Alucard's statement that Lilith required an entire soul to wake made Seras' stomach lurch; at the same time, Walter's fingers tightened on her shoulder. When she looked up, she saw that the lines on his face had deepened still more; the man standing behind her was the picture of the Walter Dornez she had known since joining Hellsing. This was clearly affecting Walter more strongly than his placid facial expression suggested.

Impulsively, she stood. "Sit down, Walter." When he tried to demur, she grabbed one of his hands and pulled on him until he came around the chair and sat.

Turning to Alucard, she asked, "Can I have your suit jacket?"

Rather than question her, he leaned forward and slipped the requested piece of clothing off, handing it to Seras and waiting to see what she intended to do with it.

Seras wrapped the jacket around her waist and sat on the floor at Walter's feet, leaning back against his legs. With a skirt as short as hers, there was no way she was going to take a position like that without something to help protect her modesty.

Walter met Alucard's eyes and cocked an eyebrow. This was progress, indeed. I doubt that she would appreciate knowing that she just wrapped a piece of you around her waist.

It's nothing more than shadow, less than a full piece of myself. Otherwise I would not have given her the jacket. I don't want an unexpected repetition of what happened earlier when we three touched.

I'm certain that Seras would appreciate that thought as much as I do. Walter reached out and smoothed down her hair. When Seras sighed and leaned her head back against his knees, he brushed the stray lock of hair away from where it had fallen across her right eye again and nodded toward Alucard that they were ready for the story to continue.


Alucard had allowed himself to be distracted. Integra had been behind protected lines, Seras had been with her, she should have been safe enough. The fight with Walter had been engrossing and he'd allowed himself to draw the engagement out for the pleasure of seeing his old companion go all out against him.

Walter had no holy relic to pull out in a last ditch attempt to destroy him as Paladin Anderson had. After fighting through a swath of leveled London buildings, their fight came to its inevitable conclusion with Alucard's victory, both over Walter in their personal battle, and over Millennium in their attempt to own and control his Angel of Death.

Big Ben's bells tolled out as Alucard took Walter's Millennium-ruled life and body. The last tones were ringing as Alucard created Walter's new body and pushed his soul into it. The vaguely man-shaped blob of shadow mass resolved itself into Walter's younger self by the time the bells quieted.

No longer needing to focus on Walter's re-creation, Alucard became aware that Seras and Integra were gone. He sensed Seras briefly in the top of Big Ben, but she winked out of existence. He knew she wasn't dead, but she was beyond his reach.

Integra, however, was in the zeppelin and not beyond his reach. His shadows were bearing him up to the Nazi dreadnought when the first bolt of pain struck him through the bond and seals with Integra.

While passing through the hull of the ship, Alucard had a flash of contact with Seras, but he was back in the material plane too quickly to get a fix on her location. Though he was concerned for his fledgling, his Master was his higher priority. He followed his bond with Integra into the depths of the ship, but was blocked by the walls and doors of the room where he sensed her.

He made short work of the four guards and took the key to the First's chamber off of one of their bodies. He felt the power behind the door stirring and bared his teeth in anticipation of the confrontation, although, for the first time since the Hellsing family had begun its experiments in "perfecting" him, Alucard did not feel completely confident of his inevitable victory.

The door opened easily with the key and Alucard felt Lilith's power thrusting through the open portal. Integra's presence was a thin thread in the roar of the First's presence, but it was there. He fell to shadows that swept across the room toward Integra only to stop short at the line painted on the floor.

Ilse looked up from watching Integra when Alucard's presence had disrupted Lilith's dominance of her chamber. She placed her body between Integra's and the outside of the circle; she had been part of this project almost from the beginning and wasn't going to see it derailed so close to completion.

Doc – all males in fact – was repelled by Lilith's aura. When she slept, it was merely unpleasant to men, but as she roused, her aura became physically impossible for a male to penetrate unless she willed it. Alucard was encountering that problem. Doc had had nearly sixty years in which to learn from partial awakenings just how far the impenetrability extended – thus the line on the floor for his own convenience and reference in preparation for her final and full awakening.

Females, on the other hand, could thrive in Lilith's presence once they learned to overcome the feeling of dread that the First broadcast indiscriminately. Both Rip Van Winkle and Zorin Blitz had spent time helping the Doktor's research. Prolonged exposure to Lilith's presence had changed the women, giving Rip and Zorin their special abilities. Ilse had not come through the years working with Lilith unchanged, either, but was not put into combat because Doc still needed a female to do the close work with their ultimate weapon and Ilse's gift from Lilith did not lend itself well to war.

Doc had frozen at his computer terminal when Alucard invaded the First's sanctum. He didn't fear that Alucard could stop the awakening. It was far too late for that, but the warped genius wanted to survive to see Lilith fully conscious. He'd never been able to risk allowing her full consciousness before this day and he didn't want to die without having seen her full power.

Motionlessness might work for rabbits faced with a fox in a meadow, but Doc was faced with a far higher order of predator. When Alucard was certain he could not penetrate the circle on his own, he turned on the nearest target. Millennium's mad scientist had time for a single choked cry of agony before the shadows closed over him and dissipated, leaving no trace of him behind.

Alucard absorbed the information from the scientist's soul and howled.

The echoes were dying away when Seras appeared, bloodstained, but whole, if one counted the shadow limb, which Alucard of course did.


"How did I do that?" Seras sat up straighter while smoothing Alucard's jacket over her knees. She didn't like the way the story was going, but what was there to do about it? As Walter had pointed out, she had already gotten through whatever Alucard was going to tell her, but somehow that didn't console her when she knew that Integra hadn't gotten through it, and she wasn't sure that Pip had, either.

"You did what I've been trying to get you to do since I turned you – you embraced your vampiric nature and used it."

Walter nudged Seras with a knee until she scooted forward. With his legs on either side of her body, he slid off of the chair onto the floor and put his arms around her. The disturbing nature of the things she kept learning from the story left her unwilling to make him stop, even if she stiffened and drew away out of deeply ingrained habit. Was it so wrong to want someone to hold her while she listened to the story of the deaths of people she cared about?

Slowly, she relaxed back against Walter and braced herself for the resumption of the tale.


The blood that flew when Seras pulled away from Schrödinger had no place to land and dissipated into the eternal nothing the pair occupied. Schrödinger mewled and tried to get away from her, counting on leaving her there to dissolve into nothingness, but that would only work if he could just escape her grip.

Resisting the urge to snarl from the pain that was wracking her with every moment InBetween, Seras wrapped her legs around the creature that masqueraded as a boy and pulled his body to meet hers. While she drank from him and felt his soul fighting to stay in his body, to stay free of captivity to her, Seras could feel herself becoming less not just physically, but in other, less tangible ways.

With Schrödinger's blood, Seras was healing her body as quickly as the spaces of InBetween claimed pieces of her to fill its gaps, but his blood was doing nothing to heal the losses she felt in her mind, and on a deeper level that she guessed might be her soul, or spirit, or anima; whatever it was that made her an individual. The pain of that loss was far greater than any pain to her body. Seras found herself sobbing while she continued to drink and fight Schrödinger for possession of his soul. Learning what he knew was her only chance to find her way out of this space before it was too late.

When the agony suddenly abated, Seras shivered, her whole body relaxing from its stiff posture. She hadn't realized just how bad it had been until it was released. A feeling of warmth and comfort enveloped her; the scent of Pip invaded her nostrils and made her look around, even as she continued her struggle with Schrödinger.

Finish him, quickly, chère, I can't protect you for long. Pip's voice was taut with suppressed pain.

What do you mean? What are you doing? Seras felt panic welling and did everything she could to push it down. She could panic later when she knew she wasn't going to dissolve into a bit of mortar holding the bricks of the universe together.

You don't think I died for you just to let you die now, do you? Now finish him! Was his voice weaker? The panic surged back to the fore.

Seras sobbed and focused her attention on the creature in her arms. This thing held the key to getting her and Pip back to London.

Despite whatever Pip was doing, the pain was creeping back, nibbling at her concentration and taking tiny nips out of her thoughts – nips that became nibbles; nibbles that became bites; bites that began to tear at her mind and soul.

Finally, with a last snarling hiss, Schrödinger let go of his body and Seras drew his soul into herself, straining everything he knew through the filter of her own soul until she knew him as well or better than he knew himself. Using that knowledge, she began to pull herself together, literally, drawing the lost pieces of herself back from where InBetween had stolen them away.

Pieces of herself…

Pip had been silent since ordering her to finish Schrödinger.

Seras cast around for the familiar feel of the mercenary's soul, already knowing, with a sick feeling in her stomach, that he was gone. Seras brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them to herself, weeping while Schrödinger's corpse dissolved into the crevices between everything.

It took Seras a few minutes to cry and to regain her mental footing after losing a soul she treasured and gaining one from a creature she hated. She hated Schrödinger all the more so because he had cost her Pip. There would be no heaven or hell for her love, only nothingness.

When she thought she'd managed to put Schrödinger away inside herself and found enough of her mind to be able to think and fight, Seras willed herself to the First's chamber on the Hindenberg II, knowing, because Schrödinger knew, what the Major had planned for Integra.

Seras' first impression was from Lilith. She could not look away from the bound and bandaged figure that hung on the wall like a cocoon, ripe with promise that whatever emerged would definitely bite. She was repulsed, yet attracted.

When Seras could drag her eyes away from Lilith's figure, her next impression was that Integra was strapped down in front of the thing on the wall and was arched up against the straps with an expression of strained agony on her face while a female vampire held her down and warily watched something out of Seras' immediate field of vision.

Alucard's voice spun her around to face her sire, "Lilith is consuming her soul."


"That's it?" Seras was stiff in Walter's arms again. "After everything he sacrificed, after the fight with that bitch with the tattoos, after giving his life for me, Pip dies InBetween because of me?"

"Would you have had him sacrifice his life for you for nothing?" Walter asked, still holding her despite her closed and withdrawn body language.

"No! I don't want him to have sacrificed his life at all!" Seras twisted to look at Walter. "Don't you understand?"

He pushed the rebellious lock of hair away from her face again and looked at her with the eyes of a man who had been a warrior since childhood and watched many people die over the years. "I do."