Chapter Two

The Haunting of Hellsing

She hated him.

She'd not even known the man for twenty minutes before she'd decided. The new captain was a pompous git, she declared, her hands gripping the handle of the massive cannon in her hands. Her eyes narrowed at the cocky man in military garb sitting in the row of seats opposite her. When his azure eyes caught hers staring, he grinned suggestively. Seras' grip only tightened; she looked away in disgust.

The van carrying the team came to a stop. Immediately, the members of the team began to pile out of the van- guns cocked and bodies on edge. Every member quickly organized into a line, ready to receive the next order of action. Seras was on the end.

"Alright, men, you're going in. You've got fifteen minutes. Follow Stadler," Commander Fargason spoke as he walked the line. He glanced at his watch for the time and then nodded to the new captain. "Don't disappoint me. In and out in fifteen minutes," Stadler confirmed. Seras could barely hold back the desire to roll her eyes. The line slowly began to break as man after man entered the building.

"Victoria," he called, making her stop, reluctantly, in her quest to begin her mission, "planning to hide in the back of the unit, were you?" "No, sir," she answered back. "Then let's have that door down," he ordered as he traded hand items with the girl. Wanting nothing more than to be rid of him, she grabbed the device quickly and ran off to complete her duties.

As soon as she entered the building, she slid on a gas mask and readied her pistol as she joined the rest of her rank. As silent as a mouse, the team infiltrated the building. Door after door, they cleared each room until they reached one with a crying wounded man. "I'll get it," Seras volunteered. She stepped forward and emptied a cartilage into the man. He fell silent. Hearing the whispers of her comrades, she began a brief explanation, "It's a mercy. They become ghouls otherwise. I'll stay in the lead." With that said, the whispers ceased. Seras stepped forward and they all fell into her shadow.

The enemy, a group of ghouls, was not hard to find. The team easily found and removed of them. After the immediate danger was dealt with, the team broke up into single cells and dispersed in different directions. Seras headed east, checking rooms at every door.

As she was running down one of the hallways, she caught a glimpse of motion and quickly moved to conceal herself in a doorway. Cocking her gun, she peeked around the frame down the hall to catch a glimpse of brown tendrils floating on air. The person it was attached to disappeared into a room a little further ahead. She followed.

The King of the Undead

"Alucard?" Her voice was sweet as the finest honey and as tempting as sin.

The age-old vampire felt his eyes flutter open to find two bright burgundy eyes boring into his own unwavering crimson ones. Only one person, in all his life, had the ability to look him straight in the eye, especially with so much emotion held within the windows; it was her, the haunting siren of his dreams.

His hands lifted to entangle in her brown locks. An errant smirk reeled upwards from his lips, revealing a sharp, glittering white canine. The muscles of the king relaxed almost instantly once he felt the soft, light body of the woman land gracefully over his own. He tugged the locks to his lips; they trailed from the ends to the roots until he was again met by those red-stained, blank eyes that held so much inside.

The woman smiled all the more when his lips reached her own. It were these moments he treasured the most; it were these moments held only between the two opposites, who held nothing back only when in the arms of the other. "Alucard," she whispered over his breath as she rested her forehead against his own. Her hands, warmer than the sun he detested, caressed his lonely skin and set both his mind and body ablaze. His own arms snuck around her waist as his lips found the crook of her neck.

"Alucard," she whispered again into his ear, "Can I stay here, with you, forever?" His hands ceased their entanglement for the briefest of moments while the words registered in his twisted mind. Did he want her with him forever? This woman who was once human? Who'd become damaged by his own weakness? Did he really want to remain with a pure soul, a soul who contrasted so violently with his own warped and grotesque view of life? A woman who hated senseless killings and loved the products of the natural earth? Could he really ever keep such a free-loving creature made unto the darkness, who truly belonged in the light? Could he find it in himself to take it all away, just to have her in his arms?

A dangerous grin flitted across his lips.

Of course he could.

"For as long as we shall live," he whispered back before stealing her lips once again with his own. "I knew you'd say that," she replied, pulling back with a teasing smile. "But of course." His grin widened suggestively, "Did you foresee this as well?" She gasped in surprise.

As he always did in such a rare state of bliss, he felt the word roll off of his tongue. It was the word he'd long since marred as taboo, as the mere mentioning extorted the only weakness he'd ever known, the only emotion he'd ever truly felt…

"…Lucretia."

"Alucard!" The husky, no-nonsense voice of his female master, the heir to the Hellsing family, called out to tear him from his slumber. The vampire's eyes drifted open; two blood-filled eyes glowed in the darkness of the room. Upon hearing his Master's beckoning, he did what he had always been compelled to do- answer.

The king lazily stood from his bed and shifted as a way to crack stilled bones and relax tensed muscles. Satisfied, he walked to the wall and melted into the shadows it cast.

As he usually did, he entered the room by slowly emerging upside down from the ceiling. Why, a sane person might ask? Why the hell not, the insane would reply. In the darkly lit room stood Sir Integra beside Walter; both were huddled in front of a computer. "M.I.5 has already taken action," his master spoke after setting the corded phone back upon its cradle. Alucard, having been called, could not refrain from making some remark to initiate himself into the situation, "There's something so human about finding delight in the deaths of one's fellow men."Having made his opinion clear with an unclear comment on the situation at hand, he focused on more important matters, like his gun. The one he had worked just fine, but after it's uselessness for fighting priests had been discovered, he'd lost interest in his once proud weapon. Now, he wanted one that was bigger, one that would not destroy, but obliterate his enemy. With that in mind, he presented his problem to his oldest companion, Walter.

Naturally, his friend agreed to his request. Having done what he'd intended to do, he turned back to the shadows, prepared to leave. "Alucard," his master, Sir Integra, warned him. Alucard stopped in place out of habit; instantly, knowing her better than she knew herself, he denied what she would ask of him, "I cannot help. I belong to a world where all is death. Your world of choices was not meant for me to interfere with." He had left that world many years before, he spoke silently; in truth, he wasn't even sure, had he been alive, that he would have even belonged to such a world created and ruled by humans. He resumed his exit.

"Your world is my world now, Alucard." The undead king stopped in his tracks. His signature arrogant smirk fell from his face. A heavy frown took its place. Whose voice was it, now, that he was hearing? Was it madness, finally coming to claim him after so many years of narrow escapes? Or was it a ghost he'd sworn away from every ounce of his awoken conscious?

Alucard glanced over his shoulder to find the stern face of Sir Integra. It must be the madness, he decided as he turned to reply to her.

Brown, coffee colored tendrils replaced white; chocolate pools sparkled in the place of indigo; a small smile formed at her lips- all of this combined fiddled with his brain system. He would have resisted curiosity, had it not been for the shift of wind that coursed her overpowering smell through his nostrils. "Alucard," her voice, dripping with broken innocence caged him where he stood. Her eyes narrowed as her smile grew sweeter; she tilted her head slightly in that fashion that could easily steal the heart of any man who dared glance her way. Her light pink lips parted as if to speak to him the words he'd longed for so many years to hear…

"Alucard." The shrill tone of reality shattered her image before him. Before him, again, were the angered indigo eyes of his master, rather than the humming brown of the woman who'd call him by the same title. Seeing the human woman before him, he smirked despite the crawling sensation under his skin and tilted his hat, "And a good evening to you, too, Ms. Hellsing." As he turned away, back into the shadows, the fake grin slid off his lips as the soft giggle of a ghost echoed through the corridors.

Seras

Seras didn't know why she'd followed her faulty senses. At first, she'd thought there had been a woman in the building and because of such followed to find if she was ally or foe. Much to her surprise, she followed her through every corridor, only to find that the route ended in a dark room. She looked around for the woman she'd followed, but could find no trace of her. When she asked the men of her cell if they'd seen her, they replied that they'd not seen anyone, and had been following her lead the entire time.

Seras was perplexed, but no more so when she found the bodies.

Bodies littered the wooden floor. Blood spotted the walls and corpses were strewn across the floor as to replace where there once was a rug. Looking closer at the indeterminable color of the walls, she discovered faint scrawls like wallpaper in gibberish. Directing her flashlight towards the other end of the room, she found even more bodies- six or eight, perhaps?

"Christ, what a mess," one of the soldiers behind her mumbled to himself. She was inclined to agree. Someone had been there, and recently; the killer they'd been searching for was messy, indeed- a sure characteristic of a ghoul, she believed.

Seras. The warm voice blazed in her ears like a snare drum. Looking up with lightening speed, she found the evasive woman.

As she had appeared in her dream, the woman was brunette, oddly dressed, and as radiant as the moon, itself. Upon her lips, she wore that taunting smile, and in her hands she held her trademark parasol. Seras, she whispered as she twirled her parasol with one hand; using the other, she gestured towards the shadows darting across the ceiling.

Seras cocked the weapon in her hand before the creature hiding in the shadows had the chance to strike. "Engaging the target," she spoke into her headset. The gun shots of her teammates ceased the second she pulled the trigger of her cannon. The creature stood no chance. "It looks like our target is entrenched on the third floor," she spoke, holding the speaker closer to her mouth this time so her superior could hear her over the damage the shell had done. "Don't worry," the man she strongly disliked, her new captain, replied, "I have it dealt with." A series of loud gunshots followed.

A swish of white caught her eye. Standing out of harm's way, stood the woman in white twirling her parasol as if it were a relaxing day in the sun. Her mischievous smile ensnared her attention; knowing she'd caught Seras' attention, the woman's smile stretched, revealing two very sharp, very inhuman fangs. The moonlight leaked into the room through a break in the boarded windows, encasing her eyes; two crimson orbs stared back into her own, intently.

"Victoria," her Commander's voice blared into her eardrum, nearly causing her to jump in surprise, "We need you to do a bit of rat catching." The woman- Lucy, as she had called herself- continued to stare, as if waiting for something. Seras struggled to split her attention between dream and reality; "What?" She replied into the headset, her focus still trained on the woman, as if her eyes straying would cause her to disappear.

Lucy's smile widened even more; she twirled the parasol in her hands and leaned the rod against her shoulder. In a swish of white, she exited through the only other door adjoining the room. Seras, again, followed her without a single moment's hesitation.

Sir Integra

It was all over the media, her little army. It was the one thing her organization did not need, for the public to know that they existed. Silently, she cursed the foe at fault and vowed to deal punishment where it was due.

Pulling up at the apartment swarmed by Hellsing that had been broadcasted only minutes prior to her arrival, she found Commander Peter Fargason waiting for her. Slamming the door of her luxury car hard enough to make any collector cringe, she began her slow advance towards the building.

"Quite a mess you've made," she directed towards the Commander. In turn, he politely bowed his head, "My apologies, Ma'am. The cleaning up process has already started." Good, she thought, glaring at the rundown apartment. Finally, they could begin the process of pushing Hellsing back into the shadows, out of the media's eyes and ears. She was concerned, to say the least, or at least she had been before her indigo irises clashed with the bloodiest of crimsons.

It was only a second.

For one brief moment, time stopped. In that silent sliver of a moment, she saw her staring back at her through the only window left unbarred. At first, she'd thought she'd seen a glimpse of white, which she'd shrugged off as her own imagination. But those eyes- blind to the world, yet containing far more than any being on Earth could possibly know- could not be dreamt up by any human imagination. She knew it to be true, for no matter how hard she tried, she would never be able to forget the dizzy revelation shrouding the one being she could never forget.

For only a second, her heart stopped beating and air became as heavy as lead inside her lungs.

"Hello?" The young white haired girl with large indigo eyes peered inside the stone monument. Using what little strength she possessed, she pulled the heavy wooden door until the crack between outside and inside was just enough for her to slip through.

Peering outside, she found only an endless field of sunflowers, in which her father had disappeared to only minutes before to greet the keeper of the building that know ensnared her interest. She only allowed that one glance before taking in a rush of air into her lungs and sliding into the ancient monument her family had kept guarded for longer than she was allowed to know.

The inside was more and less what she'd imagined it to be. Her father had mentioned the "monument" once on their business trip to France; he'd told her it was a special place, and was very important to the Hellsing family, and that it would be just as special to her. What he didn't tell her was why, and it irked her curiosity greatly. How could this old stone building be so special?

Inside the only light to be found was the small sliver of light leaking through the only entrance to the single-roomed monument; a few lit candles sat on handcrafted metal stands and were littered about the room in no specific order, but they shed very little light unto the darkness. Using her hand against the cold stone walls, she cautiously made her way into the center of the room where some type of upraised stand stood.

She remembered, looking back, every beat of her rattled heart, every sound her small feet made as they touched down upon the marble floor. She remembered, clearest of all, the next few minutes that would the finding of truth.

The building was no monument, she realized as she reached the center- it was a tomb.

Lying upon the marble slab in a lidless coffin was a young woman not a few years older than herself. She looked as if she had lost her life recently, between the fragile time between child and adult. Her skin was pale, yet it still radiated the gentle warmth of the living body. Her long hair was glossy at best, and the chocolate strands fell around her like a halo of humanity. She looked as if she were simply sleeping, Integra had thought. But she knew she was no longer alive, for she had been showered and laid upon a bed of sunflowers, her hands permanently joined together in eternal prayer. Oddly, the woman wore century old dress that had since been left to tatter and spoil with time, something that had evaded the body. She pondered that, but something about the woman drew her closer and halted the racing questions reigning inside her skull. Her feet shuffle noisily closer until she was mere inches from touching the old tomb itself.

Her heart, strangely, she later realized, had not leapt forward in pure fright. When the cold hands of the corpse untangled to grasp her own, she did not fret. Instead, upon the contact, her body relaxed euphorically as if instead of being held captive by a corpse, she'd been embraced by a field of sunflowers.

The corpse's eyes flickered between being open and closed as the eyes beneath adjusted to a lesser darkness, or so she'd thought. Those honey brown eyes shifted from the paintings of angels upon the ceiling to Integra's innocent indigo orbs. A soft caressing smile shattered the stillness of her lips. Her heart began to beat faster, she remembered, as the woman lifted from the grave to life. But it was comforting, somehow, as if the woman were someone she'd always known, who'd always held nothing for her but love.

The unseeing eyes, she noted, fell upon her as if she really could see her standing there before her. Gently, the woman lifted her hand to caress Integra's cheek. Her lips again moved, parted to speak to her, "Hello, child." Her smile grew fondly as her fingers twisted into the white tresses.

"W-who are you?" She'd asked, fighting the calm that engulfed her upon the woman's touch. The woman's smile remained immovable, but the shape of her eyes narrowed with sorrow, "I'm afraid that I don't remember." Integra vaguely noted the leather chocker binding her throat, nor did she notice the soft white scar upon her forehead, now revealed where bangs had long grown out. The woman's fingers fell from Integra's hair to clutch at the silver cross strung upon a chain around her neck. "You can't remember your name?" Integra had asked, perplexed by the idea of someone forgetting something as simple as their own name.

The woman's hand dropped as her head tilted slightly, her smile turned taunting; "I'm afraid not, my Lady Hellsing." She'd gasped, Integra recalled. "How do I know your name?" The woman spoke, asking the very question Integra had been thinking to ask. The woman chuckled lightly, softer than the flowers that embraced her body like a quilt of life. Her hand lifted to the leather device upon her throat, "Do you see this symbol, my Lady?" She tilted her head to the side to reveal Integra's very own family crest upon the black leather. The woman turned back to her, her smile softer than before as she explained, "This makes you my Lady, Ms. Hellsing, and I, your humble servant. I've been waiting a great deal of time to meet you, my Lady." The mysterious woman offered her hand.

Integra had been captivated the second she'd entered the field of towering flowers, she'd later realized. Without hesitation, she took the hand offered to her and shook it, enticing a happy beam from the woman, as well as one of her own. It was one of the only times she'd ever laughed, she thought bitterly; and it had been with a woman whose name she hadn't even known.

"What should I call you?" Integra had wondered aloud minutes later. The woman's eyes shimmered with knowing; "You are the one I've been waiting for, to call me by name." Integra's eyebrows furrowed. She didn't know anything about this woman, much less her name! She supposed her only option was to guess rationally. But what would she do if she were wrong, if she called her by the wrong name?

"You won't," the honey brown eyes reassured her. And inside, she felt that reassurance flow through every blood vessel, in every cell that made her alive. The word was not a thought, nor was it a random choice word.

"Lucy."

It was her name.

Her eyes, in that moment, became clearer, as if an eternal downpour of rain upon her had ceased, as if the sun had peeked out from behind the dark clouds to shine down upon her.

She'd never forget that moment, Integra knew; nor would she forget those blind eyes or the name she'd known before her own.

"Lucy…"

"Sir Integra?" The Commander questioned, concerned by the stare of horror upon her face. "Is everything alright, Sir Integra?" Integra returned from her memories to find an empty window before her line of vision. "Yes," she replied after a moment's pause. She had been rattled, without a doubt. The Commander saw that as clearly as she did, but he let the topic go out of respect for his superior.

Silently, she turned away, headed back for her car. Once inside, she reached into her jacket pocket with shaking fingers and clumsily dialed a number. She held the device to her ear and heard it ring three times before the man on the other end picked up. "Walter? Do you have the footage streaming from the apartment?" "Yes, Sir Integra," he replied. "Good, I need you to destroy it, but first I need you to find something for me." "Of course, Sir," he replied after a brief pause, "May I ask what it is I'm looking for?" Integra paused, staring out the windshield as the Hellsing vehicles began to leave the scene. She weighed her chances, and prayed to God himself that Alucard would never hear of what she was about to say, "I need you to look for her." "Who, Sir Integra? Seras?" "No," she bit her lip as the scales of her decision tipped heavily to one side. "It's not Seras, Walter….it's Lucy."

Integra disconnected the phone line.

Staring up at the empty window, she sincerely hoped that she was wrong, that her tired mind had created the illusion of a ghost. But her gut, however, was twisted, telling her that that was only wishful thinking.