Walter dialled another number and held the receiver to his ear, taking a sheet of paper from a subordinate as he did so.
"Hello" said a voice from the other end "West Midlands enquirer, John Hoskins, editor."
"Ah," said Walter, rubbing one hand across his brow, "Mr. Hoskins, I believe that you may have recently received some photographs of an unusually large swarm of bats flying across the sky."
"How the hell do you…"
"I work for the government, Mr. Hoskins. This is a friendly call to advise you not to put it in your newspaper, or the policemen who will visit you within the hour to confiscate the photographs will have to seize your entire printing run as well."
"What the hell is this, some sort of prank call? Look, even if you do work for the government, there's no way you can suppress…"
"Yes there is, Mr. Hoskins. When you have no paper tomorrow, only you will be to blame" He put the phone down. Oh damn, this was proving to be a stressful night. Unavoidable, but stressful. If Hellsing was going to take on this idiotic mission to rescue this papist regenerator, they had to do their best. Honour demanded little else. Failure would see them become the laughing stock of the Round Table and the Vatican. So, they needed to send an operative capable of tracking and fighting whoever had captured the priest as soon as possible. Who better than the nominal head of their investigation division, former policewoman Seras Victoria?
"I always get these sorts of jobs" she had complained at Walter as she dissolved into a cloud of bats on the Hellsing mansions helipad. He had warned her to try and stay as out of sight as possible, but it was nigh on hopeless. Bats were not built for incredible speed, nor for any altitude above a few hundred feet. He and the rest of the media management department had their work cut out for them. Hopefully, she would be able to gain some height on the thermals over the coast, or at least avoid the major shipping lanes…that's all they needed, swarms of bats plastered over the inshore radio channels.
His phone rang again, indicating that yet another of their plants had just noticed the delivery of photographs of bats to his newspaper. Walter groaned as he picked up the receiver. This mission had better be worth all this.
Seras hugged low over the Irish countryside, doing her best to keep to lowly populated valleys and narrow ravines, but still by no means moving un-noticed. It was damn near impossible for a swarm of over two hundred bats to move un-noticed on a bright summers evening with the waxing moon up. Elder vampires across the British Isles must have been cackling at such an immature and wanton display of ability. Maybe she should be glad that her line of work kept her far out of the social circles of any other vampires, except the ones who'd decided that the rest of the planets population was beneath them and they really needed a Mercadium-processed quicksilver round in their brain.
She really hoped that none of the many people she saw pointing and gawping at her were bat enthusiasts. Bat enthusiasts would have had several things to say about the abnormally small, abnormally light haired and fanged pipistrels*. Damn, whatever form she took, she was blonde. Her hound was a golden retriever for goodness sakes. A golden retriever? Alucard had that huge, demonic Afghan hound, whilst she had something that Walter had once described as 'Quite adorable actually', despite its excessive amount of eyes. She couldn't help but feel it made the job easier for him.
She reformed at a small bus-stop five miles from the outskirts of Belfast, rocking slightly as she made the transition from two hundred odd airborne perspectives to one ground based one. She then checked herself over thoroughly. Her arms still bent the right way, thumbs were on the right bit of the hand, face looked forwards, breasts were the right size, legs the right length…one would have thought that re-assembling yourself afterwards would be a natural process, But no, it actually required quite careful control, or you looked like a cross between a human and a giant bat, which was not a very pretty sight.
It was also exhausting, not just the transformations at either end, but the whole flying bit in the middle. It was one of the fastest means vampires had to travel, next to shadows or simple teleportation, but it did take a lot out of you, especially such a long journey as the one she'd just had. She reached into her coat, found one of the blood packets she had picked up before the mission and drained it quickly, shivering at the unholy nourishment it provided. Licking her lips with her un-naturally long tongue, she put the spent packet back in one of her inside pockets before the bus arrived, not that anyone would probably have raised any fuss at her macabre Capri-sun.
Belfast was just as terrible a place as it had been when she last visited it two years ago. Terrorism and urban decay had worked their twin charms on it to create a festering cesspit of humanity. The FREAK problem here was the worst of any city in the British Isles. Damned FREAKs…they had thought when they destroyed the last factories that the problem would go away, but no…now the FREAKS merely passed their curse on by their bite, a new and modern species of the undead made by arrogant man. It was this huge FREAK population that caused Belfast to be such a battleground between Hellsing and Iscariot. The Catholics were constantly tracking targets across the border to the city, where Hellsing officers would pick up the same target and launch a simultaneous attack. The results were seldom pleasant, and, due to the Vatican's use of regenerators, the casualty count seldom favoured Hellsing.
The bus dropped her off, after a forty minute ride, in a run-down part of the city, near where they had the last definable evidence of Father Lieberwitz's presence, a building full of dead FREAKs and Ghouls he had exterminated…but apparently he'd never left the building. He certainly hadn't made his normal phone call afterwards to tell his superiors back in Dublin that he had completed his mission. When the police got there, they had found evidence of a great struggle on the top floor: bullet holes, bloodstains, but no sign of the Catholic priest…at least none that they, bound to scientific modes of thought, could discern. They could hardly know that the priest they were looking for could survive being cut in half with little more than an amused grin.
Damn, where was this place? She looked down at the hand-drawn map she had made for herself back at Headquarters…damn, she should have asked Walter to do it. She was hopeless at this sort of thing.
"You lost, love?"
Oh damn, this was all she needed. She turned, and saw a young man of about twenty-three walking towards her, holding a flick-knife.
"Look, mate," she said, returning the map to her inside pocket. "It would seriously be in your best interests to just piss off right now and forget you ever saw me."
"Yeah, whatever love, now hand over your…"
Seras was tired, angry and still rather hungry. This was the last bloody straw. She leapt at the man with a hiss and dug her fangs into his neck. He gurgled as she drank about two pints of his blood (damn, she had forgotten how good it tasted warm), more than he could comfortably afford to lose without feeling quite ill, and then, dropped him to the ground, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.
"I did warn you." She said to the blubbering would-be mugger. "But you just wouldn't listen, would you? Thanks for the drink, by the way. Here, get yourself one." She dropped a twenty pound note on his chest and left him lying there in the alleyway. His wounds would already be healing over. With any luck he would now go and get rat-arsed on cheap lager to the point where no-one would care to pay any heed to his tales of being bitten by a vampire.
She hoped he was superstitious. She could imagine him checking for his reflection for weeks to come. That brought a smile to her face as she rounded the corner to find the crime scene. She saw several men, obviously policemen, waiting in front of the door.
Maybe the blood had made her a bit light headed, but she decided she would scare them a bit. Nothing like mortal terror to make someone give you some respect.
She blended into the shadows next to the wall, coming to within a couple of metres of the policemen without them noticing her. She listened to them talk.
"So, when does this 'Special officer' arrive, anyway?"
"I don't know. You never know anything with this 'Hellsing' bunch, they're a funny lot, all sorts of weirdoes working for 'em…"
"Weirdoes, gentlemen?" Asked Seras, stepping from the shadows, causing them all to jump. "That's a new one, anyway." She withdrew her Hellsing ID from an inside pocket and handed it to who she judged to be the senior officer. He looked it over, warily.
"Eye colour red?" he said, after a few moments, looking up at her. She dropped her spectacles and let him look into her crimson eyes.
"You'd better believe it" she said, hitching them back up. The man passed her ID back to her, looking almost fearfully at her chin.
"Erm…have you, er…been in a fight, miss?"
"What?"
"You've got…er…blood, on your chin. Right there."
Seras grinned. "Oh sorry," she said, and extended her tongue to lick it off, causing all the men to flinch in something approaching dread. They had obviously heard what they had thought to be the more colourful rumours about Hellsing, rumours which she was now confirming.
"I always was a messy eater. Now, lets have a look at this crime scene."
She was pretty sure she could count on their full co-operation on this mission.
"I still don't understand why you say you're not my mother." Arthur said, sadly, at the imposing blonde haired figure standing at the window, looking up at the moon. She could never remember the night sky being red before…the moonlight seemed to shine like blood.
"Arthur," she said, as she turned around, "I am not the woman who gave birth to you. I am undead, surely you know from what you've learnt what that means?"
"But mum…you look the same, you speak the same, you even chew those stupid cigars the same…you're the same person…"
"Just in a very different body." She came closer to him. "Look at me Arthur." She opened her mouth wide "Look at my teeth, Arthur, what do you see?"
The little child paused for a moment…
"Well?"
"Fangs, mum…you've got fangs."
"Precisely Arthur, and you of course know what that means."
"It means you're a vampire, mum."
"Precisely." She walked over to the bookcase that lined one wall, and began toying with a volume of Milton. "I'm a vampire. A walking corpse, Arthur. A dead body with no pulse or heartbeat. I'm driven by dark cravings you could never imagine, Arthur. That's what makes me different. I can no longer trust myself to be around people. There's a part of me that wants to drink their blood all the time Arthur. That part of me even wants to drink your blood."
The fair haired child looked scared "You're not are you…"
She smiled, tight lipped. "No, of course not Arthur. I can control it. But what if I lose control? That's why I can't be near you Arthur, for your own good." And of course, she thought bitterly, how can you, the future head of Hellsing, whose destiny it is to fight the evil undead every night of your life, be allowed to love a vampire? What if, when the time came, you hesitated, remembering the pale skinned, red-eyed monster who was your mother, and could not pull a trigger, or give an order, and ended up like me, dying in the street…
She heard the scrape of the chair behind her. She turned, and saw the little boy walk up to her. He paused for a moment, then hugged her round the waist.
"I still love you, mum…even though you're all cold."
She felt the tears well up. Oh no, she was going to weep blood all over her beloved son…she pushed him off, as gently as she could manage with her hideous strength, and ran from the room, the first red droplets beginning to run down her face. She ran through the mansion as quickly as she could, taking the back stairs to avoid meeting anyone, her arm over her face, praying she met no-one, praying no-one saw the blood dripping from her eyes. She banged open the cellar door, and ran down the steps, almost stumbling the last few, along the corridor and to her temporary quarters. She slammed the door shut and fell against it, the warm trickles of blood running down her face to leave great crimson stains on her white shirt and impeccable blue cravat.
"You must leave all human bonds behind you."
Her head jerked up when she heard that deep, mysterious voice.
"Alucard?"
He seemed to appear from the shadows in front of her, fully dressed in his coat and hat, sunglasses over his eyes.
"Integra." He said, sitting down in the chair at which she had had her meal, removing his ridiculous eyewear and looking her in the face.
"I…Why did…"
"You're asking me, Integra, why I am so angry at you. Why I've been avoiding you, yes?"
"I thought you'd be pleased!" She blurted out. "I thought at least someone would like me more as a vampire than as a human!"
Alucard began to laugh. "You don't get it, Integra, do you?"
"What?" She asked, wiping the blood tears from her eyes with stained gloves, "Don't get what?"
He smiled grimly at her. "Who is the dearest person to you in the world, Integra?"
"Seras." She said, without thinking, then she stopped. "No, wait…"
"Don't apologise, Integra, or try and change your answer. Because it's the truth. Seras is now your world, your life, your master. Did you not understand what that word means, Integra? No, how could you. Up until you were turned you had only seen it from one side…Now, we have all seen it from both sides, and you know what it means now, don't you, the sheer joy of obedience, the love, the respect?"
"I...didn't know…"
"Hah! No-one ever does, until it comes. Whilst I waited down in that cellar, for all
those years, do you think I was planning on how well I would serve Hellsing? No! I was pondering the infinite number of ways I could kill Van Helsing's cursed heir when they should be foolish enough to come for me…But when I licked your blood off the floor, Integra, the bonds came on me, those dark rituals he had performed, the seals he had etched into my hands. I became yours Integra. I was a prince in life, a count, and a No Life King in death, an aristocrat of the night, and yet, suddenly I was the servant, and the servant of a thirteen year old girl at that."
He looked slyly at her.
"A very…hormonal…thirteen year old girl."
If Integra had been capable of blushing, she would have.
Alucard grinned "You seem to forget that I can read people's minds like open books, Integra. And, whilst at first you were a bit young for my tastes, I certainly did not mind your fantasies once you had grown to be more of a woman…"
She gave him a dirty look. "Alucard…"
The nosferatu grinned, but it was hollow. He replaced his glasses.
"I wanted you, Integra. I wanted you more than I have ever wanted anyone before. What made that want more keen was the fact that, unlike everyone else before then, I could not just take you. I had to…tempt you."
"You mean…"
"All those offers of my blood, all those contrite arguments of how much good it would do Hellsing, all those times I interrupted your sleep, all those eyes in your mirror, all of it, every single last bit, was my courtship of you, Integra. For years I tried. Even when you lost your virginity to that pampered cretin I didn't despair. There are always ways and means, Integra. The world of shadow has no rules that cannot be broken. I found a way, as a matter of fact. In one of the books up in the library…not that I will ever need to use it now. It might have been hard to get you to agree to carry out as well, when I come to think of it…but, anyway, what does that make? Twenty four years, Integra. Twenty four years of slow, painstaking work…and then, I lose you in a single night."
She didn't understand. "What do you mean 'lost me', Alucard?"
"I mean exactly that, Integra. You are no longer capable of loving me."
"I am…who else would I…?"
"The police girl of course."
Integra shook with anger. She slammed her fist down on the table, causing it to crack. "What the hell are you implying Alucard!? That I'm bisexual? A lesbian? I've never…"
Alucard stood, his face grim. "Stop lying to yourself Integra. You know your own recent thoughts about the police girl, and though the blood bond is strong enough to alter anyone's outlook, you know as well as I do that you have not always been comfortable with your sexuality."
"WHAT!?" She fumed, smashing her palm on the table again, ploughing straight through the wood with a great splintered crash.
"Integra, you were a virgin till the age of twenty-eight and you wear men's clothes. Most other people…" She struck him, smashing his glasses from his face to shatter against the wall. "That's a damned malicious lie, Alucard!" she screamed "How the hell should how I dress or choose to act lead you to opinion like that, eh?" She punched him again, in the chest. He just laughed, seemingly unperturbed by blows that would have reduced a normal man to shreds of bloodied meat. "Even if you hadn't been broadcasting sexual angst like a lighthouse at me for your whole teenage years, it isn't to hard to guess most of your little complexes and insecurities Integra…especially if you've read a certain little book."
She stepped back, lowering her fist. "You've…read my diary?"
"I read it every night after you went to sleep. Some of the poems about me were actually quite good."
She fell back against the wall, cradling her face in one hand.
"You bastard…"
"Save it for the police girl. I'm sure she'll be more than happy to kiss you better."
Her face became a mask of rage as she sprang at him, but he simply stepped backwards through the wall, chuckling, leaving her to claw at blank stone. She slid down the cold surface…oh god. What he'd said was true, and she knew it. She remembered those thoughts she'd had when she was a teenager, those ones that began 'Well, If I don't seem to like boys…', but…no, that had just been her own angst and insecurity, hadn't it? She just wasn't a sexual person, she was too shy to ask boys out, she was too intimidating, she never got invited to parties…those were the reasons, surely? Surely…?
She held her head in her hands. She just didn't know. She'd never known, she'd just managed to bury it all, to get on with work. She'd hated making love to her husband, but surely anyone would hate doing anything remotely affectionate with that pig…Yes of course….but now, everything was coming up. Not just the recent horrific changes in the last week, the impact of vampirism, of her bond with Seras, but all that old insecurity, about her identity, her sexuality…
She sobbed again, feeling yet more blood trickle down her cheek. She was thirty-seven years old, dead as a doornail and she didn't have the faintest idea who or what she was.
