But having a first hand idea of their feelings didn't do anything to make Seras feel more at ease. Knowing that they knew how she felt, made her feel very exposed and nervous.
But she had a better feel for the two men and she knew she'd be a little insulted and a little hurt if one of them drew away from her the way she was drawing away from them.
But… she thought it would be too easy to lose herself under the tide of Walter and Alucard's emotions and hungers.
Don't try to lie to us or to yourself.
But…
The buts were making her head swim. She had too many objections swarming through her head that she found she didn't actually want to listen to, even though she thought they were probably sensible objections.
"I want to know the rest of the story." She didn't particularly want to hear it, but she had to know.
Both Alucard and Walter regarded her silently, and Seras tried not to squirm under the weight of their eyes. Finally she sighed and sat down again. "But one of you keeps his hands to himself at all times."
Walter leaned away from Seras and folded his hands across his lap. "I'll be as perfect a gentleman as you require." He was still shaken from the experience and wasn't in any more of a hurry to see it repeated than Seras was.
Alucard betrayed no concern for repetition of the incident when he put his hands on her neck again, taking up working out the new knots of tension from her muscles. "Don't be too perfect. That would be dull." He waited for Seras to relax slightly before picking up the narrative again.
The Major turned away from Integra and her captor to watch the battle going on below. Integra's vision was still too clouded to be able to determine what was happening and she remained ignorant of the identities of the combatants.
"I won't let your final sacrifice goes unwitnessed, Miss Hellsing." Max waved dismissively over his shoulder. "I will be along to watch after Butler and Alucard finish their play."
Integra's shoulders straightened at the slight both to her status as a knight and her status as his enemy. Being dismissed so casually was an insult above anything else he could have done. Which was as he intended. She threw him a glance over her shoulder as Doc dragged her off the bridge that promised that the Major would pay for everything with this last tidbit thrown in on top as interest.
"Butler and Alucard?" Integra managed to choke out as the man in the bloodstained lab coat propelled, and eventually carried her through the hallways of the zeppelin when her legs gave out. She had stayed relatively unharmed through the thick of the battle down below, but all it took was a fraction of a second to reduce her to this. Doc had no respect for the woman's choice to remain weak.
He didn't answer and conveyed her deep into the hold of the zeppelin, where the hallway became narrower, the light remained unchanged in intensity, while somehow leaving more corners in shadow, and the air had an unpleasant weight to it. No human would voluntarily walk into this. The zeppelin's cargo made every instinct in living creatures that approached it scream to flee and even made the vampires' skin crawl with foreboding.
Finally they reached the door to the First's chamber. Two soldiers stood in front of the door; two more turned in their patrol of the side hallways to watch Doc's approach with the woman in his arms.
With a barked order, the door was opened and Millennium's mad scientist carried Integra Hellsing in to meet Millennium's progenitrix and answer to Alucard.
"'Answer to Alucard?'" Seras twisted around and looked at Alucard before standing and backing away from him. "Integra met Millennium's version of you?
"How do you know this? No more games. No more 'I'll tell you later in the story.' Just tell me now." Seras gave him a hard stare and crossed her arms under her breasts, hugging herself. The room darkened and shadows seemed to seep from the corners while Alucard met Seras' eyes expressionlessly.
The silence stretched and was broken when Seras realized that Walter was standing directly behind her, although she had not heard him move. "I doubt it will ruin the flow of your story," Walter said dryly after she noticed him, "to give her that specific piece of information. Otherwise she'll likely be too busy gnawing at the question to hear what you're trying to tell her."
Seras wished at that moment to understand what was passing between Walter and Alucard that she couldn't hear. Whatever it was, she saw Alucard nod his head fractionally at the other man before answering Seras.
"I ate the doctor. Consumed his soul and everything he knew and witnessed." He sat down in the chair and crossed his legs, looking neither proud nor ashamed of that admission. It was just as significant to him as having read the information in the newspaper.
By this time, Walter's hands on her shoulders came less as a surprise than a relief. Hearing Alucard describe what he did so baldly was appalling, but even more so, it reminded her that she still didn't know what had happened to Pip. There were so many unanswered questions and it seemed as though the more Alucard talked, the more questions she had.
She leaned back against Walter and felt his fingers on her shoulders tighten slightly in reaction before he put his arms around her and his hands over hers in a firm embrace. "Are you two ready to continue?" he prompted. When Seras nodded, he escorted her to his recently vacated seat and murmured with a smile that was a bare twitch of his lips, "Shall we continue our game of musical chairs? Please. Do sit."
She didn't look all that imposing if one looked at a photograph of her – something that couldn't convey the aura of power and menace that spread away from her like a fog. Approaching where the mummy was mounted on the wall, though, Integra began shivering, although she remained otherwise stoic.
Doc's steady footsteps faltered and slowed until he stopped at a painted line that arced across the floor. Mentally completing the arc, one could see that the First was the center of a circle the arc was part of.
"Ilse," Doc snapped.
A woman in Millennium uniform rose from behind a row of equipment with a voltage tester in hand. "There was some difficulty with some of the camera equipment, Doktor. I was just getting it back on line." She took in Integra's dirty and bloodied form in his arms with a look of patented scientific disinterest. "This is the one?"
"Yes, and the Major wants us to start waking her now," a nod toward the figure on the wall.
The blonde woman Doc had called Ilse approached her superior and looked Integra over. "What happened to her? I thought she was supposed to come in unharmed?"
"Schrödinger," Doc said as explanation and the woman nodded, needing no further answer.
She held out her arms and the man transferred Integra into her arms and hurried to a desk situated outside the arc and typed a series of commands into a waiting computer terminal. "Get started. The Major will be joining us soon."
Ilse laid Integra on a gurney and strapped her down before pushing the gurney over the line in the floor and positioning Integra directly in front of the shrouded form of the First.
From outside the zeppelin, penetrating even to the depths of its interior where the First's chamber was located and protected, came the sound of Big Ben's bells ringing cacophonously.
The chimes were fading away when Integra went stiff against the restraints and stifled a cry of surprised pain.
"So sorry, Miss Hellsing. Past experiments tell us that this part is quite painful." Doc sounded anything but sorry and he was humming to himself as he typed notes and commands into the computer in front of him. "It will all be over soon."
"Who is the First?" Seras asked. "What is the First?"
"She is what the name implies – the first vampire – the source of most vampires. She is mother to Millennium's trash."
Walter interrupted Alucard, clearing his throat and giving the other vampire a less than happy look.
Alucard tossed his head and made a exasperated noise. "She was only your mother as a vampire for a matter of hours. You are mine, not hers."
"Why aren't you hers?" Seras asked the question, even though she was nervous about the answer. She knew so little about Alucard's actual origins. Stoker's novel was a work of fiction, even if based on fact, and Seras didn't know how Alucard had actually gone from Vlad Dracula, ruler of Wallachia, to Dracula, the vampire, and scourge of London during a brief period at the turn of the century.
"I am not hers because no vampire sired me." Alucard leaned forward in his seat, eyes glittering. "I chose you because you don't know how to give up. I didn't give up even when Death himself stood before me. I would not die."
Behind her, Seras heard Walter murmur, "And you, my father, there on the sad height/ Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. / Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
"Perhaps." Alucard smiled slightly. "I did rage against my light dying, and God responded with his ironic sense of humor, taking light and giving me the dark." He sat back and flicked his fingers dismissively. "I have no sire save perhaps my Last Domain, but I do not owe my existence to Lilith, nor do either of you."
"Her name is Lilith?"
"Yes. From her rose the legend of the defiant Lilith, Adam's first wife, and a succubus who stole men's souls and seed and killed babies and children." He shrugged, "There's usually a germ of truth in legend. Perhaps she preferred the taste of children. They are delicious, I would agree."
Seras stiffened and Walter put a quieting hand on her shoulder. "When was the last time you fed from a child, Alucard?" he asked.
"It has been longer even than my servitude to Hellsing," the vampire replied and Seras relaxed, glancing up at Walter in thanks. Alucard's look for Seras was not conciliatory. "Children are delicious, but preying on the young is neither a challenge, nor good husbandry." He was beginning to look bored or impatient or both. "Are we finished with the discussion of my eating preferences?"
Abashed, Seras nodded. "Please finish the story."
"Lilith was the first vampire as far as either human or vampire history records. Where I have had centuries and the help of the Hellsing Organization to attain the level of power I possess, Lilith has had millennia. Her power is staggering."
Seras' eyes widened to hear Alucard describe another creature's abilities in such terms. She'd seen what her master had unleashed on London – at least part of it, since she could not remember the end of the battle – that the vampire capable of Alucard's feats of devastation would describe Lilith's power as "staggering" spoke loudly of her abilities.
"That sort of power does come with a price. Just as I required blood to wake me from my hibernation when Integra found me after her father's death…"
Walter leaned down and whispered to Seras, "I will tell you that story another time."
"Are you finished?" Alucard arched a brow at Walter and waited for the man's nod. "Just as I required blood to wake me, Lilith must feed to wake. However, just as her power is exponentially greater than mine, the power required to rouse her is exponentially greater. The tiniest taste of a soul is enough to rouse me from torpor; Lilith, she requires the entire soul to wake."
A/N: The poem Walter quotes is by Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night."
