Three of a Kind
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, anyone, or any concept here-in
Chapter Five:
"Well, that was interesting," said the boy as he retrieved the bayonet from its place in the ground behind him. Seras realized that she probably should just be happy to have not been stabbed by Anderson in this encounter.
"Did that just happen?" she asked. He looked at her opened his mouth and was interrupted by the sound of gunfire and the radio.
"Vehicle spotted. Open fire!" There was a crash and the gunfire died.
They were in the process of carrying Seras back to the APC's and collecting the teams that had been assigned to sweep the area around the road for extraction.
They had made the whole walk bathed in the babble of children speaking in that disjointed way that children so often do.
"...and the black one threw the bad man across the room..."
"...stomped his face good..."
"...like those TV ninjas..."
"Can we go back? I need to go potty" and so on.
When they came in sight of the APC's, William was confused and not a little worried to see one leaning against a tree and the other flipped on its side.
"Damn," said the strange boy. "John must'a been really movin' to do this."
The bag William was carrying twitched and Seras said, "What, what's happened, report."
"It's nothing," said the boy. "Just that our little ol' minivan collided with, and flipped your transportation," said the boy is this Luke speaking? with an evil grin.
William almost laughed when his end of the bag (the head) shot straight up and its occupant screamed "WHAT!!"
"Don't worry Nightling we can fix it," and with that the boy walked up to and around to tip the APC to its normal position. William heard him telling the soldiers on that side to vacate the area and stand with the group and the children when they voiced confusion, distrust, and their directive to capture him, there was an inhuman roar and three soldiers sprinted out and around the APC.
No sooner had they left than there was the sound of three voices going, "three, two, ONE!!" The APC jarred and tipped a little and started to rock when it had started on the rebounding swing the countdown was heard and the APC shuddered under what must have been a massive impact but whatever it was did the trick and the whole thing tipped back over and landed on its wheels. The boy walked around from behind the vehicle and for a second William thought he had six arms but then he blinked and he didn't, just a manic grin.
William didn't ask how the kid had done it but he did check to see that his weapon was loaded and the safety off at least twice in the half hour it had taken to un-wedge the other APC from the tree with some tow chain.
By the time they returned to the Hellsing residence most of the soldiers couldn't wait to debrief and go to sleep. William almost couldn't because that strange boy had been fidgeting on the APC, this wouldn't have bothered William so much except that this fidgeting involved an enormous knife, an overlong rifle bullet, and a very shiny coin. When asked to stop the boy just smiled then sat in the APC, stiller than a statue eyes closed not even seeming to breathe and that just creeped out everyone worse.
When they arrived at the manor the boy blinked a couple of times and crawled to the exit in a fluid, motion almost as if he had no bones, unlocked it an walked out onto the manor grounds.
"Is it me or is he as weird as Alucard?" asked one of the other soldiers.
"No way," answered another. "No-one is creepier than Big Red."
By the time the soldiers had gotten on to hauling Seras inside and waking her up she was in the middle of a very pleasant dream involving male models and chocolate, and so she missed the best part in order to deal with the infuriating boy instead.
"What's your name anyway?" she asked walking the now handcuffed boy to Integra's office.
"Now that you finally ask, it's Luke, and why are we handcuffed again?" Seras chose to ignore this strange turn of phrase.
"So Sir Integra doesn't shoot you on sight," Seras seriously answered.
"Fair enough, we're susceptible to silver and holy weapons now." He nodded his head.
Seras, still a little upset at being woken mid-dream asked, "What, do normal weapons not affect you now?"
Luke Shrugged. "No it's just the silver and mercury bullets tend to either hurt more or make bigger holes."
At the office door Seras knocked and heard Integra inside say, "You had better have good news police girl." This was bad, normally Integra called Seras by name; this little difference told her that the master of her master was in a truly foul mood.
Seras immediately answered. "I caught the artist as well as his accomplices."
This it seemed was good enough news for the office occupant who then said, "Then come in." Seras's 'captive' walked behind her in the door and dodged right immediately behind one of the chairs in front of Integra's desk. This seemed wise since the Knighted lady held a gun in one hand and looked ready to shoot.
"If you want to shoot us do it in turns and not right now please." This seemed to confuse Integra.
"There's only one of them. Seras you said his accomplices, where are they?"
Luke only made the problem worse by saying, "all four of us are right here, and we're not coming out until you put the gun down at least." To Seras's utmost surprise Integra did.
"There, you can come out now," said Integra. He looked around the chair at her to see the tabled gun, stood up and sat down in the chair. Seras noted that his cuffs were now in front of him when she remembered putting them behind him.
"We guess we have a bit to explain don't we?" said Luke.
"You'd better" said Integra in a brook non nonsense tone.
Silence reigned for a few seconds before he said, "we are Luke. We run the Lone Star Weapons trading company and a majority share in three medical blood donation collection companies. We also have a rather extreme case of multiple personality syndrome," he grinned maniacally.
"I demand you stop that!" ordered Integra who looked at Seras with a glare that said 'why did you bring me a lunatic to deal with?' It was not Integra's day, with the round table meeting that afternoon to discuss among other things Seras's very existence. Now that she also had a crazy to deal with made the whole thing worse.
"There's more or else you wouldn't be here," she said looking into that toothy grin.
"Well yes. This is our tri-annual vacation but that isn't all that special." At this point Seras decided to inject a little information into the conversation.
"He was working with a vampire and was killing them as well."
"He was?" queried Integra. "Very interesting, do you care to explain that to me." His demeanor hardened and the grin disappeared into speech.
"Certainly, aside from running a rather well off and respectable gun trading company we also run a nameless organization whose sole purpose is to rehabilitate vampires. Our local branch says that this, we presume your family, called Hellsing is the primary hunter organization in England. We tend to enjoy dumbfounding other country's hunters when they come to an infestation only to find it dealt with. A neat little note, this is no different except that you actually got to the infestation nearly as quick as we did." This he said in one breath and when it stopped he inhaled and Integra asked a question.
"When you say 'rehabilitate,' what do you mean?" This was getting slightly interesting.
"We judge a vampire, based on their undead actions and then we either kill them or give them a job in our company or one of the other companies we own parts of. Every other week they receive a visit from our 'Icecream' distribution personnel to get their food supplies for that week. That and with the war on in Iraq..." Luke was interrupted by the first bars of the Superman theme song played on. He looked up at Seras who was holding the satchel she had come in with.
"That's the emergency line. Would you please give us that phone?"
Integra instantly said, "I do not give you permission to answer that in my presence!"
His head snapped to look at her, his expression disappeared entirely and said in a voice that chilled her blood. "Since John knows where we are, if this call is not answered, soon this building will be inundated by mortar fire and clean swept by a combat team more heavily trained than any other on this planet. This is not a threat, just a statement of fact of what will happen." He blinked and his eyes changed from hazy blue to solid black on the right, and deepest green on the left, he blinked again and they were blue.
"Very well," conceded Integra, "However, use speaker I want to hear it if it's that important."
"Thank you," he replied as he reached out with his now unhand-cuffed hand to accept the phone Seras finally pulled from its special pocket. He opened and answered it.
"Hold, this is going on speaker," he pressed a button and stated, "ok, go." A woman's voice came through.
"Hey Bossman, we got good news and really bad news. Good news is we found and raided another blood hostel on the D.C. outskirts but it was heavily populated in both senses of the word, but we lost father Jacobs and his whole team. There were a large number of survivors but a little under half were dying when we got there," the voice cracked with the sound of grief.
Luke's voice cracked as he asked, "how many?"
"Out of the three hundred and eighty-seven bodies, thirty were dead outright, a hundred and six were alive and could be saved by the paramedics, of those that remain, twenty that died gave permission and the remainder who could be were given the choice, twelve refused and the rest were changed." There was a silence.
"You're distressed, explain further." he persisted.
"The oldest victim was twenty years old, the average was fourteen..." the voice broke down in sobbing.
"It's alright, get back to the office and send the new ones and their paperwork back to base. I'll deal with it when I get back. In the meantime you get to sleep; it must be the crack of evening. Tomorrow evening find another priest of Jacob's persuasion. We will call back on the normal line tomorrow at four AM your time to take your full report."
He closed his phone and looked at Integra who was for a first speechless. When she regained her composure she asked, "Did that mean what I think it meant?"
His face was hard as he responded. "Every word, and yes that operative was a vampire."
"Just how many monsters do you 'employ'?" Integra finally asked.
"We wouldn't call them that, but all told if you count them all, around eight hundred." This single piece of information hit Integra like a tangible blow, it couldn't be true, her disbelief must have shown on her face.
"No they're not all vampires. In the central U.S. section we have werewolves and further north and west we have the equivalent in bears, totaling around five hundred vampires." He said all of this in a deadpan sort of way that irked Integra to no end.
"That is, still impossible" said Integra, still in disbelief. "We haven't even killed that many in the past twenty years."
"No," was the only answer he gave "Our family has been doing this the past three generations, England is very small, and you have a distinct 'shoot in sight policy' here. Now, on to business you probably have a few more questions surely?" he stopped, tensed and without looking in any particular direction said, "Salut count Ce mai faci? Îmi pare bine."
What resulted surprised Integra even more as Alucard descended from the ceiling where he had been standing; he looked the stranger in the eye and said something in the same tongue.
Luke unfazed, answered in English. "At last we meet the Count of legend. We don't speak any more Romanian and had been saving that bit for this meeting."
"You shouldn't have," said Alucard in a tone Integra had never heard him use before. "Your accent was horrible."
When Integra looked back at Luke, in his place she suddenly saw four people, one sitting in the chair, asleep and three others standing around it, all looking either at her, Seras, or Alucard.
"Just who the hell are you three?"
One of them dressed in blue answered, "He told you he had multiple personalities syndrome, you take a guess."
The one in black continued, "and if you want, you can shoot him," he gestured at the one in blue. "He sent you those sketches and the virus."
The one in blue said, "dammit bla..." but was cut off by the sound of twenty bangs as Integra promptly emptied her gun into his chest. He fell over. By this time the other two had by this time picked up Luke and started walking towards the door.
"You coming speed?" asked the one in green.
"I didn't say you could leave!" said Integra.
"He needs some real sleep after the bad news he's just received," said the blue clad one, standing up from the floor plucking silver from the holes closing in his shirt. "I'll stay and answer your questions for him."
"No, I'd rather speak with a more civil and less perverted person," Integra retorted unfazed with the fact that she had just emptied her clip into him and once again stood before her totally unharmed. Her interest with this 'person' grew even more. The blue clad one looked appalled.
"Now wait just a minute. He drew the sketches!" He pointed at the camouflaged one. "I sent the virus, and he," he pointed at the one wearing black, "delivered them!"
Integra keyed in Walter's number at her table phone and said, "Walter there are three gentlemen leaving my office. Please find appropriate quarters for them."
"Understood ma'am. Tell them to wait outside," came the prompt reply.
As they left the room Seras suddenly remembered something.
"Hey, where did my handcuffs go?"
To which the one in blue answered, "You mean those things on your left wrist?" She looked down to see her handcuffs locked around her wrist, side by side the chain broken at the middle link.
"Now on to business before the host got sidetracked. He was saying that the availability of willing donors is up because of the war in Iraq and that there is more than enough, no soldier will die for want of blood..."
TBC