Chapter nine is up! Hooray! I have taken into account all the suggestions I have been given, and I have tried hard to better my writing. I hope you enjoy this chapter. Next chapter will be very important, so it may take me a while to formulate/write it. Enjoy!


The soft evening light streamed through the window, the pale illumination caused by the moon casting a gentle shine on the inside of the room, on Integra who was smoking a cigar in secret. It had only been a week… one week. One little cigar couldn't hurt. As she took deep drags from the expensive cancer stick, she promised herself that this would be her last… at least for the nine months she needed to stop smoking. Ah… the feeling was wonderful, the tang of the tobacco on her lips, the taste of smoke in her mouth, the soothing affect it had on her nerves.

She smoked in silence for a while, though sorely sorry when the last of the cigar was burnt to the quick, and she had to snuff the butt out in her ashtray, greatly resisting the urge to light another cigar from the embers of the finished one. Farewell, cigars. The wind hummed outside like a requiem mass.

Crossing the room, she eyed the sword that had been gifted to her, which had since been mounted on the wall, along with a few other of her decorative weapons. The blade gleamed bright and cold in the moonlight. Integra lifted the instrument from the hooks, cradling it in her hands. It was beautiful.

While caressing the sharpened end of the rapier, Integra's hand accidentally slipped, and the razor edge slit the tip of her finger. Red blood seeped through her glove, and cursing, she removed the stained article of clothing.

"Let me clean that up, Master."

Alucard loomed in front of her, a hungry gleam in his eyes, and an expectant grin on his lips. Integra said nothing, merely holding out her hand, her finger glistening with red liquid. A second was not wasted once she had given him her silent consent. Taking her bare, bloodied hand in his larger gloved one, he brought her finger to his lips, lapping up the blood in a desperate sort of way.

Nothing else compared to Integra's blood. When he had first tasted it in the dungeon, when he first had been awakened by it, Alucard had hungered for nothing else. It was wonderfully rare. Blood so thick and rich as hers was not commonplace. It was bitter, and yet sweet at the same time, with a wonderful, smooth texture on the tongue. He savored every last bit, and when the wound yielded no more, he ached for another taste.

Integra smiled in a knowing sort of way.

"You have a knack for appearing whenever blood is spilt."

"I know when you bleed. I hear it, I smell it, I taste it on the air. Please, master… give me more…"

He circled behind her, creating a close proximity between the two of them. With his hand, he brushed her silvery blonde locks to one side of her shoulder, exposing the soft, unmarred skin of her neck. Leaning foreward slightly, he nuzzled her behind her ear, behind her jaw, at the base of her neck…

"So close… All I would need to do is give you a little nip… but you are protected by the seals set in place by your ancestors…pity."

His mouth watered as he ran his teeth gently over her skin, so desperately craving what he knew he could not have. He could hear the blood singing through her veins, the melodious rhythemic sound like a symphony in his ears, driving him wild with desire. He nudged her neck gently.

Was she hearing things, or had he just whimpered just a little? Integra stood strong, still holding the sword at her side. He always got like this when she fed him her blood, becoming lusty and forgetting the boundaries between the two. Personal space was usually kept, but not when there was blood in the air. His nose and lips were cold against her neck, making her skin sting like it was being touched by ice.

"Integra… Let me drink from you. Think of it! You would be a glorious draculina, a lovely no life queen, my beautiful countess… You would enjoy the immortality… the power… I know you would." He hissed gently in her ear, desire dripping from his lips as the sentence rolled off his tongue.

Integra clenched her fist around the sword's handle, her fingernails digging into the leather grip.

"I should run you through for touching me, slave, let alone for all the implications you have uttered with your heathen tongue. Remove yourself at once."

However, Alucard did not. Instead he nibbled her ear in an artful way, his tongue parting his lips and rolling onto her skin. Integra sneered in a disgusted way.

"I still will not tell you who gave you that sword, Integra."

"Because you did."

Alucard chuckled.

"I knew you would have figured it out sooner or later. I know you are no simpleton. No one knows you so well as I. It is fitting I should be the one to father our child."

She turned, breaking herself away from him.

"Excuse me? This is not our child, and you shall not be fathering it. This is my heir. Nothing will change between the two of us. I will give birth, and you will carry on as you have always done. You are nothing more than a servant. Like a stud horse you have been used merely for the sake of carrying on my line. You will have no part in my child's life. What manner of father would you make anyway, you worthless fiend? Would you truly love my child, or would you only see it as a way to gain power, to control Hellsing vicariously through your offspring? Would you hug my child, read it stories and tuck it in at night before it went to sleep? You are a monster. You cannot raise a child. Your purpose in the life of this child is finished. Absolutely nothing is going to change."

Her voice was strong and stern, carrying an air of absolute, implacable authority, her bespectacled eyes glinting like spearheads. The fire in Alucard diminished with her words. His face grew cold and solemn. Something in her words had almost stung. Alucard was not one to be intimidated by verbal abuse, but something about her manner had dissarmed him. Worthless? Incapable of love? Is that what she thought of him?

"I have a right to love whomever I choose, Integra."

"You could not love a child, Alucard."

"That is not who I mean."

Integra scowled, bearing her fangless teeth at him. Pitiful human teeth as they were, the look of utter disdain on her face could not have been mistaken.

"You mistake lust for love, Alucard. If I died would you mourn me? Would you cry over my grave and wail and sob and feel like the depths of your soul had been ripped out? Or would you only pity the waste of power? Would you truly care? Would you? No… your unlife would just go on… meaningless, servile and cold. You may have ultimate power, but you have paid for it dearly with your soul. A person is nothing without their humanity. You do not feel the way we do, Alucard. You do not feel joy and hope and pain and loss the way we do. You cannot love me."

"You forget I was once like you. I still carry the mark of humanity with me, like a scar that will not ever truly dissappear. You do not know how I feel, Integra. What I feel. You deny me all I want. How can you think it does not affect me?"

Integra's eyes narrowed, staring at him straight in the face. Their gazes matched one another's, eyes locked for a moment in a silent battle.

"And what do you want, Alucard?"

Sarcasm dripped from her voice, Her words resounding solemn and grave in the moonlit room. Alucard's eyes sparkled, and he drew a step closer, neither of them touching, but their bodies so close. He could feel her radiate such emotional coldness , and for a moment, he silently basked in the authority eminated by her. There was no one else quite like her. He reached out, with a white gloved hand, and cupped her cheek in it. It was strange how human the motion felt to Integra, the way his thin fingers caressed her skin made it almost seem… like he was alive. He stared at her, drowning in her powerful presence. His red eyes flickered with the echoes of some unannounced emotion… was it sadness?

"I thought you would know."

Integra's brows furrowed over her pale eyes, as she slapped his hand away from her face, and brought the sword up to his chest, the point of it touching the fabric on his bright red coat.

"Leave me."

Her simple command said a thousand things. Her tone was paved on anger, despite the placid and level pitch she had used. She did not need to raise her voice, to yell or scream to get her fury across. The dangerous expression of her eyes, the thin, straight line made by her lips… the message was all to clear. Alucard turned without any fight, to stride in an almost dejected manner from the room.

Once out of one another's presence, Integra wilted onto the sofa that sat near the wall. Why? The simple phrase was all that ran through her head as she asked herself that one word question that she couldn't possibly answer.

Alucard had since retreated to his room, sitting on the edge of his shut coffin. Integra… she was a blessing and a curse. He could not have the one thing he desired above all else. She would die before she submitted to him, before she agreed to be his countess. What she had said to him… the unfair judgements she had passed… he couldn't help but feel they were, in some way true. Was she only attractive because of her power over him? Did he only want her, because he knew she was the one person he could not have? Could he really love her… or a child, for that matter? Was there any humanity left within him? A feeling of inadequacy consumed him. She was right. He was, after all, just a monster.


Okay! There you have it.

I dunno exactally where this chapter came from... I just started writing and couldn't stop, and I feel like it came out allright. It could be better, however.

Yeah. I still don't own Hellsing. Just so you guys know. And I apologise to Kohta Hirano for the royal debauchery of his characters.

Cheers,

Kimi-Taco