could not let himself look away. No breathing or pulse to check – how could anyone tell if she still "lived"? Alucard's red eyes narrowed.

"Police girl. Seras Victoria. No childe of mine is going to die at the hands of the Vatican dogs." The elder vampire pulled back his sleeve and opened a vein with a deft twist of his fangs. He pulled the unmoving girl into his arms, cradling her like a child in his left while he pressed the bleeding wound on his right to her lips. There was a long pause during which neither moved. Then Seras gave a sound, almost a whimper, and clamped her teeth over Alucard's arm.

"Why are you so reluctant to drink human blood, yet take the blood of a vampire with such ease?" the red-eyed man asked almost bemusedly as the girl drank from his veins. It was as if he'd forgotten Anderson was even in the room. "This is the second time, Police Girl."

"What in the name o' God are ye –" the priest could barely form the words as he watched color come back into his rescuer's face.

"God has no place here, Judas Priest," Alucard cut him off, a half smirk crossing his lean visage. He pulled his arm away from Seras, whose eyes had not opened once, and laid her back down with a shocking gentleness. He turned to look at the paralyzed Catholic. "My blood has sustained her unlife – but she'll need human blood to heal."

Anderson stiffened at the implication, and inwardly raged at his unresponsive body. Alucard grinned at him, enjoying his discomfort, and let him squirm for a minute. "But it's much more fun to have you here to play with," he said finally, and went to the mini-fridge in the corner. He shook his head at the amount of blood inside it. "Damnit Police Girl, this wouldn't have been so bad if you hadn't been half starved."

He pulled out three blood-packs and brought them over to the bed. Opening each one with his fangs, he carefully fed them to the semiconscious girl, who was too out of it to know what that she was drinking almost desperately that which she normally spurned. If she was even aware at all, Anderson thought, watching the process with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. Almost as if they were forced out of him the words fell from his lips. "

Will the lass be alright?" The elder vampire laughed. Loudly.

"And why would you care, priest?" he sneered.

"Ye aren't gonna be takin care of me if she dies," shot back Anderson, stung. More laughter greeted his words, and Alucard lay Seras back down in the coffin. He stood to his full height and pressed the button to lower the lid, closing the young vampire inside. After a moment of silence, he turned.

"I managed to get there in time," he said with eerie calm. His blood red gaze flicked to the pile of swords lying on the floor. "It was another of you Vatican dogs – a paladin Gabriel Michaelous. Another regenerator. You breed like cockroaches."

"Yer lyin." Anderson shook his head. "There's no regenerators but me."

"That'd be news to him then. He ambushed the Police Girl at the site of the latest FREAK attack. When I got there, he was ranting that he'd been sent by the Vatican to destroy the undead demon who'd eliminated Paladin Alexander Anderson."

"What are ye on about?" demanded the priest. "I'm not dead –" he broke off and swore. "Maxwell must think I –"

"I don't think it matters if you're dead or not, Judas Priest," Alucard said, taking a seat in the nearby chair and propping his boots up on the table. Anderson wasn't certain whether the vampire was keeping an eye on him or on his wounded fledgling.

"I didn't get much time to play with him – not with all the damage he'd done to the Police Girl and that cheap disappearing act you dogs seem to enjoy using. But I did laugh at him for his stupidity – I told him you were alive and well and being kept by us. And do you know what he said to that, Paladin Alexander Anderson?"

The name was drawled out in a mocking tone that made his hackles rise. Alucard didn't wait for a response. "He said, 'Dead or alive, Anderson has been destroyed by the forces of darkness. If alive, corrupted by exposure to their influence for so long. The only thing awaiting him now at the Vatican is a merciful death so his soul may rest in peace AMEN'." The vampire spat the last word at him, and broke into his strange laughter at the look on Anderson's face.

"Lyin demon hellspawn!" Anderson roared at him. The other gave him a look of amusement and malice.

"I don't need to lie tonight, Judas Priest. The truth is far more entertaining." Alucard rose to his feet and gave a mocking short bow. "Goodnight, former dog of the Vatican. Don't disturb the Police Girl, or I'll see to it you're put down." And he walked out through the wall with barely a ripple.

Anderson cursed between his teeth and struggled against his paralysis for a brief moment. A pain in his side warned him of what would happen if he continued, and without anyone to close his stitches back up if he tore them, he was forced to subside. He lay his head back, staring up at the ceiling and feeling like the world had been cut out from beneath him.

The demon had to be lying. There were no other regenerators. The Vatican would not give up on him so easily. So who had forged and blessed those blades, identical to his? No! He was a servant of the one true God, not a weapon to be tossed aside at the slightest hint of damage. He had committed no crime, except that of overestimating the strange vampire Incognito.

He had been cared for by the vampire, but not corrupted, not bitten, not –

Just like that soldier he'd killed.

That Gareth that Seras had mentioned.

Anderson's face went pale and his throat worked. With a groan, he turned his face to the wall.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned..."