Author's Notes: I like broccoli. Oh, my fanfic? Yeah, it's almost done. Thank you everyone for your consideration and your kind words!! I'll consider an epilogue maybe some other time.

"Transient Beings": A VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER

TAKE 9 : When Angels Cry (FINALE)

A mouse with eyes like tiny pepper corns scurried underneath the freshly fallen layer of snow. The undisturbed, rolling hills of farmland were blanketed and silent; formless lumps of abandoned hay bales were cast around the. Ravens pecking at the remnants of dead (or dying) things roosted in the trees, trembling with gossamer-black feathers ruffled thickly about their bodies. The scavengers of the sky grimly bore witness to the figures advancing to the empty field. The moon was high, the devil's horns pointing skyward. A wall of black trunks belonging to decade-old trees flourished at the end of the field, enroaching on the farmland after the farmers abandoned it to the elements. A farmhouse with windows painted black leaned over on its foundations in the darkness. Its paint peeling, its porch ravaged to nothing but cinderblocks and wild vines creeping along the stones.

Alucard walked at the end of the world, letting the calculating coldness of the stars mindlessly pour light onto his skin, illuminating his eyes that shined like the devil's. His boots did not leave footprints in the snow. No one would know that two men had come this way; and none would uncover that only one left. No one knew for sure whether there were still yet more countless dead crushed underneath a decade of mud and rain and filth. Perhaps he was walking in a graveyard, unpurified by the blessing of God. The perfect, final resting place. It was his wish, his burning to desire, baptise the ground in the blood of immortals in the unholy ceremony of battle.

He wished hard that it was not so quiet. The devil wearing black walked beside him, head bent against the chill to maintain the ill-wrought illusion that he could actually feel cold. He was dry and clean and perfect, holding his power around him as if he didn't even know it was there. His ignorance was a frustrating, niggling insect in Alucard's ear. Any mere human would fall at his feet begging a favorable glance in their direction. It was a wonder his beloved master had not fallen under his spell. Avoiding him, he decided, had been a preemptive approach on her part.

That power. The count had no need to squint to see it. It was there, coiling and uncoiling around him like black, blood-drenched banners. Like hooded serpents, so beautiful to look at but deadly to get close to.

Unbidden, the dhampir caught his gaze, and he studied him with eyes that were enviable by the count's kind whose only gaze was the terrifying vermillion of their ancestors. "We don't have to do this."

Alucard gave a hearty, thick laughter that seemed to resonate from Hell. "You are bound somehow by something you do not understand. Vampires must die by your blade, while their existence yet haunts your every waking and sleeping moments. You'll see me dead long before you crawl back into that fucking coffin of yours to rot away."

D matched his stare, held until the coldness disappeared between the heat hissing between them. Then, surprisingly, D smiled. It was like watching a night flower bloom, every drop of moonlight infused into that gorgeous, unparalleled beauty. Alucard was suddenly, violently in love with him and, in the same breath, so full of hate that his eyes bled.

His ears buzzed when he heard him speak, "Fine," and they squared off in the midnight cold.

Vermillion oculars flared with savage delight at the ring of sword on scabbard. Cold, calculating crystalline sparked against the figure bathed in red. The thrumming vitality even beneath the ground seemed to be sucked away, deadening the sound of D's very slow, almost indiscernable breathing. The slight vapor from his nose disappeared an instant later with the rest of him.

In a millisecond, barely measurable by human standards, the vampire Alucard gave the sky a cursory glance before he spun around, firing a shot into empty air vacated by D's body. Alucard spat blood into the snow. D reappeared a short distance away, his blade coated with blood.

"How?" Alucard laughed, the pain wracking his body like a welcome explosion warming up his senses for the agony to follow. So fast, D's movements were difficult to follow. Difficult; not impossible. His battle with the Nazi dogs sent by the lovely and corpulent Major gave him all the practice he needed to remember his strength. His upper body straightened, the impalement wound healing slowly, filling up with blood that looked black in the moon.

The baleful gaze of the dhampir hunter bled into his concentration. His lips moved slightly, as if speaking a single word, before he bounded skyward again. Alucard opened his arms wide and took to the sky with him, using Casull and Jackal, crossing them together to catch the blade between them. Beautiful hot sparks flew; their eyes caught seemed to catch on fire, rubies against the ocean. That irredeemable smile remained firmly in place, complimenting the utter blank stare from his adversary. They stayed airborne, locked in place for four seconds, D throwing with all of the downward momentum he could muster into that godly weapon.

With a monumentous effort, Jackal inched its crosshair shakily onto the swordsman's shoulder. Surprisingly hot, gushing blood spattered into his face, raw bone and sinew exposed to the wintry air - the steaming was not due to the temperature but for the stink of charred flesh.

Weightless, with a grimace of pain tightening his mouth and the corners of his eyes, D flew away again, and Alucard followed his path away from him with black and white crosshairs trained on D. Sparks flashed as D whacked bullets away with a high-pitched squeal back at his enemy with the flat of his blade. Most of them flew wild, hiding themselves in the snow beyond the Midian's line of sight. Then Alucard heard the chunky, wet 'thukk' of a bullet hitting flesh. He landed on the ground with a hint of a stumble. A bright patch of blood squirted crimson into the snow, a shaky signature in blood against virgin white.

D's landed in a shower of displaced snow. He artlessly switched hands to the right, and then surprisingly sheathed his sword with the sheath at his side. "I won't let you reload your ammunition."

"Just as I won't let you get that pretty blade sullied with my blood. That won't stop you from trying." Alucard lifted one corner of his mouth. "You've been counting my shots? Are you sure I'm out?"

"Maybe."

Alucard bared his teeth, sliding his tongue out to lick the blood dripping close to his lip. "Stop wasting my time, boy. Show me that power of yours - the power of your father, Dracula. I want to feel it ripping my flesh to ribbons!"

"My father..." D's eyes quickened with emotion suddenly.

Alucard attacked, sped across the snow until he was nearly abreast of his foe, abandoning his Casull for his bare hand. His left hand angled itself to drive through that black breast, ignoring the fiery sting of a sword through his throat, severing his head from the rest of his body. The last satisfaction he had was feeling the cloth break and the skin burst like a well-ripened fruit, cascading blood into his sleeve and down the beautiful youth's chest. The snow quickly became slightly ruddy with scarlet.

Alucard's head still sat precariously on his severed neck. The wound healed itself, carmine fluid rushing back to his body with a sickening, gutteral sucking noise. He still had the same crooked, infuriating smile pasted on his cherry-speckled face.

"I see... that I must convince you."

D raised his sword; Alucard caught the hand that held it, squeezing tightly.

The dhampir groaned with pain, feeling cold, heartless fingers worming into his chest. Blood poured from his lips and nose. "S-st...stop..."

"You should be dead by now," Alucard mused, twisting his hand further. The tremor in the dhampir's legs proved that he was not impervious to the pain inflicted now on his body. His left arm hung at his side, dripping blood from slack fingers originating from the pulsing, bone-shattered hole in his shoulder. "I hereby classify you as a new type of vampire, potentially more lethal than Class A." The words made utterly no sense to D at all.

The dhampir's vision blurred slowly to red, feeling his own heart twisting and quivering inside his chest. The pounding inside his ears had nothing to do with blood vessels.

"Releasing Art Restriction to Level Zero-- what?!"

The snowscape around them bent, contorting into a funnel. It was sucked away into some indiscernable point, as their surroundings had brushed dangerously close to an event horizon. The two figures remained where they were. There was absolutely no sound, not even the sound of dripping blood. A violent wind cracked their jackets back and forth like black and red sails. The undying darkness, depthless and formless and unending would have given a normal human a violence sense of vertigo. As it was, Alucard was fairly certain this was not the result of releasing his art restrictions on D.

D crumpled in on himself. While he seemed suspended on solid nothing, his blood fell for half a minute before the droplets broke apart noiselessly on something solid further below - or was it above? Alucard thought, staring in wonder.

"What the hell is this place?" he whispered, afraid to break the unnatural quiet, narrowing his eyes at D's crumpled, still body.

Then the Count began to hear discordant, watery voices. His searched around him for any sign of change; all he could discern was the impression of movement, like the flow of the air around his body. The voices poked through the silence occasionally, needling past the crushing nothing around them. Finally, sound rushed in; the darkness was washed away in the watercolor fade of time.

Muted columns of stone rose into shadows that were more familiar to vampire eyes. The footsteps and laughter were loud and clear now. Alucard saw three figures walking toward him between the giant columns whose sconces flickered with an everlasting brilliance. The women walking down the halls were dressed in a decadent manner, a study in the flesh with chests hardly covered at all. Barefoot and pale-skinned with varying degrees of immortal loveliness, they stopped, ignoring Alucard completely.

A fanged beauty with brown, streaming hair tittered, "Ah, trust it to the Count to throw such a ball! 'Scantily clad,' the invitation said. All those beautiful mortals..."

"But where is our beloved host?" the blonde temptress added in a sultry undertone. "How we would like to pay our respects to our great and omniscient lord."

A small figure stirred out of the corner of Alucard's vision. The females noticed it as well.

"You there!"

"Yes, you. We can see you plain, fool, come on!"

A young person stepped into the light. The boy's eyes were as if they were poured from the paint wells of a deity, the color of the bright afternoon sky - such a blue that took the ladies' breath away. He gazed calmly albeit it nervously back at them from a face carved from porcelaine, cheeks flushed red with embarassment. It was the most beautiful child any of them had ever seen; they swooned and fell to their knees, crawling toward him to get a better look from his height.

"Ohh," the blonde crooned, reaching to touch the boy's dark brown hair. "So beautiful..."

"Must be a tiny left-over from the ball," the brunette whispered.

"Let's have him," the black-haired lady suggested. "Just to ourselves. Just we three; we'll share, each have a taste, until he's all gone."

The child stepped backward, hand reaching for the sturdiness of the column he was hiding behind, eyes slowly growing wider.

"Get away from me."

The women froze, quailing at the tone of the little one's voice, so bold and full of power.

"How dare you," one hissed, recovering more quickly than the others. "Well, we were willing to make it nice for you, boy. Now you'll suffer!"

In seconds they were upon him; the boy struggled, but as he was he was far too weak, and a tiny pale white white throat was exposed. He quivered, his jaw clenched from screaming - or sobbing. But his expression was curiously empty, eyes thrown behind a curtain of dark, gleaming hair. In a few seconds they would start to drain him of his life.

During this, Alucard had quietly prepared another loaded clip for Casull, before moving to join the fray. However, he had forgotten about something important. The gloved, black hand around his wrist made him check his step. D was kneeling on the floor and breathing better now, but where his eyes were focused he didn't know.

Alucard understood his motives in a moment. While he had glanced away, a fifth player was added to the stage and Alucard naught but an observer. Regardless of whether D had stopped him or not, Alucard probably would have just wasted his ammunition. The women were petrified with fear; the fifth presence was not a face or a name, but the growing darkness, a multitude of unblinking, glaring red eyes. It swelled like a plague, all jagged edges and razor-sharp teeth as it closed in on the four figures on the floor.

Without even a warning, the immensely powerful vampire fell upon the women and tore them apart. Their screams were swallowed as their throats were gouged open, their vital red fluid never reaching the floor; it simply collected itself in the center of the blackness, destroying them. What was left of the women, after the chaos subsided, were tattered bodies, all of them crawling over each other to get away.

"Cowards," the vampire lord, reforming himself slowly. "Run away. Back to your weakened, inbred little brood. Flee into the holes you crawled from!"

The count's head was shrouded. As if the boy was not even there, he turned away, staring toward the spiralling stairway where a group of other monsters had formed. Without looking, he spoke to the trembling boy on the floor. "You were to stay in your room."

The boy lowered his head, vastly unharmed. He stood up slowly, smoothing his white shirt. "Father."

"Never call me that!" the vampire king snarled, backhanding the child into the stone marble column. There the boy crumpled, tight-lipped. The cut on his cheek healed on its own before Alucard's eyes.

Alucard relaxed his shoulders after he noticed the colors around his vision were blurring. The vision was melting, and then gone. D let go of Alucard's wrist a second after the last color was sapped by the flow of time.

"The past?" he demanded. "Was that the past?"

"It is your future. It is already long past for me." D's eyes went hazy. "Was I really so small then?"

"It shouldn't matter," Alucard replied with chilling emptiness. "We have a battle to finish. I think you've recovered. Let's start our dance again!"

D sighed, pursed his lips, before raising his sword, his head back to look at Alucard. "We can't fight here. Or at least we shouldn't. We don't know what could happen, and we should be more worried about getting back."

"You're concern is touching," Alucard replied, "but wholly unnecessary. I'll place a bet on the theory that this purgatory will end as soon as one of us dies. As you said, this hell only springs up around us when you and I are together."

"Death doesn't guarantee anything," D answered back tightly. He lifted the bright sword, flicking blood from its point. "But if that is all that entertains you now, I'll indulge."

Alucard turned his reloaded weapon on D, but found that no matter how much he wanted to fill his beautiful, damned body with bullets, there was nothing but hesitation. His lip was curled savagely enough to scare a cannibal into pissing himself, but the mean of his emotions boiled down to pity. That boy in the vision. To spite his lack of paternal affection - and God knows what befell his mother - this man named D had turned out the way he was now, a proud and unspoiled hunter, wearing his badge of innocence like it was a spoil of childhood.

Suddenly the space outside of time shuddered again, and Alucard looked around himself, stepping closer to D simply out of a need to find a point of reference to ground himself. "Again. What will it show us this time?"

There was a strange cracking sound. Then, as the colors dripped into focus, Alucard holstered his weapon, listening to D sheath his sword as they again observed a scene unfold. The cracking became clearer and more definitive as the sound of a whip on flesh.

A slightly older boy was secured to a metal cross on a wall. His flesh was red and raw from touching giant iron crucifix, as if brushing against it burned away layers of skin. There was another painful alternative - leaning away from the cross to recieve the lashes raining down upon his chest. Thick, dark and damp hair fell across his startlingly luminscent eyes which shined even from the shadows. The odd thing was that the boy hardly uttered a cry. Just a hoarse, quick breath of pain at each lashing, his flesh laid open and bare and then healing slowly even as the next one fell. The boy looked exhausted.

The one delivering his torment was a monster in a shroud who very obviously took pleasure in dealing out punishment. He seemed intent on carving the meat right off the boy's ribs, but no matter how many times, the wounds would seal over in a matter of seconds. A thin layering of scarlet covered his skin. The dungeon was rank and full of filth and stank of excrement.

"It's all for your own good," the monster chortled. "The master wants you strong... and the only way you can get stronger is to never be afraid of pain. Pain's only good for lettin' you know you ain't dead yet!" Another blow fell.

The boy winced darkly, trembling slightly as his hands tightened into fists.

"He hates you, but he can never get rid o' ya! Yer all that's left of that bitch he said he loved so much! He takes pride in boastin' about how he fucked her raw. Never expected a little punk shit like you would come popping out, killin' her in the process! What rubbish! You're a sack of shit, and your daddy knows it!"

Every blow that fell equated to a lesson in agony and endurance. This purposeless torture otherwise did nothing but satisfy the monster's hunger and allow Dracula to fulfill a vengeance upon the boy for killing a woman who had meant so much more to him than life itself. Dracula gazed from across the room, as much as the sight of a crucifix irritated his eyes.

Gradually, each blow became more swift and vicious, rending open the precious immortal skin of the youth whose eyes quickened with fever and pain. He shut them, bowing his head, and bending his body as far as it would go away from the crucifix, whose longer-lasting anguish was not preferable. But the heavy rain of attacks on his flesh were becoming incessant and the laughter, the horrible, cackling madness--

"ENOUGH!" Alucard screamed, lunging toward the scene, reaching to tackle the cloaked monster to the ground. But he fell through and crashed to the floor, directly in front of the cross. He could gaze on it without discomfort as it was not necessarily real for him as it was real for the young, dark-haired youth.

He looked up, glaring aggravation filling his expression.

The boy's eyes were changing color. They were quivering orbs. The whip fell again and again. The boy stopped trying to move. His gaze turned a muddy violet, then outright crimson, his mouth coming open after keeping his cries of agony behind his fangs. His eyes flew open suddenly, and from his lips poured a tremendously horrifying scream. The shackles binding him to the enormous cross shattered. Alucard jerked backward; the boy fell.

Then, in a few seconds, the raging dhampir boy flew at his tormentor with the speed of a demon, snarling like an unleashed lion from its cage. He kicked with his knee at the cloaked figure's face, knocking the head clean from its vertebra, uncapping a spray of dark, black and unnatural blood from its torn ligaments. Unrestrained anguish and rage filled the boy's face as he gazed toward the indistinguishable character moving above the chamber on a balcony.

He screamed "Father!", but the figure disappeared, and the boy was alone with the haunting command.

Go away from here, D. I can't bear to look at you anymore.

-------

"Do you understand? Do you understand now why I put myself in that coffin?" It was the voice of wind from the icy north, brisk and captivating. "I can't bear surviving outside of both circles. Neither can I fit myself into both of them at once. I can't be a monster and a victim simultaneously. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to find peace, and instead I find this place - and you. There is no single being in my world that can send me to that oblivion."

The Count Dracula, of the timeline of our Earth, pushed himself up from the floor. The scene had long since evaporated into time and memory. He may as well have been floating in thin air. His expression was deadpan, a mask of indifference bordering on a lethal case of apathy. He had been sitting down, covering his face and hiding from the scene, curling in on himself so that he could also hide from the memory of that dark, reprehensible creature - himself. Now he was upright, staring D flush in the face.

"You're the only one here that can fulfill this wish," D deadpanned, gazing back into his eyes. He stepped closer, leather creaking as he brushed his hat away and let it fall - it did not stop at their feet but continued to descend forever, on into the blackness. He ignored that; the dhampir continued and pressed his face against the lapels of Alucard's jacket. His face was wet. "Please. Aluca-- No. Dracula."

The name sounded sweet and strange and alien on his tongue, with all the right inflections of his homeland. It sent a funny pain into the count's chest. He smirked, grabbing D's shoulders and forcing him to rise. "Don't. I won't do anything, with you on your knees all pathetic like that. Do yourself some honor. Look me in the eyes."

D obeyed. When he did, Alucard pulled him near and brushed his mouth against his, slowly and curiously. The dhampir had looked stricken, as if everything he had ever done had drained out of him and he simply felt old.

"May I devour you?" Alucard said suddenly, pulling away.

"Why?"

"Why should I have to tell you? You're going to be dead anyway; what difference does it make how I do it, and for what reasons? All I ask is that you fight as if you give a damn!" The vampire snapped, closing his hand around D's throat. "Releasing Art Restrictions to Level Zero..."

The darkness swallowed them, a thickening frenzy as the multitudes of the dead spirits that Alucard had consumed filled the empty spaces between the corridors of time. The bright flash of a sword flickered like the waning light of a burning candle, twisting and writhing in the wind.

------

The snow squealed beneath the tires of the minivan. Soon, a pair of well-blackened boots cracked through the hard shell of snow on top, and crunched their way a few paces. White slacks taut with a second layer underneath to ward off the biting wind whipping the snow into a froth crinkled as the figure half-ran, half-stumbled into the distance. A white long jacket, and two swords buckled to feminine hips flapped back and forth. Integra's hair came loose from inside her hat and went streaming behind her.

There was a thunderous crack, as if something had broken the sound-barrier, and a sickening nausea quickly and harmlessly passed over her. She was already sick at heart. Seconds ago she had heard signs of battle and could not sit by like a typical woman waiting to survey the aftermath. She had ran to the snowfield, half-expecting to view the battle.

However, there was one little problem. There was no one in sight. It was still. The fading rumbles became distorted and then disappeared altogether. Then, half a heartbeat later, the sound crashed again. A few feet above the ground, a blood-drenched figure crashed to the snow with a muffled thump.

Regardless of who this was, in spite of not knowing just what the hell had just transpired, Integra nearly landed on top of the battle-torn individual. There was no red coat, no guns, and no sword on his person; his black hair fanned out around him in a reckless heap, sticky with gore when she tried to brush it into one again.

She cursed under her breath; hot, angry and admittedly terrified tears streamed down her face. She listened to Walter as he came after her. Seras was a bit faster on the mark, dashing toward them, shrieking in fear, "Master?!"

"Is he...?"

The man stirred, rolled over. A rattling cough produced a wad of blood and sputum. He looked up at the sky with its horned moon, as if he had never seen it before in his long life. Black tears streamed along the lines in his face. He gazed with red eyes, his mouth twisting into the ever-familiar sneer of pleasure.

He whispered, "I've never seen... such a beautiful night... my master."

THE END