The vampire looked the speaker over. She had a nice enough figure, if you liked female body builders, but he wasn't into the whole tattoo thing. What kind of woman covered half her body with tattooed words? Not his type, that was sure. He shook his head and tried to pretend he saw a friend of his across the bar. He stopped and stared evilly at the tattooed hand that rested on his bicep, gripping it with a strength that promised that she was holding back.
"Not me, you idiot. Vat vould you say if I told you that I know vhere you can find the hottest little piece of wampire since Lucy Vesternra took a stake in the heart? Und I know for sure that she is in a, shall ve say, receptif mood?"
Seras walked around the Hellsing grounds. She was so angry right then. It just wasn't fair that Integral had to always treat her like a third wheel. She'd been valuable. She'd killed vampires and ghouls, she'd even helped bail Integral's butt out of the fire when the Valentine Brothers attacked. Now that Alucard was showing some interest in her for the first time, why did that woman have to be so mean about it. Integral had had her chance and she hadn't taken it.
Seras knew that she should be in her room where Integral had ordered her to go, but she was feeling both restless and defiant. She told herself that she wasn't some teenage girl whose mum had grounded her. She was a valuable member of the Hellsing organization, a vampire and a woman who could and would make her own choices.
So she walked around the grounds. The moon was beautiful, the air was crisp and cool. It was a night when she could imagine herself swept up in strong arms and held close for a kiss that would make her knees weak.
She was snapped out of her fantasizing by the sound of an unfamiliar voice. "She wasn't lying. You are absolutely beautiful."
The man who had spoken was leaning against a tree nearby. She didn't recognize anything about him except the familiar smell that shouted, "Vampire!"
She knew she should do something, but Seras was unable to do anything but watch as he closed the distance between them. His eyes were locked on hers and she found herself melting into his arms as he pulled her close for a passionate kiss. Something in the back of her head was shouting at her that this wasn't something good, that she shouldn't be kissing this strange vampire, but it was obscured by a purple haze that settled over her vision as he kissed and caressed her more intimately than she'd ever been touched.
The vampire was suddenly wrenched away from her. When she opened her eyes, it was in time to see him bursting into a puff of dust that fell away from the hand that had punctured his heart. She looked up into the angry eyes of her Master. The anger in his eyes softened when his gaze met hers and for the second time that night, he swept her into his arms. This time, he used his considerable self-control to pull himself away from her entrancing eyes and stepped through a summoned portal to Seras' bedroom.
He dropped her almost harshly on her bed and turned away. "I cannot look at you like this, Seras."
She blushed and stammered an apology. "I don't know what happened. One minute I was out for a walk, and the next he was there and I couldn't help it. It was like it was someone else and all I could do was think of…" She trailed off, hoping he wouldn't ask her what she was going to say.
Alucard heard what she didn't say. It was right there, shouting at him from the top of her mind, "All I could do was think of you."
He couldn't look at her. It wasn't just the magical draw of her eyes, it was something more. He'd been alone for so long. Even before Abraham Van Helsing had taken his freedom and enslaved him, he'd been alone. His brides hadn't loved him the way this girl did. Despite what he was, she neither feared nor hated him. Despite what he'd taken from her and the way she still clung to her humanity, she still wanted him.
He'd known it before, but he'd been able to brush it off as a passing infatuation. He realized now, with the spell pushing him to pay more attention to her, that it wasn't just an infatuation – she earnestly cared about him. More frightening to him was the realization that he cared about her just as much. Seeing her in that other man's embrace had been the final straw for him, he couldn't deny that she was more than a toy.
He was turning to brave the glow of her eyes when a rap at the door turned him away again. He made a silencing motion at her as he faded into the floor.
She cleared her throat around the huge lump that had formed there and answered, "Who is it?"
Walter answered from the hallway, "Miss Victoria, I have found something about the spell. Sir Integral has requested that you join her in her office. She also suggested that you wear sunglasses, as she has summoned Alucard as well."
Seras sat uncomfortably in a chair in Integra's office, as far away from Alucard as she could get. He leaned against a wall on the other side of the room, with his hat drawn down over her face. Pip Bernadette sat on the edge of Integral's desk, despite the dirty look she'd given him when he'd settled his bum on her papers.
Walter stood as though ready to give a lecture, complete with several pages of typewritten notes. Seras' mind wandered as he gave them an extensive history of love spells, lust spells and vampiric reproduction!
Seras' mind stopped wandering and she paid careful attention to what Walter was telling them. Seras wasn't the object of a love spell, not even a lust spell. Oh no, she had been the target of a vampire fertility spell.
"How can I be under a fertility spell? Vampires can't have babies!" She stopped for a moment and remembered Integral's comment about litters of red-eyed offspring, "Can they?"
Alucard snickered from his side of the room, "Oh yes, they can, Police Girl. You see, when a boy vampire and a girl vampire lie down together and give each other a very special hug…"
"Master!" Seras tried to ignore Captain Bernadette as he fell off of Integral's desk onto the floor, laughing hard enough for tears to stream from his good eye.
"This is no time for cheap jokes!" Integral stood up from her desk and paced around the room. "Let me get this straight, Walter. You're telling us that Seras was the target of a fertility spell, that she and whatever vampire," she shot Alucard a dirty look, " she has intercourse with, will conceive a child, and that she will continue to exude this distracting 'allure' to any male vampire until she has conceived?
"This is entirely unacceptable!" Seras flinched when Integral glared at her.
"It wasn't my idea, Sir Integral!" Seras squirmed and wanted to know how it was that Alucard could sink through the floor. To top it off, Bernadette still hadn't stopped laughing, although he had managed to pull himself off the floor.
"Is there any way to remove this curse, Walter?" Seras crossed her fingers that Walter would give her the answer she wanted.
Walter shook his head at her. "I haven't found anything yet, Miss Victoria."
Integral paced the floor for several minutes. "I cannot countenance allowing vampires to breed in this fashion. It's bad enough that Alucard gets the occasional wild hair to have a toy." She missed Seras' glare at that comment. "We will need to keep Seras under wraps until we find an answer for this."
Alucard read Integral's intention and pushed away from the wall. He spoke inside her mind, rather than disagree with his Master with so many observers, You will not confine Seras as I was confined. She does not deserve such a cruel punishment. She is not strong enough to survive it and come through with her sanity intact. You will make her into a real monster.
Integral narrowed her eyes in anger at his presumption. We will speak more about this later, Servant.
Seras was afraid. She could see on Integral's face what she wanted to do with the young vampire. None of this made any sense. Who had cast this spell on her? Why?
And why did Integral have to act as though Seras had something to do with what was going on? Seras was too scared of the implications of this spell to see much of an up side to this. She remembered what had happened with that strange vampire who had kissed her outside. He had said, "She wasn't lying." Who wasn't lying? Someone had told him that Seras was here.
Neither Seras nor Alucard had told Integral about the vampire they'd seen outside. They knew without saying that Integral's reactions were too extreme right now. If she found out that a vampire had hunted Seras down on the estate, she was almost certain to have Seras locked away.
Seras slammed through the door to her room. "I don't want to have babies!" she wailed to the empty room. "I didn't know I could have babies! Why didn't anybody tell me that vampires could get pregnant?"
She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard her Master's voice tickle down her spine, "You never asked, Police Girl. I thought we had other things to worry about before we'd need to worry about whether the skeletal stork would be paying you a visit or not."
When Seras tried to turn around to look at Alucard, his hands gripped her shoulders and kept her in place. Even when she stopped trying to turn, he left his hands where they were. "Stay facing the other direction. It's safer this way. It's bad enough that your natural perfume is a virtual vampire intoxicant."
He sighed and Seras could feel his breath ruffle her hair. She shivered to feel his hands on her shoulders and know that he was close enough to lean on if she only dared. He said, "You're going to have to hide for a while. I want Walter to find a solution for this problem before Integral makes a decision I'll have to make her regret." His right hand left her shoulder for a moment and reappeared with an envelope he held in front of her face. When she took the envelope from him, she could feel a weight like coins or keys inside of it.
"Inside are two keys and two addresses. They are flats I keep in town." He smiled when she made a small noise of surprise. "I can come to Integral as quickly from a flat in London as I can come from my room downstairs. I don't actually enjoy living in a dungeon, Seras."
"But what if Sir Integral asks you if you know where I am?" Seras asked.
"Choose randomly and if she asks if I know where you are, I will tell her honestly that I don't know where you are. I won't mention that I have a fifty-fifty chance of guessing where you are." Alucard loved using small technicalities against Integral.
"How am I going to know when it's safe to come back? What happens if I'm found by more vampires. I don't want to end up having some random bad guy's baby."
"I always know how to contact you. Stay inside. Be careful. Don't go for walks. Watch that dreadful mind-destroying box. Just be careful and don't go wandering around. Do as I tell you, Seras Victoria."
Seras shoulders slumped, but she nodded her agreement to her Master's command. Before Alucard could say anything else, she pulled out a small suitcase and began piling clothes and toiletries into it.
Seras looked around the flat she'd chosen. It was beautiful. It had a gorgeous view of the river and the Tower Bridge. It was immaculately kept and either it had been professionally decorated or Alucard had much better taste than she would have guessed.
She was relieved to see that the bedroom was well provided for, with heavy blackout drapes and a discrete pedestal that concealed a coffin in addition to the huge bed.
She laughed when she saw that Alucard had "dreadful mind-destroying boxes" in both the living room and the bedroom. He had some very modern equipment for someone who pretended to be so scornful. She rummaged through his media collection and wasn't surprised by his taste in music (classical,) but she was surprised by his movie collection. He had modern tastes in movies and had a collection that included a lot of violent action movies and just about every vampire movie ever produced. She could just picture him sitting alone in this flat with a glass of blood in one hand, watching "Love at First Bite" and laughing uproariously.
Either that or shooting the tele.
The refrigerator was well stocked with blood. It seemed that she'd be able to stay here for some time without needing to leave for anything.
Unless you counted cabin fever.
Pip and Walter sat together in the kitchen. Pip's hair was down and Walter had unbuttoned his collar and let down his shirt garters. They had gotten into a habit of sitting down together with a bottle of Bourbon and telling tall tales at least once a week. For someone so young, Bernadette had a couple of stories that nearly rivaled some of Walter's more unusual experiences.
They also shared similar wicked senses of humor. Walter had just learned over the years to hide his genial depravity around the Hellsing family better than Pip had.
Pip was just in the process of sputtering a large swig of bourbon out his nose after a comment Walter had made about their resident immortal blonde. Integral had been on a tear since Seras had disappeared, but the girl had just dropped right off the map as far as the Hellsing Organization was concerned.
Walter thought that he had found the right direction in his research and that it would be possible to reverse the curse with a bit more time. He was taking a break from the library at that time because his eyes had started to blur too much for him to make any progress with his research. Walter wasn't a young man anymore, not the shinigami he'd once been.
Alucard had been more sullen over the past few days that Seras had been in hiding wherever she'd gotten to. The consensus among the men of Hellsing was that Seras had probably done the right thing in getting out of Integral's sight at this time. They knew what Integral would do with a vampire she saw as a liability.