Author's Note: The popularity for this fic has been unprecidented. I assume it's the title and rating, personally.
I had no confidence in my ability as a writer or storyteller when I first started writing fics years ago, so I just wove Hellsing characters into pre-existing stories like Peter Pan, Carmilla, The Little Mermaid, and more. The amount of popularity for this fic, and other original fics, make me think that maybe you guys do like my original stories... which scares me. What if I disappoint you all? It creates writer's block like you wouldn't believe.
Disclaimer: Don't own or make any money off Hellsing.
After a few days of crying, Seras dried her eyes and crawled out of bed. Well, not her bed, her coffin. As comforting as her dark, empty bedroom was (she felt she could drape the darkness and silence over her like a shroud), her master had returned from the war and he needed her back to work as his secretary. He had conquered a whole new realm, along with many new castles, captive nobles, and humans-er, serfs. He would need her to go over treaties, deeds, titles, and other such documents.
Actually, why was it that once vampires took over the world, they reverted back to the Feudal system? What was wrong with the Industrial Revolution, or Capitalism? Or the maybe the British Empire of the Victorian Era… then again, the vampires seemed to enjoy commandeering many Victorian fashions, furniture, and social functions to suit their own purposes, mixed with the rather draconian medieval system.
After all, humans needed to eat, and vampires weren't going to do the work to feed them. They also needed subjects to rule, and a place for humans to go and… exist when the vampires weren't dealing with them. So, the humans worked the land to grow their own food, and vampires owned the land that the humans worked on. And they owned the humans who lived on the land, but that was a minor detail. Humans also distributed the food that their kind grew for each other to eat, and vampires feasted on the humans that they owned. It was a horrible system, but in a way it was one that worked.
Actually, it didn't.
Hiding out in her room didn't keep Seras from receiving papers from her master to go over. She did not need to go to the office for several days because her master was out engaging in "WAR!" (as he liked to call it), but some new treaties, titles, land deeds, and other such documents made their way to her room, needing some appropriate signature, or to be filed away in the appropriate place.
Seras was increasingly horrified to discover, as she flipped through the documents, that humanity's population was declining. So many new vampires were being created all the time; each with so little self-control, each indulging in their bloodlusts and murderous instincts. Worse still, some vampires preferred to create a lot of ghouls to directly control rather than keep hoards of humans to serve them, yet ghouls needed human flesh to sustain themselves as surely as vampires needed human blood, or else they would expire in less than a week.
The wanton violence, destruction, massacres, and mass turnings (whether to new ghouls or new vampires) were creating such a strain on the human population that it could not sustain the vampires' lifestyle for much longer. Soon, the vampires would have to either seriously curb their nights of fun and stop making any new ghouls or vampires at all, or start killing each other en masse to bring their own population down, or starve. The vampire population could not continue to grow AND indulge in their wanton gluttony without devouring both humans and their own species.
Of course, the sensible thing to do would be for the vampire lords to curb their nights of fun until such a time as... WHAT?! The vampire lords were staunchly refusing to believe their indulgent lifestyles were draining their human population's blood supply, and they were violently refusing to cease their nights of fun? Many nobles were gathering together in groups and protesting the Vampire King's proposed measures to conserve the human population?
As Seras sat cross-legged on her bed, with the documents sprawled out on her lap, she could not contain her gasps of horror as she read the state of affairs. Most vampires were extremely greedy and short-sighted and could not—would not believe that their extravagant lifestyles should be contained.
"After all, we are the lords and masters of the universe," they said. "Our Lord Vampire King says that we are above humans. They were created to feed and serve us. Why should we not do with them as we will?"
"Because, you arrogant little shit," her master had said, "If you keep playing these games, humans die out and we go extinct, you short-sighted punk!"
"Humans shall never go extinct!" one said. "As long as we keep breeding them, and storing their blood, we'll always have plenty."
"They cannot breed as fast as you are killing them!" her master's lieutenant had said. "You have to slow down, and let them produce more young before you kill them."
"Then they are weaklings that don't deserve to live," said the leader of the rebels.
"WE DEPEND ON THEM TO LIVE!" her master's lieutenant had screamed.
Before long, war broke out. Her master had fairly recently passed a law that said that vampires could no longer create new vampires or ghouls. Many disobeyed, and had to be put down. Her master had reveled in the bloodbaths this had created. Many allies of those slain had protested, rioted, and then revolted, but they were put down too.
Seras' master had strolled into his study right after the battle, soaked head-to-toe in blood, and pulled Seras from her desk and waltzed with her merrily around the room.
"Master!" she'd flushed as he led her into a dip.
"War, Police Girl!" he had cried; his cheeks flushed with exhilaration beneath the splattered blood. "Glorious war!"
However, these controversial laws had not contained the existing vampires' bloodlust, nor the rebelling humans, nor the many ghouls who needed human flesh to satiate their endless hunger. Her master started proposing killing off most ghouls so that present vampires could continue drinking mostly uninhibited, and leave plenty of quelled humans for vampires to feast on. This naturally split the vampire population down the middle—those who liked the idea of having less ghouls around so they could have more humans for themselves, and those who hated the idea of killing off lots of ghouls because they having massive ghouls armies for themselves. The ones who liked ghoul armies naturally revolted, which her master had just gone to war to put down in a brutal slaughter.
All this was what was going on in the world when Seras had walked in on… on her favorite human with another vampire woman, and now it all seemed so paltry by comparison.
Her master had won the war, and those few enemy vampires who had surrendered were now ready to talk peace terms. They would be severely punished, of course, but for the remaining vampire lords in the world, this would serve as an example. Now that her master had put down the opposition, he would define the terms of his victory. The law of no longer turning humans into new ghouls and vampires would remain, and as for the rest... there would soon be a purge of the ghoul population.
"About time," Seras thought with distaste. It was like a zombie apocalypse out there, just with vampires directing the mindless hordes.
While some loyalists readily bowed to their king's demands, others steadfastly refused. There was an especially large group of vampires who adored keeping lots of ghouls, and who wanted the
Regardless, Seras could not stay in her room forever. She had to go out, even though it meant exposing herself to the ridicule of her peers.
Seras dressed herself in her most professional secretary uniform—a navy dress with black stockings and flat black boots, with her hair neatly combed for once. Something that made her feel pretty, but secure and professional—almost as a way to ward off the mockery.
No such luck. From the moment she left her room, she could feel the mocking eyes and jeering whispers as she passed. There were so many of them. There seemed to be vampire couples and groups in every hallway and around every corner. Every richly decked drawing room, ball room, and salon was no good either. In every room, there were richly dressed nobles, sipping wine and lounging and fondling each other.
Seras, who had a job, kept trying to assure herself that she had nothing to be ashamed of as she walked to her room. She knew the state of vampire society was on the verge of collaps thanks to indulgence like theirs, and soon their extravagance would be outlawed, and she would have been ahead of the curve the whole time. Still, that would be then and this would be now, and she could not ignore their malice or their mockery as they stood right before her, taunting her with their eyes, facial expressions, and voices. She tried to keep her head down but her eyes ahead, not stopping to talk to anyone or hint that she could hear the awful things they said.
She tried not to notice the golden-haired vampiress in a plunging red dress giggle as the vampire man she was drinking wine with stuck his hand up her dress.
As she rounded a corner, she tried not to balk as she discovered another vampire woman pressed against a windowsill, sighing and moaning luxuriously as her pet human rammed her into the wall over and over on her orders. "Very good..." she purred, "Very good."
There was only one more room she needed to cross to get to her master's study, and it was through a large drawing room. She knew from many visits that it was richly furnished with Persion rugs, gilded frames for sensuous Victorian paintings, many red plush couches and lounge chairs, and a piano. Dozens of aristocratic vampires in their most fashionable attire lounged in the drawing room, drinking wine and listening to fine music as they no doubt basked in how fine they thought themselves.
Being a laughing stock, no one failed to notice the pathetic blood virgin walking through the center of the room. It was a stigma not unlike what many adolescent and young adult men feel when their less sensitive peers learn that they cannot or will not "perform" on a sexually nubile and available woman; be she a prostitute or wife. After all, if a young man's manliness was defined by his ability to sexually conquer a female, then a vampire's worth was defined by his or her ability to conquer a human. Since blood and sex and violence were entwined for vampires, Seras' unwillingness (suspected inability) to conquer a human through carnal means or through fang was seen as a double failure on her part, both as a woman and as a vampire.
These thoughts brought on dark thoughts that led to dark memories. They were the sort of dark memories that led to many terrible outbursts as a child; ones that left other children bleeding or hospitalized. When she had been in the orphanage, by adolescence most of the other kids and teachers alike knew that when Seras was in a mood like this, they tread lightly or leave her alone. None of the current vampires knew it, but Seras was getting wound up tighter than a rat trap. The slightest prod from the wrong soul would lead her to snap.
She hid her dark eyes under her bangs and tried to make a bee line for her master's study, but she was stopped by two drunken idiots.
"Well-y well well, if it isn't our resident blood virgin."
"Go away, Jonathan," she said with a voice black as pitch.
They snickered. "Or what, you'll talk about your fee-wings with me?" he said in a mock baby tone, to the laughter of his friend.
"Leave me alone," she said in a voice that promised consequences if he didn't, but he didn't listen.
"What? She couldn't even handle a single human!" he said to the whole room, "You think she could handle a whole lot 'o vampire like me?"
"I don't have time for this," she snapped, and pushed passed him to the door.
He grabbed her arm. "Maybe if you didn't have a flaccid little eunuch to give you pillow talk, you could learn a thing or two from a real man..."
Something inside Seras snapped. She turned tail and slapped his lower jaw right off his face.
The aristocratic vampires all around the room gasped in shock and horror as the lower jaw flew through the air and bounced off the piano, leaving a bloody little smear on the keys.
"YOU HAVE THE MIND OF A GUTTER RAT, JOHNNY!" screeched the girl who just snapped like a rat trap.
"You little BITCH!" his friend yelled, pulling out a blade hidden in his cane.
Using her police training, Seras flexed her right wrist and broke his nose, then used her other hand to easily wrench his blade out his his hand and jam his arm behind his back. His cries of pain enraged the other vampires in the room, particularly his close friends, and they came at Seras too. Filled with nigh murderous rage, and possessing more combat training in her human life than most of them had seen in their entire existence, she easily outmaneuvered several of them. Several vampires managed to get a punch in or a scratch back before she managed to kick or shove them aside, or use the momentum of their body weight against them.
When Jonathan's lower jaw grew back, he lunged at her and tried to wrestle her to the ground.
This was a huge mistake, as it set off the worst in her and she blacked out.
When Seras came to, she was breathing deeply and slowly, her master standing over her, two steadying hands hovering near her heaving shoulders. She stood in the center of the drawing room, with every vampire in it either passed out on the floor or furniture (at least, they looked passed out...) or cowering in fear before her. There were many pools and splatters of blood everywhere, and Seras' knuckles and fingers stung. Her claws her extended, and they were covered in blood. Her teeth ached too, and she realized her shark-like vampire teeth were extended. For one wild moment she feared that she had drank blood in her wild state, but she did not feel any different, and the inside of her mouth was dry as a bone.
She looked slowly around at the terrified faces, and a few flinched when she looked their way.
She had no idea what had just happened, or what she had done, if she had done anything at all. Her master stood over her, after all. But no, his suit was as impeccably clean as ever, while Seras' every muscle ached, her dress was tattered, her teeth and claws were extended, and her hands were covered in blood. Just like the blood surrounding the room.
She had no idea what she did, but she also knew she now had their fear - if she let this moment pass, she would lose it and their respect.
She took a deep breath, balled her fist, glared at all of her enemies around the room, then rested them on a terrified Jonathan.
"If you ever touch me again," she said in her blackest voice, "I'll rip your heart out."
"Well-said, my secretary," he said. It was a reminder to everyone in the room that Seras was under his protection, and that she had his approval to defend herself when she was accosted by subjects of his that did not have his permission to harm one of his closest employees. "Now, come into my study."
She could only do as he said, and walked mutely inside.
"Clean his mess up," he ordered his terrified subjects, and slammed the large oak doors behind him.
As soon as she was in his study Seras collapsed in her chair, shaking and breathing uneasily.
She was treated to slow clapping. She looked up, startled, and saw the Vampire King clap slowly and deliberately. "Very good, Seras Victoria," he said in his richest voice.
"... What?"
"You passed my test," he said, with obvious pride.
Seras could only stare. "You... you planned that?!"
"Of course," he said easily, and sat across from her in his great swivel chair. "Why do you think I turned you in the first place?"
"You... you planned this trick?"
"Still not quick on the uptake, I see," he said with obvious disgust.
"You... I don't understand..."
"Then I'll explain this as simply as possible, so that even dull-minded simpletons like you can understand," he said, turning to face her, resting his elbows on his desk and folding his hands before his face.
Seras didn't trust herself to speak, and on top of that she was still shaking, so she waited for him to continue.
He remained silent.
"... You set them up," she said.
"They bore me," he said.
"They're your subjects!"
"Of a kingdom to which I've grown tired," he waved a hand dismissively.
"So you encouraged them to mock me knowing I'd...!"
"Our bond is stronger than anything you can imagine, Police Girl."
"So, what?" she snorted derivatively. " 'You know me better than I know myself' and all that palava?"
He laughed a roaring, booming laughter. It went on far longer than was comfortable for Seras, and she grimaced when he finally came to a stop. "Oh, you are a TREAT!"
"What do you want from me?!"
"Only this: I've grow bored of this kingdom which I've named myself monarch." He gazed sideways at her, "And you can help me."
"Oh, what?" she snapped. "Are you going to make me your concubine?"
"Don't be so crass, Police Girl."
"Then what?!" she snapped, fast losing patience with his coyness.
"You've seen from the reports I sent you: this world has begun to rot. It's become languid, fetid, and lascivious. The nobles have lazy, and over-indulgent."
"And who's fault is that?!" Seras snapped.
"Don't push it," he said in a voice that brokered silence.
Seras glared defiantly up at him.
"You've seen that the human population cannot sustain their extravagant lifestyles, but most would resist any attempts to curb their indulgence."
"It'll create the wars you've always wanted," Seras said with not mild disgust.
She saw how it was: he wanted to conquer humanity and so turned an army of vampires and ghouls to turn and overpower them. He then created a world of bloodthirsty vampires that fed off humans as casually as humans once fed on chickens and cattle. Now that he was bored of this new world he created, he was going to "cull the herd," as she had heard him say once before, and bring down the population of vampires again.
"That's right, and you are going to fight them with me."
Seras was literally knocked out of her chair.
"Wha-! ME?!"
"You are one of the strongest fighters I have ever created," he said simply. "While your hand-to-hand prowess as a police officer left much to be desired, your resistance to your baser urges proved an intriguing change from the usual fan fare."
"Wha-? Bu-? I still don't see how that makes me-!"
"When I first turned you I expected you to give into your cardinal desires like all of my other simpering lackeys, but you have proven to be a fresh breath of pure air."
"Yes, one you mocked for being 'too pure' before!" Seras snapped. She still didn't forgive him for that.
"Yes," he said. "And how is that little human of yours in the cellar?"
Seras gasped.
"Yes, I know all about that," he said. "Did you really think I would send you down there expecting you to just lose your 'blood virginity' to the first whore to cross your path?"
"Then you...! You knew...!"
"I knew that you would never even consider passing along your precious treasure along unless you cared about the man," he grinned a shark's grin. "And now, I have my bargaining chip."
"You're sick!" Seras exclaimed, and stood abruptly from her chair to stalk out the room.
"The human is becoming too expensive for you, isn't he?"
Seras stopped dead in her tracks, and grimaced.
Without turning around, she said, "All your doing, I suppose?"
"Don't be absurd."
"Then why?!"
"Because I want you to fight in this war with me," he said, rising. "Drink the blood, Police Girl. Become a true Nosferatu. Walk the path of a true Draculina. Take the world by storm, and rule the world of the night. Become a true No-Life Queen!"
"And then what? Become your mistress?"
"I told you, I don't care about getting you in bed," he said, and took a step toward her.
"Then what?!"
"Become my general," he said. "My second-in-command, if you will. I know you've always been unhappy with the way humans were treated in my realm. Well, now you have the power to change things. Purge this world of the filth I have created, and take the reigns yourself when I start anew. Create the new laws by which my subjects will be forced to obey."
"And then what? You'll kill me too?"
"You are the only fledgling I have fed my own blood."
Seras was struck silent. She stood with her back against the door, and her master stood over her.
Despite his assurance that he did not want her in bed, he leaned over her and placed both of his white gloved hands on either side of her head; dominantly; seductively.
"Become my No-Life Queen," he purred
She was silent for a long time. She did not trust herself to speak.
"What of my humanity?"
"Your humanity is gone, Police Girl!" he snapped, withdrawing his hands at once. "You cling to that which is long dead, like a man who assures himself that he can feel his arm despite it long being severed."
"I can't just 'drink blood' -!"
"You can, and you will."
"And if I refuse?"
"Will you do it for the good of your precious humanity?"
"What? Become a monster just to protect humanity?"
"It is more possible than you think," he said, his voice twinged with sadness.
"Will I even care about humans once I do?!" Seras cried, tears forming in her eyes. And now we reach the heart of her terrors. "What if I drink the blood and I become like YOU! Or them! What if I forget - what if I stop caring about them the way YOU have-?!"
"Do you think I would ask you to do something if I did not think you could accomplish it?"
"I don't know!" she cried, tears in her eyes, "I don't know anything anymore!"
"Not even yourself?" he leaned over her again, "Do you truly believe you will cease caring about your pathetic values once you become what I am?"
"You tell me!" she said. "How many of your other 'pets' survived the transformation?"
"There have been more than you think," he said. "You just don't see them because they don't draw attention to themselves as you have."
"Well, that's a relief!"
"If you won't do it for humanity, then will you do it for that one human?"
Seras' heart froze, dead as it was.
"What are you offering?" she asked.
"One month," he said. "In exchange for one month of service to me, fighting whatever battle I wish, I will ensure the rest of this human's life belongs to you."
"And what if he has some sort of terminal cancer I don't know about?" Seras demanded. At this point, she did not put it past her master, to trick her into giving up the last scraps of her humanity and her blood innocence just in exchange for a few days with the human she cared for most.
"Oh, he's healthy as a horse, believe me..." there was shift in his eyes. "For now."
" 'For now'? What do you mean, 'for now'?"
"He is quite the stallion, isn't he?" he said.
Her master's crudeness made her flinch.
"So much so that everyone wants a ride," he said as he collapsed back into his swivel chair. "But these are very rich nobles you're dealing with, Police Girl. It's only a matter of time before someone decides they want to buy the horse and have only rides for themselves."
"And you think that won't change in a month?" Seras asked.
"I'll buy him the second you drink blood of your own volition," he said, removing a pristine white glove. "And then, when the moon returns to the phase it was on the night you agreed to take blood, after you have done all that I asked, I will give him to you." He cut his palm with a letter opener, and squeezed out a few drops of blood with his fist. "And he will be yours, for the rest of his life."
Seras watched the blood drip from his fist in trepidation; tempted and yet hesitant.
Little did she know, it was already becoming too late to take him up on even that offer. The vampires she had savaged in the drawing room were some of the richest and most powerful, with some friends in equally high places. Unable to hurt Seras due to her status as their king's favorite, yet wishing to get back at Seras through her one vulnerable means, one of the aristocratic vampire women stole down into the cellars. She talked swiftly with Narissa, and a bargain was reached.
In his dark room, the human slept in his plush bed.
She smirked psychotically as she saw her own dominant shadow in the silhouette of the doorway. She cracked her whip, startling him awake.
"Wake-y, wake-y!" she sneered.
He rubbed the sleep from his eye, and fumbled for a light. "This is my time to rest..."
"Not anymore, it isn't," she smirked, flashing a knife. "I own you now."
The color drained from his face. "Non..."
"Now..." she said, strolling forward. "Let's see if we can have some fun."
