As D walked down the road he missed the weight of his sturdy long sword across his back. He felt too light, too exposed in the clothes Hellsing had provided him plus a thin jacket made of artificial fibers instead of leather. It wasn't that he was cold- his half noble heritage made all but the most extreme temperatures tolerable, but he felt unprotected and didn't have familiarity on his side.
One of the more convenient parts of a greatly inflated life span was getting familiar with the land, forests, the placement of towns, even governments. Individual humans are constantly replaced, but if one town has a culture and rites, they are passed down to future generations and can be easily predicted by the hunter. Where he was now, wherever that is, he knew nothing about the expectations or culture of this new world.
While he didn't have any trouble at the hospital, he also made a point not to interact with anyone. If he ever had to interact with people of this world it could tip them off to his strange, ignorance of their world.
The only thing he had going for him was what he remembered Alucard mentioning saying to him, while explaining bagged blood to the dhampir, that the population themselves was ignorant of the supernatural and would not be able to tell he wasn't human, even if they did think he was strange. People might think he's a little crazy but he wasn't in danger of being chased by any stake-wielding mobs, and that was a cause for celebration.
The sun was starting to set. The sky was shrouded in a sea of fiery orange and pinks, which faded to purple as the sun lowered itself into the horizon. If Alucard was not tracking him already, he was going to start soon. D unconsciously started picking up the pace, faster than he had been walking before. He was lost in thought currently about Alucard's tracking ability- although he had been injured, the vampire found him quickly, too quickly for D's comfort. After all, D did have centuries of practice stalking, tracking, and following nobility and vampires on his own planet. He was not expecting to be caught, especially that fast.
Alucard- not Dracula, Alucard- was a curious vampire indeed. He was obviously old, enough so to make a lot of the remaining Nobles look like children. He was powerful and obviously skilled, D was unsure who would win in a fight of pure physical strength. He also served a human master apparently not of his own will but from what D had seen, the vampire enjoyed Integra's orders and didn't need to be coerced. There was also that unnerving smile and smoldering red eyes, D could still feel those eyes attempting to bore into the place where the dhampir's soul would have been.
He had been walking on a more rural road but eventually it had started to become more and more suburban until he was walking down a considerably populated city. There were even people walking out at night, which was practically unheard of in all but the safest towns on the Frontier. Going out at night for a human wasn't worth the hassle of beating back flocks of dangerous creatures living within the wilderness of the Frontier.
While he was unsure about interacting with a large number of people like what was inevitably bound to happen but perhaps the large amount of people would throw Alucard off his scent, if only temporarily.
After watching the comings and goings of people in the city he made a few observations, unlike life on the Frontier, his world's state of technology was current and probably progressing. All manners of vehicles flew down the roads of the city, and public phones were common. Yellow streets lights illuminated the paved sidewalk and neon business signs flashed in the dark. He was surprised how alive the human city was after dark. People milled in and out of businesses, to restaurants, and back to their vehicles.
D blended in well in his plain outfit and smallish duffel stuffed, with what the population didn't know were blood packets. D walked and walked for a while, without really noticing where he was going. All he could tell was that he was slowly crossing the city to somewhere and eventually get somewhere less populated. While blending in with a crowd is generally a good way to hide, Alucard would not be fooled for long and would eventually find him. When that happened, a fight was bound to follow and D didn't want any strangers getting involved.
For now, the dhampir blended in with throngs of people moving in and out of bars and clubs on the sidewalks. Eventually people started thinning out, due to the fact that he had moved into a quieter area and that the night was growing old. Technically it could have been considered very early morning, and then he saw her.
Walking down a particularly ill-lit street, littered with old newspaper D encountered what could only be a prostitute. She was blond, with a youthful face and a curvy body further enhanced by tall leather boots and exceedingly short pants- as what was in style among the female population so far as D could tell. Her makeup was dark and her bright red lipstick for a moment reminded D of the blood-engorged lips of the Nobility.
"Hey there beautiful. How 'bout I give you a good time? I'll even give you a discount, I don't get many men as pretty as you," she hollered.
D was not sure whether or not he should engage her but deciding it was in bad taste to ignore her completely so he responded stonily,
"I have no interest in your services."
"Well, you're a polite one aren't you? Awfully formal too." The girl responded, moving to take a cigarette out of a small golden clutch she held. D was about to walk by her when she asked, holding out her cigarette,
"Hey, can you light me up?"
D did not know how to respond so he didn't try to.
"If you aren't interested in the goods and can't even give me a light then get off my street corner, you're going to scare my other customers," the girl shooed him away, swaying slightly in her high-heeled boots. She held her clutch loosely as she sucked on the unlit cigarette, leaning on a streetlight for support and to show off her long pale legs.
D was glad to leave that street. It was all too possible he had strayed too far from the busy, business filled part of town into the poorer areas. He wasn't worried for his safety but he also didn't want to become involved in an altercation between a townsperson and attract undue attention. He kept on walking. While he didn't recognize the placement of stars in this new world, he did recognize the placement of the sun and he was relieved that he could tell he hadn't just been walking in circles all night.
D entertained a fleeting fantasy that he would ride away from this city on his cyborg horse and hole up in a forest somewhere. He would start in the road until dodging cars became too much of a problem and then he would rush the sidewalk while narrowly avoiding a few hapless pedestrians.
"Only a few days into the new world you've rushed into and you've already cracked huh? If you stayed you would already have picked up a new target by now," said a voice, echoing from downward. The dhampir didn't respond.
"You didn't even bother to ask me, just hopped onto some rusty bucket with a rocket engine, that's pretty reckless even for you. Now you're wanted by a vampire old enough to be a descendant of the nobility and the surprisingly attractive leader of a secret organization. I can bail you out if you need me too, but not if the whole world's after you," exclaimed the voice, emanating from a crude human face chiseled from the dhampir's left hand.
"Don't worry about Hellsing, Alucard is the one worth worrying about," the dhampir finally responded. "You're awfully sentimental for a parasite," he added for good measure.
"Sentimental? I guess you can say I'm just as attached to your well being as I am to your hand," the small face said a long with a almost twisted laugh.
From a bystander's perspective, D was just another vagabond aimlessly roaming the streets of the big city, with a duffel to hold his meager belongings. They wouldn't be wrong. Hellsing had confiscated the majority of his belongings that he had the foresight to bring along with him.
Somewhere in Ireland…
"Well, what brings Reverend Maxwell here to my orphanage? Is it really so important you couldn't have called," questioned a priest in an impeccable grey cassock and circular glasses, shining sharply under the sun.
"I need to speak with you, somewhere private," the bishop replied quickly, his long grey hair hanging in one orderly ponytail flowing down his back. For having silver grey hair the bishop's face was deceptively young.
It was an amazing day outside. Instead of the grey weather and masses of cloud cover that plagued the region, the sun glowed warmly in the blue sky. There were many children running outside in the green grass surrounding the orphanage taking advantage of the unusually bright weather, away from where the two men were standing alone near the entrance of the orphanage.
The two's surroundings changed as they headed outside into a back room within the building. It was a small office filled with multitudes of organized papers, books, and leaflets. On the walls hung dusty ornamental crosses and old religious paintings. The second the door of the tiny office creaked shut, the young bishop Enrico Maxwell continued,
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut your vacation short. The Iscariot needs you. There was an UFO that landed in Northumberland; officials are trying to keep things covered but Hellsing for some reason is in on the whole thing. Hellsing was called the night it crashed in the middle of a forest in the region, but nothing of interest has happened in the last few days," the bishop said, stopping to breathe.
"Then why are you here?" responded the priest, with a bored face, his green eyes wrinkled.
"I have sources who say the UFO is really some sort of small spaceship, and with Hellsing involved it means that something either alien or supernatural has probably arrived with it. That's not all- sometime last night the vampire Alucard was sent out on a mission; Integra has informed me that he is out for nothing more than a standard rogue vampire hunt, but I don't think so. So soon after being called on from the UFO crash Integra would have sent out her young and blonde to take care of something like that. I think it's something more, and I want you to go after Alucard, or better yet, figure out where he's going and why," Maxwell handed a thin, nondescript folder to the priest, who let out a mad cackle.
"Leave it up to Hellsing to fail whatever tasks they've been given," the priest laughed, the shine off his circular glasses did little to obscure the dangerous gleam in his eyes. "Very well, Maxwell, consider it done."
The sun had risen and was becoming almost painfully bright now that it was sometime in the late afternoon. He was almost relieved when he saw a church riding over the run of dilapidated housing. Inside the church held large crosses unlike what he'd ever seen in the public of his world before. Crosses had been fairly uncommon on the Frontier as most religion died off after the mass of nuclear attacks from which humanity almost extinguished itself. They still remained surprisingly unknown considering they would momentarily distract and impair the nobility.
Inside the church was quiet and stuffy, the air hung hot and thick inside with little movement or drafts. Even though it was just a small church, it still had impressively gory crucifix on the chancel hanging below a slightly faded stained glass window of the sacred mother. The pews were mostly empty except for a few people alone or in pairs seeking sanctuary. The dhampir sat in a down in a pew as isolated as he could make himself.
"Hey pretty boy, didn't expect to see you again," a blonde girl sitting in the pew in front of him said, twisting slightly around in her seat. D vaguely recognized her as the prostitute he'd briefly met last night; he wondered how she got here after his long night of walking nonstop, but then remembered the electric cars rumbling along the paved streets of this world.
"I didn't think you would be the type to attend church," D commented with an immutable face.
"I'm not," the attractive blond said with a laugh. "I help the father with the cleaning and housekeeping for some extra cash. It's a good thing too- he's awful at it. When I first started, all the crucifixes were so dusty you couldn't even see the blood. And that's saying something, Father Mathews loves his crucifixes to be as gory as possible," she sighed while twirling a strand of blond hair around her finger.
"So why are you here, you don't seem like the church-going type," she asked.
"Maybe I came for the service," D responded, a little too quickly.
"Well, you're about four hours too late, better luck tomorrow," the blonde finished with a smile. "I suppose I should be a good heathen and let you pray in peace. My name's Shera, incase we meet unexpectedly again," she said while standing up from the pew and stretching slightly. She had changed from what D saw her wearing last night; she was now wearing denim pants and a white blouse. Compared to last night, her outfit and appearance had drastically changed from a seductive vixen to a worn-looking yet normal girl.
"You can call me D," the dhampir replied. He would never see her again. Either he would succeed in running far away from this place or Hellsing would hunt him down.
"Bye D," Shera said to him with a smile before walking out of the church, the heavy doors thudding behind her.
He was secretly glad when she was gone that he could be alone. D was planning on spending the few hours until sunset to sit and reflect in silence and was looking forward to it immensely.
The dhampir had only been sitting there for no more than an hour when the door to the church banged open. He didn't react and nothing seemed out of the normal as a preacher made his way down the aisle. What he didn't expect was the priest to turn to him with a mad grin and exclaim,
"Look-y what I've found here. A little lost vampire far away from home."
AN: Finally an update! I couldn't think of any other ways to break up this chapter so it's long compared to the other chapters.
Please review and tell me what you think, especially about whether or not you like the stories pacing because I'm a little iffy on that myself.
There also will be more Alucard next chapter, so stay tuned :)