Book Dragon: "Thanks goes out to pruningshears, Fruityone, KrysSaiyan, blazingfirewolf, and Lord Makura for reviewing last chapter. Thank you everyone who's given support. A note (for anyone who bothers to read this) yes, there will be more characters appearing… I don't own Hellsing (and never will). On with the chapter!"
Chapter 6
A new part of town to see, the blood splatter was chaotic. And what she needed. It was nice to forget who you were for a little while. The Ghouls were starting to escape down the street, but she planted a few bullets in the correct places. Head and Heart. A lovely combination. Her gun clicked, declaring itself empty. She dug out a new clip and slammed it home and had some more target practice while listening to Alucard blast things apart.
"Get back here, bastard!"
Lorian turned to see what he was snarling about. Instead of him she found the vampire in question flying towards her. This had never happened before. She swirled the gun around on him, but was far too slow. He grabbed her by the shoulder and lifted her up, off the ground. The gun went off, but only buzzed meaninglessly over his shoulder and into the pavement. He batted it away, out of her hand, a lanky kid maybe eighteen when he was twisted and turned, laughing at her and opening his mouth to claim her as the gun clanked on the ground.
Dangling before him by her shirt, she raised one hand and clawed his face, snarling and kicking him. Most of it was useless, just meant to buy a little time. Still, the expression was hilarious. He'd never been clawed like that before, and he looked stunned, the nail marks streaking across his face, but only for a moment before the skin began to stitch back together. She was swinging her leg to kick him again when Alucard came up behind him.
The look on his face made her freeze.
He wasn't smiling. He looked pissed off. It distorted the grin on his face and made it look like a snarl. He around about, fast, in a flicker of a second and grasped the little vampire's arm. It came off with a simple tug of his fingers, severed from the elbow down.
Lorian found herself falling, and landed hard on her feet, gritting her teeth against the sudden flare of pain, but ignored it. The limb went unseen as it uncurled its fingers from her shirt and hit the ground with a morbid thud, twitching a bit, but calming as the blood oozed out of it. Her feet were moving, closing the distance was closing between herself and her weapon, but her eyes were glued to the sequence of events.
The punk went flying off into the wall face first as her fingers numbly picked up her pistol. The little vampire slammed into it hard enough to break his nose and jaw. Not that he felt it. He didn't even have long to slide down the wall before a rain of black smashed into him like a wave. Not bullets. Lori stared, almost unable to believe that her teacher's arms had twisted out of human form, twisted to glistening black.
Her had face turned white.
Yes, she had heard of this, read of this, and knew vampires changed their shape. Dogs, bats, rats, and even fog, but she never thought it would've been like this. She stood, watching as his hands morphed and formed duel dog heads, heads with six glowing crimson eyes, grew and opened their mouths wide. His face began to distort before she hurriedly looked away. If she kept watching, she'd surely scream.
For several minutes, she listened to nothing but bone crunching and flesh ripping.
When it was over, the noise gone, she turned back warily. He stood, back to human outline, but he still wasn't himself. Her teacher was gone. The Monster had come back, even as he glared at her behind his specs. He turned swiftly enough for her to draw her gun, startled. He matched her draw.
"Don't do that again!" He snarled inhumanly.
His teeth were still too large of his mouth to speak properly, all of them; it was like looking into the mouth of a barracuda. The act of speaking made them pierce and rip the skin in places, making the blood ooze out like black ink down his chin, his lava red eyes burning above.
They stood, pointing their guns at each other. She stared at him, forcing herself to go beyond and let the killer within rule out. He'd see it if she filled herself with doubts. If he wanted to load her full of bullets, she'd deal him as much retaliation as she could before going down because that's what he would've wanted from her.
Still, she was scared and it hurt.
Finally, thankfully, he lowered his pistol. His face twisted back to that of her teacher's. Human, a bit handsome, but her teacher's none the less. Lori's arms came down at a swing, gun pointing to the pavement. She continued to stare at him, occasional tremors running through her legs. He looked away and back to…what was left of the body… and kicked it before turning and leaving. She could already hear the sirens coming, police on the way, so she followed, but not too closely.
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Later they were in the graveyard and she was sitting on a tombstone, cleaning her pistol. She did this slowly and methodically, not really paying attention. She was more focused on where her teacher was standing and where he went. He'd calmed down a bit, sucking on a blood packet labeled AB positive, but whatever had pissed him off was still there, lurking beneath his visage.
Part of her wanted to ask him for a sip of it, the blood. This thought had swum through her mind on several occasions while he fed, but never had she been so close to asking. The curiosity of its taste wasn't the reason. Nor was fear. Despite the raging monster she had witnessed, there was still little fear to be felt towards him, even now. It surprised her. No, there was a bit of wariness, but not horrific fear. This feeling was something else.
She wanted to please him.
The thought of sharing blood with him made her think of all the little boys that sit with their fathers and tried to copy their habits. 'I wanna be just like you daddy!' they intone, after fumbling attempts, and their hair would be ruffled affectionately by a large warm hand or a hug or a proud and flattered smile.
Oh God, did she really think of him as a father figure?
"…I'm sorry." She said instead.
"Forget it." He said coldly.
They said nothing for about an hour, not going home, but star gazing for a while. The moon was loosing its fullness again. Still, she could see all its craters and its interesting gray patches. What would it be like to walk up there, on its white powdered surface and feel the rock gravel beneath her soles? She wondered dully behind the discontent. It didn't over shadow it.
"…Are you going to tell me what I did wrong?" She asked, after she put her beloved weapon back together and returned it to her pocket.
"No. Shut up." He snarled.
Lori closed her mouth and stared at her feet, hanging her head. Testy. Very agitated. It was pretty bad. She'd never seen him like this at all. He'd even put his gun away and was just standing there with his arms folded meaningfully across his chest, his back to her, packet nothing but warped empty plastic on the ground now. Then again, she'd never seen him twist so easily out of shape like that either…
He looked like he could've stood like that all night, but suddenly he twisted around and snarled at her.
"And would you stop being so damn obedient!"
"Stop yelling at me! I can't help it!" She shouted back at him.
He gritted his teeth, but he did close his mouth. He turned back around and looked at the surrounding buildings for the third time. Another few minutes passed and she was still trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with him. It was just bizarre, and how did he expect her to not do something again if she didn't even know what it was?
"You're the master." He muttered.
That's it!
Lori pulled off her shoe and chucked it at the back of his head in a childish tantrum. It connected and hit home, but he didn't turn around or yell. He ignored her. If he had done either of those things, she would've reloaded the gun and put the whole clip in his head.
"I AM NOT!" She howled at the top of her lungs, instead when he continued to do nothing.
"STOP CALLING ME THAT! YOU'RE THE MASTER, DAMN
IT!"
Lorian regretted the words once they flew to the open air and would've loved to take them back. She knew they'd only put him in a worse mood that before.
There was an uneven silence.
He turned his head half way around so only one blood red eye could look at her coolly out of the corner of his glasses beneath that hat of his. It was steady. Almost hypnotic. Did something change in the air? All of a sudden her mouth closed up tight and she hunched her shoulders against it, steeling herself, whatever it was.
"What did you call me?" His voice was dangerously soft.
"Master." She told him evenly.
Made herself stare right at him. He had told her to stop being obedient, but she couldn't quite help it. Was he angry? Was he furious? For once she really couldn't tell. All she did was heave an even breath and talk as slowly and as calmly as she possibly could. Yes, he was a blood craving killer and yes he could tare her to pieces if he really wanted to. Master or no master. He'd proven that tonight with his…change.
Besides, there were other masters. Many other candidates to pick from.
"I'm not your master, Teacher. I'm your student." She replied, aware of her precarious position. It wasn't what he'd like to hear, but she wasn't going to lie.
Aware, also, of that trained destroyer lurking behind that steady staring crimson eye. That he could shift and distort himself and eat her, if he liked. Animality ran through his veins. It was his nature. He was a vampire, after all. There was no changing the nature of a vampire. Of course he was, he was the one that had awakened her own murderous side; how could she not see it?
There was no changing the nature of anything, really.
No matter what meaningless titles you gave them.
He continued to look at her and said nothing for a while. Then, finally, he turned back around and started to walk away.
"It'll have to do for now." He said, but what he meant she wasn't exactly sure. Was it what she had said or the fact that she had countered him at all? She didn't know, and it really didn't matter.
Later, she lay in bed, hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure it out. To step out of herself and step into his head, if only for a second. What does a vampire think about all the time? Well, what does a vampire like Alucard think about? Could she possibly comprehend it? A world seen from a beast that felt no pain what so ever?
Lori slept and dreamed.
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A week past.
She felt like she was going to die. School before had been hard? She sat in a room for six hours and tried to wrap her brain around what all the instructors were telling her. Posed questions and still was having a rough time. And fencing was tiring before? It ran two hours longer because she was lacking in it and needed to get better.
And when night fell and she flopped onto her bed, ready to fall asleep right there, who comes in and shakes her awake? About three hours of a midnight barrage of gunfire and she comes back to sleep at two in the morning, only to wake up four hours later at six to go around the whole damn cycle again.
Luckily, her meals were an hour long each, so if she ate quickly she could catch some Zs for about forty-five minutes at least three times. So, what was that exactly? Two hours or so of extra sleep? She was still hours shy of eight, damn it! Some how she persisted, moving through each day. One step at a time, they said, somewhere. Maybe it was target practice. She could shoot the targets in her sleep.
Sometimes she wondered if she did; the experience was sometimes a blur.
And the clothes her family sent?
Skirts and dresses.
Lorian had stared at the inside of the suitcase that was sent with horror and wanted to bang her head against the wall in complete and utter frustration. Every time she got blood on her clothes, she either had to throw them out or spend another hour that she could've been sleeping trying to scrub the stains off them, Alucard laughing at her the whole time. She couldn't keep them. What if someone found them?
Of course, her teacher was a little pissed when she threw out all her jeans and had to go running around in a skirt one night.
"Would you hurry up?" He asked for the third time.
"I can't!" She snarled again. The stupid black thing was constricting. She couldn't reach her maximum leg stride and therefore running was not an option.
Finally, after being grazed by a bullet on the left shoulder from being way too slow, she lost her temper and ripped most of it off. It had been long, but her fingers tore through it and made it end above her knee in a ragged line. Hearing it tare, being able to move again was joyous and blasting apart some Ghoul's head was more pleasurable than it had been.
Of course, the look on Alucard's face afterward was embarrassing.
He proceeded to take his coat off and hand it to her, not looking at her at all.
"Cover yourself up please." He said through the side of his mouth, annoyed.
Instead of allowing herself to blush at the humiliation she scowled and did as she was told, putting his jacket on and holding it firmly shut as they walked. What was more annoying was she couldn't help realizing the pleasant smell coming off of it did not belong to the jacket, but had rubbed off of its owner.
"Why the hell did you have to wear that thing?"
"I had to throw out all my pants. It was either that or some dinner party dress. I know what you're going to say, 'why don't you buy some new clothes?' Well, I can't just keep asking for new clothes or somebody is going to get suspicious."
"That's not what I was going to say." She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Oh yeah?"
"I would've told you to steal some." Lori covered her eyes and sighed.
"You aren't much of a role model, you know that?"
For a while they didn't say anything. It was a peaceful sort of night, even if it was clouding up and starting to rain. She was thinking too much of how utterly cool it felt, wearing a jacket that was at least two times her size. The ends of it were dragging on the sidewalk under her feet and she was literary swimming in it, but she still felt the way she felt. She must have looked ridiculous. It was childish, but it felt good none the less.
Lori couldn't help herself much.
"I wish I had a jacket like this." She said with longing.
"Then ask for one." He retorted, shaking his head. "If you want something, stop dancing around it and just ask for it."
She considered it. They continued to walk. It was so dark out. Peaceful. She felt unafraid of it, walking next to him. The lack of fear made her a little bolder than usual, and she spoke her mind a little more. If he laughed at her? He laughed at every clumsy move she made. She was use to it now, and it no longer hurt her. It was just the way he acted.
There had been a question that had been nagging at her for a while now that she finally felt she could ask, relaxed for the moment.
"Why do you kill your own kind?" She inquired.
"Because they're nothing but fools. Scum. They have no control and kill when ever the feeling hits them. Like stupid beasts. Consider it survival of the fittest." He said, not bothering to look at her. He looked a little funny without his jacket on, hands in his pockets and glasses glinting. His retort still didn't make too much sense to her, but she nodded, satisfied with his answer.
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Saturday and trapped in another damn skirt for the fifth day that week, speed walking down the hall because she simply couldn't take it anymore. Never in a million years would she have gotten up the courage to do anything about it, but a troop of boys her age and older changed that. Too many God damn nasty comments! Her lips were twitching and her face was still glowing red.
If you want something, just ask for it.
That's what the Alucard in her head said. Or repeated.
Her mind had a tendency to make him mutter there often now, not in target practice, but more than half the time. He was talking even as she curled her fingers around the door and opened it, despite the butler, a rather tall fellow in a black vest with graying brown hair with equally intelligent brown eyes, trying to tell her something. Send her away. Her face just hardened. No, this couldn't wait any longer. If she waited, she'd go chicken shit and that would be that.
So the door opened and she walked briskly into a room with the biggest table she'd ever laid eyes on. She was two feet in before she could stop herself. The conversation that had been subtle stopped altogether and she found eleven strange pairs of eyes staring at her. The different types of cigar-smoke mingled and created thick, but exotic smells that tickled her nose. Even under the sudden stress of the situation she couldn't help but notice.
"Yes?" one of those men asked.
Lori stared at him. Opened her mouth. Shut it. Tried again. Nothing would come out of her throat. She could feel her face starting to heat up in embarrassment. This had been stupid. Why had she been so hell bent to come flying in here like a bat out of hell? Now she appeared to be a moronic fool, or a goldfish in a bowl, opening and closing her mouth. Unable to say 'good afternoon' or anything polite or witty in the least. Why did she have to be such a-
"Is that you're granddaughter?" Another of them asked, a tall man with glasses and a mustache. His poise reeked of sophistication and intelligence. Gray haired he seemed just as sharp as her grandmother and maybe even older than her.
"Yes, it is. What can I do for you, Lorian?"
Lorian turned and found a familiar pair of cold blue eyes looking at her expectantly from the end of the table to her left. She sat in her usual business suit, smoking her own cigar and had a pile of papers before her. They looked important, but the girl didn't allow her eyes to linger too long. That would be eavesdropping. Still, there were photos of dead Ghouls to go with this paperwork that were fascinating.
And familiar.
"I-I'm sorry. I di-didn't mean to interrupt." Lori stuttered, "I'll come back when you're not busy-" She attempted to edge out the door.
"No, you have my attention now. What is it?"
Lori tried to ignore the eleven other pairs of eyes on her and to stop fidgeting her hands. Just focusing on her grandmother was enough of a task. She was clearly annoyed, her blue eyes sparkling in a way that meant they were ready to dish out whatever bullshit you were going to try tenfold. Her tongue wouldn't work. It was hell. That displeased look was settling on her visage.
Talk already, novice. Alucard said in her mind.
"It's my wardrobe." One eyebrow lifted above the rim of her glasses.
"What about it?" Her throat was closing. It would shut and she'd be a mute idiot in a minute.
"I want pants!" She yelled, pulling it out before her mouth could shut like a steel trap. No one said anything. There was just a bunch of staring eyes on her, no sign what so ever as to what they were thinking. Were they annoyed? Did they think she was stupid? Could they just stop staring like that, for the love of-
Then the older gentleman laughed.
Lori's eyes shot to him, startled. It wasn't a mocking laugh. It was amused. His eyes were twinkling in a way that showed it. She blinked at him, anxious, and thought she might have caught another snicker from somewhere. Someone else put a hand over his mouth. Her face was starting to sink. Oh God, they were laughing at her anyway. She turned her eyes and found Grandma's face a bit stony, and she opened her mouth to speak but the other gent got there first.
"I feel for you, Miss. I got stuck wearing a kilt once." He said consolingly.
All the eyes in the room shifted to him, stunned.
"Yep. I'd never have that experience forced on anyone ever again. Not even as a torture device. I have no idea how you ladies do it every day. My God, it chaffed." To further his point, he winced.
Complete and utter silence met this.
Then half the men in the room started laughing.
Even her grandmother was smiling a little now.
Lori stared at them all, surprised, and was finding her own little sheepish and embarrassed smile edging onto her lips. She gave him a grateful look because he saved her from all humiliation that had been threatening to break down on her head.
And she got what she wanted.
"Alright Lorian, we'll get you some pants later, since Sir Archer seems to think it is of the greatest importance." Sir Hellsing said, but she was smiling to show it was not ill meant.
The older gentlemen smiled back at Sir Hellsing to show he understood. Lori smiled at both of them, nervously, and bowed once. Then thought better of it and curtseyed, feeling a bit more like an idiot, but judging from the looks on their faces, they weren't going to burn her at the stake for it. It didn't seem to mean hearted to her when they laughed.
"Thank you very much. Um. It was very nice meeting you all." She curtseyed again before backing out of the room.
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Less than a day later she found all her skirts and dresses had been shoved to the less used side of her closet. What hung in their place was ten pairs of jeans, five pairs of dress slacks, and two full piece business suits that were her size and royal blue in color. There was a note pined to one of them and she pulled it out, curiously.
And I suppose you hate dresses too. I do.
That's all it read.
She smiled and folded it, almost prissily. It was special. She had to save it. So she changed into a pair of her new jeans, feeling in total bliss, and found a safe place to keep such a little note. It would be a prized memory. One of the few times she didn't screw up in her little life and her grandmother did something like this.
Rummaging around the closet, behind her old clothes, something was peeking out of the back. She froze for a moment, curious, before sweeping everything out of the way. In the dark shadow of the closest, hiding there, her fingers reached in and pulled out something that she had mistaken as a dress.
Out it came, ebony black in color with buttons and long sleeves. There was a little belt around the waist, but she was never going to use it. The liner was a gray color and soft to the touch. There was a few inside pockets. One was definitely big enough to hold a regular sized pistol.
Lori put it on and stood in front of the mirror and looked at herself. The trench coat was a bit too big, its ends touched the floor every so slightly, but she loved it on sight. The buttons, the way the collar flapped up, the feel of it pressed on her skin and the way the ends of the sleeves brushed against her wrists. She shoved her hands in her pockets and couldn't keep the pleased grin off her face.
Her heart soared.
There was no need for a note to explain this gift.
You should've asked, dolt.
"Okay, teacher. I get it." She muttered to herself, but she was smiling.
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