In the end of this chapter there's something you could call blasphemy, but Hellsing lovers don't really care for profanity, do they?
That was a hard day for the Vatican.
We caused all the destruction that can be caused by a girl with two guns, a huntress with a musket and a sorcerer with fireballs. We started a killing contest, and Alucard was winning, needless to say.
Just as i blown my seventeenth opponent, equalizing Rip, a whole squad of black armoured soldiers came out of nowhere. We were in a wide corridor, they blocked both ways. Their equipment was the same as Maxwell's bodyguards': night vision glasses, heavy machine-guns, grenades and big swords. The all wore white mantles with red crosses.
"Stop, vampires! You're surrounded!"
"Don't make a move! We have anti-freak weapons!"
"Drop your weapons and kneel! Now!"
None of us moved. There were at least twenty of them in sight.
Alucard went to the first one who had spoken and shook his hand.
"Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name."
The soldier remained puzzled. Twenty laser pointers concentrated on Girlycard.
"And who are you, sir?" he (or she?) asked.
"I... hm... are your parents around here?" said the fighter, absently.
I saw Girlycard's eyes grow wider, as she put in motion both her childish cuteness and vampiric charm.
"I'm orphaned, sir."
"Oh... poor girl... don't worry, we're going to protect you... the Templar Knights are guardians above all..."
"Oh. The Templars. You're the knights of fables, sir?"
"Yes... maybe... you can call us like that... but we're real..."
"Oh... those heroes could kill any monster... let's see if you can!"
The Hellhound materialized, eating the hand of the Templar before he could pull himself together. The others started shooting, creating wide holes in the black mass of the Undead.
They weren't average fighters, and we all knew it. Not regenerators, their energy was definitely magic, something darker. They had auras of dangerous power which made them seem nearly invulnerable. The severed hand was the only damage we seemed to be able to inflict them, and it was just thank to surprise. I turned frenetically around creating magic shields, but their weapons seemed to blow them with ease. There were no bullets: simply pulses, minuscule light balls.
Rip's shots didn't pierce their armours. It was clear they weren't mere bulletproof vests: they resembled in shape mediaeval plate armours and regenerated as they were hit. The three of us regrouped in the centre of the corridor, dodging and parrying the pulses as we could.
"We're not going anywhere!" i yelled.
"Thank you, i'd have never understood this on my own." Alucard said "DO YOU HAVE A FUCKING PLAN?"
"I..."
The rhythmical repetition of the guns noise ceased. They were out of ammo.
"That's a plan! Lets' attack now!"
Twenty knights drew swords in the same instant.
"Companions, let us rid the world of this evil!"
"I repeat the question. Do you have an idea?"
"I repeat the answer... no!"
"No matter, I do.
Releasing control lock restriction system three, two one. Approval of situation A recognized. Commencing the Cromwell indication. Ability restriction lifted for limited use until the enemies have been rendered silent.
Now, knights of God, meet the Day of Wrath!"
Eyes filled the corridor, the walls were covered in black and tentacles emerged from it. Shadow-like hands blocked the templars' path. I and Rip hugged in the centre of the room, under her umbrella.
A humanoid figure took shape into the dark mass, a demonic Alucard with an enormous red eye in his chest. As he opened his mouth, three Hell-Hound heads emerged out of it and attacked the paladins. Every time they severed a head of the monster, three more emerged, like a cross between Cerberus and the Hydra. Every piece of the monster that was cut off fell on the black substance which covered the floor, merging again with Alucard. The resistance of the knights lasted a few minutes, then their blows fell weak and imprecise on the Undead, and one after the other they were maimed and killed. Under their feet mouths opened to collect all the blood which fell from their wounds. The hellhound's many heads contended every piece of flesh or armour ripped off the knights' bodies. Of the twenty knights, only three were standing when the mouths on the floor rose like long-teethed mushrooms and lazily chewed their limbs. Alucard's main body walked to them, retreating the hydra-heads back into his mouth.
"So, Paladins of the Lord, how does it feel to face your doom? Where is you God now, that you are in need of him?"
He walked slowly, reabsorbing most of his essence. Tentacles immobilized what remained of the three templars and rose them high enough to look into the vampire's eyes, holding them through the holes in their bodies.
"Have you confessed your last sins? I don't think it would mind anyway, since it won't be your god to judge you. It will be ME! Be prepared for an eternity in Hell as my servants!"
Three mouths bite contemporaneously the paladins' necks, not just bleeding them, absorbing them. Alucard laughed, making the whole church shake from its foundations. His body returned whole, in his usual tall, red dressed body. Then he turned to us.
"Watch me and learn, neonates. This is what a true vampire looks like!"
He walked down the corridor, evidently knowing where was he going. He didn't even mind to look if we were following him.
And actually, we weren't following him. I and Rip were paralysed.
"... ehm. That was scary." she said.
"Really. I had never seen him... like this."
"So he's... the Devil? I mean, the Antichrist and that kind of things?"
"I don't know... he's... Evil. I mean, not just evil, he's the Evil."
"Its so... i mean..."
"Unsettling."
"Ja. Are you sure he can't harm us?"
"Almost..."
"You could be a little more reassuring."
"As long as we're together he won't hurt us. Of this, i'm sure."
"Whew. Oh, before i forget, when we get to see Doc remind me to show him this. It's a piece of their armour."
"How could you save it? I thought he'd not have given up a single mouthful!"
"A arm rolled just to my feet, so i took it. It's like... a living thing."
I took the piece from her hand; it was unexpectedly heavy, and it tickled my palm like it was moving. Looking at it carefully, it was visible as its edges were coagulating. I handed it back to her, it made me feel uncomfortable.
We rushed after Alucard, to find him shooting to a few swiss guards, mere humans, who fell with ease.
"Where are you taking us?" i asked him.
"Where those knights' blood has told me Anderson is. And it's the same place where lies the source of their power."
"What is it? The Grail?"
"No" Rip said "it can't..."
"Silent. It's not the Chalice. It's something much more ancient. And more powerful."
"And where is it?"
"Above us, in a room where only Iscariots and the Pope himself can accede."
"What is it? An Angel? A Demon? The Arch?"
"You wouldn't imagine. Just follow me."
The anonymous and steel-plated corridors of the lower levels left space to frescoed hallways as we climbed stairs and slaughtered enemies. Te total count of our killings reached a hundred (fifty Alucard, twenty-seven Rip, twenty three me) when we got to the door of the Inner Sanctum. Actually, it was the fresco of a door, part of a painted building in a scene of the life of i don't know which saint. But when Alucard turned the apparently painted handle, it moved and the door opened. Due to the painting's prospective, it was trapezoidal and very small, he had to bow down to enter it.
Before i could follow him, i felt a motion behind me.
"Heinkel Wolfe, the one and only." i turned slowly around. Beside me, Rip was loading the musket.
"You vampires should never have come here. I could just let you go in and die because of what you'll see." the priestess said.
"It's not like you can't forbid us to go anyway."
"Wanna try?"
"The fact is, when a vampire with a rifle meets a priest with a pistol, the priest with the pistol is a dead priest."
"You don't have a rifle."
"She does."
I and the magic bullet got to her at the same time. I slashed her left arm, the musket ball transfixed her legs making her fall. I cracked her right arm and got to her throat. I felt her body regenerating under me, just like that of the templar, this power was definitely not the same as the one which sustained Anderson.
She tried to escape my grip, but i embraced her piercing her back with my claws and turned my legs around her own. Then i drained her. Completely. After her neck was destroyed and not a single drop of vitae came out of it, i ripped her clothes and cut her skin, extracting the little amount of fluid which came out of it. In the end, to prevent her from turning into a ghoul, i broke down her breast and chest to gouge out her hearth.
Ok, i know what you're thinking. I'm a bad guy. I'll admit it: leaving no blood for Rip hadn't been a very chivalrous act. But Heinkel was my enemy and i wanted to finish her myself.
"Twenty four for me."
I felt and odd sensation, like a flu -you might think it's not very odd, but when you've been immune to any disease for three hundred years it's not a very familiar sensation. It was like mist enshrouding my body from inside, making me a little bit clumsy and weak. Not really a bad sensation, and it didn't really obfuscate my senses, but... as a vampire, you don't feel any pain below a critical wound, so that kind of... illness was a nearly pleasurable sensation.
I pulled together and entered the trapezoid door after Rip. The inner sanctum was a small, dark and almost empty room. The only thing that was inside it was a wide altar with a skeleton on it.
"Is this all here?" i asked.
"No." Alucard leaned his hand on a hidden hole in the altar extracting a book. "This is the true secret. The final mystery. The ultimate apocryphal."
"What is it?"
"The Gospel according to Judas Iscariot."
"He wrote a gospel too?"
"That's what those paladins believed. I don't know if it's true. I may be old, but not old enough to have seen the Messiah alive. Although, it seems, i'm still in time to see him dead."
"You don't mean what i think you mean, do you?"
"Look at it yourself. The chest is broken just like a spear stabbed it, hands and feet seem to have been nailed..."
We all stood silent for a while.
"So all Christians have believed in a historical fake."
"There's more." Alucard riffled the book. "There's much more."
I have a little request for any of my readers. If there's anyone with a little skill in drawing, i'd really need some picture to what Dragon should look like. In case someone is interested, they can email me through or send a message on my DeviantArt account: HyrAyl